As Halloween draws near, I love watching my children get excited about their costumes and dream of the bags of candy they will collect soon. My business group had a “scary” theme this morning and invited us to dress up in our costumes to add to the festivities! I decided to pull out of storage an old favorite of mine from many years ago, my adult sized Tigger costume. Now, for those of you who know me, I have an outgoing personality that fits the Tigger persona. It was a riot to see peoples’ reactions to my costume and the comments were hilarious! I even won the Best Costume award!
But in all seriousness, I found myself sitting there in the meeting this morning, listening to fellow members’ speak about the scary things that occur in their industries. I realized that what I do isn’t scary at all. In fact, I like to think that acupuncture is a fantastic treatment approach to solve the scary issues we face in our human bodies. Although there are many people who may be afraid to try acupuncture for a variety of reasons, there really is nothing to be scared about!
The one thing I have learned lately is that a couple of my clients have come to me with chronic conditions that haven’t responded to Western medical treatments. As I begin their treatments, I always do a thorough assessment of their current situation so that I may determine the best course of action. Recently, two of my clients weren’t responding to their acupuncture treatments as I anticipated thus, I referred them back to their primary care physicians or to a specialist that could better assess their chronic issue. Both of them came back to thank me for sending them to their doctors because their chronic condition turned out to be a cancer. Now they both are getting the correct treatments their bodies need. Sometimes, chronic pain or ailments can be the “costume” that a more serious issue might wear, to disguise itself so it can be misinterpreted or misdiagnosed until its too late. As a colleague of mine once said, “Your normal everyday pain is not normal!” And this is true!
So this halloween season, please reassess your “costumes” and chronic challenges and get them re-checked. You never know what you might find out!