Electroacupuncture

He calls it his Star Trek Therapy. Small boxes with dials and lights scattered around the room and I wonder what exactly they're for as I undress. "You can leave your bra and skirt on, but make sure to take off your shoes." I'm beyond the point of being bothered much by any sacrifices I'm taking to heal my shoulder. Six months ago the cartilage in my right shoulder joint was blasted out by my velocity as I hit Dorena lake after jumping from a 60 ft. cliff. The tricep tendon and bicep tendon were displaced and every shoulder muscle torn: the deltoid, lateral, biceps, triceps, infraspinadus, subscapularis, pectoral and clavical. My scapula (shoulder blade) is now rotated inward from a combination of the force knocking it out of place and no muscles to correctly position it anymore. The AC tendon which attaches the clavicle has been partially torn and a broken piece of Acromion bone floats above the shoulder socket. An X-ray at the urgent care clinic, an MRI and two visits to the orthopedic surgeon--all horribly overpriced--have left me even further disillusioned with Western medicine than I already was.

Despite the dials and gauges, I'm more comfortable here than at the last acupuncture appointment: a sliding pay clinic outside of downtown Denver, reclined in a dark room next to quadriplegics as Chinese flute music plays, barely audible beneath the laughs and screams of the severely mentally disabled. This clinic is completely different.

It's a modest office in a building of suites in downtown Eugene and I've been recommended by my massage therapist, who I trust very much. The receptionist, Carla, is an attractive, clean-cut and friendly woman who makes me feel at ease. A good family friend is even coming out of the therapy room as I go in. "You've come to the right place," she assures me. I believe it, but the small silver boxes with black dials still make me nervous as I carefully undress. (It's a lot harder to take off my shirt these days. When I first injured myself skiing in Colorado four months before the cliff jumping incident, I passed out in bed on Percocet for three days before I got the courage to take off my sports bra for my first shower.)

Four tiny needles are tapped into my shoulder and one at my foot, "to ground me". As this mousy man with his pants pulled up high balances on his black orthopedic shoes, his grey moustach informs me that at around 200 billionths of an Ampere, the electricity isn't enough to trigger neural impulses so it won't hurt, but my cells will still feel it. Carefully, he clips wires to each of the needles and tapes them in place before turning up the various dials. "144 cycles per second is the tested optimum for muscle tears," he assures me.

You don't feel the electricity all at once as in electrocutions, but I assure you, I feel it. A heavy weight seems to seep into me like dark food coloring in a glass of water. The change in electric gradient across the membranes of my cells seeps lower into my shoulder. Lying on my back, my shoulder is propped up on a pillow with another cushion under my hand, above my stomach. At first I have to battle the urge to move my arm. My forearm twitches. But slowly the pain in my bicep and pectoral muscles decreases and I feel my shoulder has rotated back, ever so slightly.

When he left the room he told me he'd be back to make sure I was ok and that if I needed help to call out, as the walls are quite thin. It worries me that he had to instruct me on what to do in case I need help. As I said, the feeling of the electricity doesn't come all at once so initial discomfort with the needles and the position of my arm gives way slowly to a fear of the heavy weight seeping into my shoulder. It doesn't hurt, but it also doesn't feel very good and it's unlike anything I've ever felt, which makes me nervously hopeful.

After 20 minutes, I'm more than anxious to get the needles out of me. My arm feels like it's made of sand. I hear the timer go off, informing the doctor of my anxiety, but he's talking to Carla about some business matters and I feel like screaming. But he comes in sweet and smiling and when I tell him my shoulder feels heavy, he clasps his hands in delight that the entirely too Mystery-Science-Theater-esque therapy is working.

Once the needles are out, my head spins as I sit up slowly, but my shoulder movement is back to normal. (Normal, of course, is a relative term here. Swelling and scar tissue have reduced the movement of my dominant arm severely.) My body continues to buzz for about an hour afterward until I fall asleep and have an anxiety-ridden nap--the kind you have with a 105 degree fever.

Strangely, I can't wait to go back the day after tomorrow.