My Aching Back!

I threw my back out—I still don’t know how—when I was in college, and the pain was excruciating. I went to a traditional doctor, who basically said it was muscular and would get better in time. He prescribed me some muscle relaxants, which did help with the pain, but made me so loopy that I did not want to take them. This had been going on for a week, with very little improvement, when I happened to sit down—very stiffly and gingerly—next to a friend of mine, Xia, who was from China. She asked if I was okay, and I told her about my situation. She told me she had just the thing for me, as her father was a doctor in China and had sent her to college with lots of traditional medications. The next day she brought me a plaster and told me to sleep with it on my back. I thanked her, and just to be polite I took the plaster from her. (In my defense, I grew up in the Midwest and knew nothing about Chinese medicine.)

I think it was a couple of nights later when I decided to put the plaster on, just so I could tell Xia that I had tried it. I was certain that it would have no effect. The next morning I woke up and was out of bed and halfway across the room before I realized that the pain was gone. I mean, gone. That was the turning point for me. I knew that I had to find out more about Chinese medicine.

Since that time, I have had a few more back spasms, none as bad as the first. In every case I turned to Chinese medicine first and it has never let me down.