Periperal Neuropathy patient

i am a long-standing euroamerican patient of traditional oriental medicine and was treated traditionally for neurological problems long before they were even able to be discovered by western means. i am also in my early 70s. i'm also trained in ethnography and used my experiences as a patient to learn about a different way to experience my body. my first real traditional doctor was from a medical family and had many years clinical experience in china before coming to this country. she trained me well.

if it were me feeling worse on bad days and better on good days, i would read this as being less numb than before. my bad days often indicate that i've strained something the day before, or an allergic reaction, a need for more rest, or something else that needs attention that i could previously ignore and now cannot. in other words, something that feels subjectively like a bad thing is actually a good sign.

my body can finally complain loudly enough to get my attention when something harms me. something that's supposed to hurt is strong enough to hurt. memory of the pain is what will keep me from harming myself frivolously again when my body is strong enough to get away with tolerating a little abuse. we humans have that ability to help us through emergencies. unfortunately we sometimes get in the habit of using our emergency reserves for everyday living and wonder why this causes us distress.

Hello Andy,

Since no one is adding to your post, I would like to suggest something you could try. I am only a student of TCM but suffering from the same exact problem as your patient, with the exception of it only occuring once a month for me.

The problem started when I worked one summer at a construcion for a few months to earn money for college and it started out as a lower back pain. It then soon went down to mostly my right buttock and then down my leg which soon became worse than the original back problem. In a few weeks it became so intense it could barely sit or walk.

At the time I went to a regular doctor, didn't want to take pain killers, she adviced me to take walks and showed me stretching exercises to stretch the area of pain. It had limited success.

I do exercise regularly since I was a kid, which would sometimes make the pain better, sometimes a lot worse but after a while I figured out that problem wasn't what I was doing but WHEN I was doing it. I came to aconclusion that if I trained soon as the pain appeared - even though training started out painful - it would gradually decrease and disappear completely.

I would suggest since you have already tried changing treatment techniques that you now try changing the timing of the treatment. If possible with the patient as well, try applying treatment at the time of the occurance of the pain - every other day in your case.

Can I also ask the history of the patient, when and how the problem started? Was he doing physical work during his life or was he an office worker sitting at a desk? At what point the pain started to appear for him?

- Tibor K.

(Blade)