Acupuncture & Complicated Patients
My wife (also an acupuncturist/herbalist/etc) and I were reviewing a new patient case that was complicated. And basically undiagnosed. You don't hear about this publicly, but not everyone has illnesses that fit into our current list of diseases and conditions.
It's common that people don't come to us until they've gone through years of illness and not getting better at the hands of MD's. By then, they have many pages of lab tests and medical reports.
To take on a really complicated case like that means reviewing every symptom and possible diagnosis, then seeing if every needed test has been run.
It's funny, too, that patients wonder if you are a specialist at their extremely rare, possibly undiagnosed condition. To be an MD specialist requires not only the 4 years of basic training, internship, and 1-6 years residency in their specialty, but also years of medical practice as a specialist.
So to expect an acupuncturist/herbalist with 4-6 years of training and 1-20 years of practice to be an expert in any of 150-200 diseases and conditions is simply unrealistic.
Honestly, it may not be the patient's expectation, but we wish we could be that specialized for you. Still, it's not realistic given the numbers of patients who see us- we have to be generalists to have enough patients to run a practice.
And I don't mean you can't be a gynecological acupuncturist/herbalist- I mean you can't be a specialist in one type of ovarian cancer only- sub-sub-sub specialty.
The good news is that Asian medicine has its own diagnostic perspective that we can use in addition to MD diagnoses, and we can do that very simply, or in a complex way- so in complicated cases without an MD diagnosis, we can still give acupuncture or herbs that may help.
We don't know enough (we know some but not enough) about all the biomedical mechanisms of acupuncture and herbs to say whether they will address your undiagnosed condition, but there is a chance they will help.
Yeah, long time no see.
