That was a bit painful...

So I went to the acupuncturist today, and was his first patient at around 9:30am. I later saw the list, and sure enough, there were about 6 or 7 other names beneath mine after I got out at 11:30am. The doctor has been in the same spot for 20+ years, and the layout hasn't changed, so says my dad's friend. By the looks of some of the Time magazines I picked up from 1998, I'm not surprised.

The guy spends half of the year in Taiwan, and the other half in the US, so he understand English very well, and speaks it decently. Thank god for that, since I have a hard enough time describing normal stuff versus medical stuff in Mandarin. He does a few flexibility tests on me, and asks me the normal questions and concludes that my back is almost healed, but the lack of flexibility and pain isn't 100% a result of the back injury anymore, but rather muscle tightness and my body still trying to protect itself from re-injury. So he went to work on my neck and mid back with the needle. Except this isn't the acupuncture that you think it is. Oh no, it's something that hurts. While typical acupuncture needles are at 34 gauge and IV/injection needles are at 22 gauge, the single needle he used was probably a 26 gauge. He used it a total of 10 times, with 5 times across the neck and 5 times down the middle back. It's about 10hrs later, and my neck and back still feel like they were punching bags and are quite sore. The good news is, my flexibility did improve fairly quickly after each poke, and he thinks that most of my pain will have dispersed by tomorrow morning. Here's hoping.