Acupuncture 1/23/2020

Today was my fourth acupuncture session and it was much longer. Usually the acupuncturist sets a timer and leaves the room. Today, I think she set the timer a bit longer but also had another client/patient in a different room. I can hear the timer go off but she didn’t come to pull out the needles until 5-10 minutes later. Instead of 25 minutes, it felt more like a 45 minute session today.

At the beginning, when she stuck the needles into my scalp, one of them stung pretty bad. She said it may have hit a hair follicle. Also, for the first five minutes, I felt a pinpoint pain in my left shin that throbbed with my heartbeat. I was going to hit the bell to bring her back but it subsided after 5 minutes. Finally, about halfway through the session, I could specifically feel the numbness increase around my right big toe. Typically the numbness is all over, like a large sock. I believe this was the first time that the numbness felt localized. I’m not sure if it meant anything but the acupuncturist was kind of excited when I told her. She is going to leave the needles in longer in future sessions to see if it will have more effect.

I did feel more numbness while I was laying there but couldn’t tell if it was real or if I just imagined it. I which you could objectively measure sensations like pain or numbness instead of relying on an subjective feeling scale.