Two weeks ago, I was sitting down on a bench to eat some cheap Chinese food with my messenger bag around my shoulder, and I got a sharp, stabbing pain in middle left back. I get this once every couple months or so, somewhere in my back, but I either stretch or twist or bend over and everything fixes itself magically. This time, however, it wouldn’t go away. If I bent or leaned the wrong way, the pain would hit me–so hard it would stop me inhaling if caught off-guard. If I turned my neck, it hurt; even if I stepped the wrong way, the pain would hit.

Over the next couple days, I tried stretching, massage, IcyHot patches, and hot showers to no avail. Ibuprofen dulled the pain a bit, but obviously didn’t fix the muscle.

Lucky for me, the boyfriend’s brother-in-law is a physician in the area who learned acupuncture while he was in residency in LA, and kindly offered to acupuncture my back (is acupuncture a verb?). Now, I’m not afraid of needles, but I was a little nervous and skeptical, but willing to give it a try. (The physician has mentioned “opening up my chi” before with acupuncture, so it started to sound a little new agey, but I think I was just confusing “new age” with “non-Western.”)

So I lift up the back of my shirt, find the exact knot in my back, and he puts a couple needles in the spot, as well as around it. He also puts two in my trapezius muscles right over both my scapulae. Most of the needles go in without any pain at all–the most I feel is some pressure–and with one or two I feel a sharp pain for a second or two. I’m sweating pretty bad, I think mostly because I’m nervous; my palms are in hyperhidrosis . He asks me if I feel any ache, and at first I say no, but as I adjust myself ever-so-slightly in my seat, I feel what he’s talking about. The muscles just feel incredibly achy, almost sore. It’s so achy that it’s just mildly painful, so I sit pretty still for the next 30 minutes until he removes the needles.

After he removed them, I felt maybe 10% better. Nothing too impressive. I thanked him for doing it, but figured it didn’t do much for me. Oh well. Over the next day or two, however, I noticed my pain and tenderness had all but vanished. I can turn my head fully, twist my back, stand on one foot–with no pain at all. Was it the acupuncture, or just the tinctuer of time? I’d like to think the former. If you push on the spot where it used to hurt, it’s definitely more sensitive than the rest of my back, but it’s nowhere near as tender as it used to be.

Color me impressed. I should get my chi opened up more often.

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