Chinese medicine

I have a friend who is married to a Chinese medicine doctor.  He graciously agreed to meet me yesterday, on a holiday, to see if there was anything he could do to help me.  Without going into gory details, lets just say my digestive tract muscles are proving they are just as adept at moving food and drink in the other direction as well.  Like the rest of the muscles in my body, they are not used to that much activity, so everything from my throat to my diaphram to the rib cage muscles are now very sore, which is starting to affect my quality of life. 

I had this problem with #1, and took Zolaft, but it rendered me incapable of comprehending speech, and i refused to take it after the first two times.  As a student, I could afford to wallow in misery all day in my bed (as long as i did the required reading and writing), but now as a working adult, I gotta be on my toes.  Since western meds make me feel stupid, I decided to take a crack at Chinese medicine. 

So far, my one and only experience with Chinese medicine was over the winter, when Mabo and I drank several gallons of medical tea they sell on the streets to chase away the flu bugs.  It tasked absolutely horrid and i gaged profusely the first time I chugged a cuppa down, but damn it worked.  I never had to take a sick day off of work all winter (for a cold; I got food poisining several times, but that's another story). 

So when my friend and her husband met with me, they warned me that Chinese medicine tastes different from western medicine and stressed that I may not entirely like it.  yeah, I figured.  After checking my pulse and other points on my body, he wrote a "prescription" and walked me to what he considered to be a reputable medicine shop.

Let me take a minute to explain Chinese medicine shops.  These shops are literally everywhere.  In them, large glass jars of various dried out objects are stored on shelves.  There are also dozens of little drawers where smaller dried out objects dwell.  In addition to various dried out roots, bulbs, and herbs, these places also carry dried out gekkos, lizards, turtle shells, starfish, sponges, and even sea horses (small, medium, and large) as well as a variety of earth and sea based creatures I don't even recognize. Mabo has recognized a couple items which are on Japan's endangerd species list.   The Chinese use literally everything on earth for various medicinal purposes. There is nothing they won't put into their bodies.  As my friend said yesterday, the Chinese will never die of starvation.  They will most certainly poison themselves to death, but never ever will they starve.  

If you have ever watched the Japanese cartoon "Spirited Away" you will understand exactly what i am talking about.  (if you haven't, please do; its a great movie!) Watching the "pharmacists" prepare my potion was just like watching Kumoji prepare baths.  While various herbs, spices, (and god i dont want to know what) were being prepared,  the doctor explained to me how to prepare the brew at home.  because he didn't know if i would be able to stomach the medicine, he prepared only two days worth of medicine for me.  if it works and I don't mind the taste, he will prescribe more later. 

That night, after two and a half hours, the potion was finally ready, prepared as he required: all the ingrdients were to boil in 5 cups of water until I had only 1 cup.  then after straining the medicine, i was to boil another cup and a half down to one cup and mix the two.  The two cups at the end were to be evenly split and drunk, one cup at a time, in the morning and at night. 

I had my first cup this morning.  it was not nearly as bad as i had anticipated, and if I liked the taste of anise, I might have actually liked it.  And it may be a coincidence, but I haven't had the urge to move my food in the wrong direction yet.  the real test will be 3:00 this afternoon, as my most difficult time is 3-8 pm. 

Oh, and he also showed me a trick:  If you rest three fingers on your wrist, there is a point three fingers down on your tendon that, if you push it, will reduce nausea.  yesterday, when I was gagging and wretching and looking for a public restroom, he pushed that point, deeply, and I went from "critical danger" to "generally nauseated but not critical", which was really an improvement for me. 

He told me if I visit his father (a medicine man for many years) in a couple of months, he will be able to tell if it's a boy or a girl just by looking at my wrists!  I'm super curious about this procedure, so I want to go!