I recently suffered from a terrible bout of Mono. For days I laid in bed sleeping anywhere from 12 to 19 hours a day. A week went by and there was no improvement. Two weeks went by and I was actually starting to feel worse as my lymph nodes swelled to the size of golf balls and my throat was so inflamed that my doctor had to prescribe me steroids. After 10 days of taking steroids and antibiotics and seeing no improvement whatsoever, I decided to abandon Western medicine and try out what I had previously been reluctant to do in the practices of Eastern medicine.
My mom knows a woman who spent several years traveling through China, India and the rest of Southeast Asia learning the ways of ancient medicine. At first, I was reluctant to try her strange methods of healing because I thought that Western medicine was the best, and frankly, the only proper way to treat a malady. But I pushed my reservations aside and went to her house where I was immediately taken to a room which looked a lot like a spa, with a massage table and various bottles filled with foreign creams. It didn't look anything like a doctor's office, more like a yoga studio. She told me to lay down on the massage table and relax. Then suddenly she began sticking me with tiny needles. I hate needles, probably more than anything else, but I instantly felt relief as she carefully inserted each needle. Then she handed me tiny glass vials filled with a special salt water solution that was meant to help bring down the swelling in my lymph nodes. Three days and 21 salt water vials later, and I could finally swallow without ay pain in my throat. She also handed me packets of herbal teas with special medicinal properties that reduced my fevers and helped me sleep through the night.
In three weeks' time, I was feeling back to my normal self again. I never in a million years thought that ancient Chinese or Indian medicine would be able to cure an illness that had no known cure. To me, East triumphed over West. And who knows, maybe I'll try out yoga next.
As westerners, we quickly assume that our ways are the best. It is interesting to see how people from other countries handle different situations, and that sometimes their methods are more effective than ours. Your story reminds me a lot of one in The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. The author describes his shoulder pain and how in America he was told that to regain full function of his shoulder he would need surgery. While traveling the world in search of the best healthcare systems, he found himself in India. He spent a couple months at a facility there, where he received different treatments, including massage and physical therapy. Not only did he regain full function of his shoulder without pain, he also never needed to take western medication or undergo surgery. Just goes to show that sometimes people in other nations have certain things figured out pretty well.
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