My Chinese treatments

We are at the First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin, which is the biggest and most famous Traditional Chinese Medicine hospital in China. It is a teaching hospital, where doctors receive their training. Every morning, the doctor, who looks like a combination of Dr. Spock and the antagonist Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, comes in the room with about 8 trainees. They are wearing masks. We (whoever of the Nagle family is wanting a treatment) are expected to be lying on the beds and ready when they come in promptly at 9:00. First the doctor needles Jenna all over her head, face, ears, and legs. Then she pulls down half of my pants to needle me in the butt, hip and low back (because I am getting treated for what has become chronic hip pain). My needles stay in 10 minutes, and Jenna's stay in 20 minutes. Once my needles are removed they haul in this device called a "Computer Fumigate", which I lie down on and put my butt in a large basin that has small holes in the bottom. Underneath that basin is a pot of steaming herbs. My butt and hip are steamed from this device for 30 minutes. After that a nurse comes in for "cupping." This is where many glass cups are suctioned onto the body using a heat vacuum (from a small flame). Jenna gets 12 cups over her lungs for 5 minutes, and then I get 8 or so cups over my butt and hip and low back. This leaves many round bruises from the suction. The cupping improves circulation and such. After that, the nurse brings in a hot herbal compress wrapped in a towel that is placed on my hip for 20-30 minutes. Then the nurse pulls down half of my pants again and rubs some black salve all over my hip and puts a heat lamp over it for 20 minutes. Then for the rest of the day I take herbal pills and drink nasty bitter hot herbal tea from a plastic bag. It is quite intensive. Jenna gets acupuncture again in the afternoon and also tui-na massage. She also gets physical therapy (called "functional exercises" in China) and drinks herbal drinks and such. Sometimes a translator comes in and says things like (to my Mother) "The doctor says you elder daughter probably has pain because your elder daughter does much hard labor." Or (to my mother) "The doctor says perhaps you have stomach pain because perhaps you should wear more clothing." The doctors, physical therapist and massage therapist all answer cell phone calls while treating the patient. The physical therapy has been great for Jenna, but maybe more on that in another post.

Today my hip is starting to hurt less and last night I did not wake up from pain at all (first time in months). In fact I slept so hard Mom had to kick the bed to wake me up after 10 hours. Either my hip was better or I was having some sort of delayed jet lag...