***** Vol.2 Chap.2 The patient’s troubled past *****
May-Ling headed back to her office. The line of patients waiting for her appeared to get longer and longer. She looked around her desk. There was a pile of mail, a week’s worth, in fact, that she had not even had the chance to get to. She sighed and called for the next patient to come in.
The morning zipped past rather quickly. By the time she finished seeing all her patients, it was way into the late afternoon already. She had no time for a break and had quite forgotten about her lunch. That was not unusual. There were many days that she never even touched her lunch at all. But she never complained. For her, it was gratifying to see that her patients were taken care of. Yes, to her the patients must always come first.
She poked her head out of her office and looked down the hallway, and saw that there were still a few more patients waiting to see her husband, Haw-Ting. This was one of those rare moments she finished the day before him. She strolled down to the acupuncture room and pulled out the chart on Jar-Li. Though she may have mollified the crisis this morning, she has been considering the morning incident the whole day. She had not expected the violent outbreak that occurred. In fact, Jar-Li had been a model patient since he started coming a month ago. He was the one she had least expected to have such a violent outbreak.
She remembered that day well when he came in. It was also late in the afternoon. He was caught stealing and beating up the storekeeper. Ordinarily, criminals like that would be sent to a labor camp immediately with very little chance for parole for a good ten years. She happened to be in the store when the incident happened. Somehow, the look on his face told her he was not a criminal. There was something in his eyes that spoke of desperation, not malice. That look touched her heart. When the policemen came to apprehend him, she followed them to the police station. She pleaded with the judge and convinced the judge that he was not a violent criminal. After much consideration, the judge suspended his sentence and put him on parole with the stipulation that he come into the clinic for treatment every day. She was convinced that with some proper treatment, she can return him as a proper person and a functioning member of the society.
So, she took the patient back to the clinic for acupuncture treatment, but he was restless and was fidgeting the whole time. Despite her telling him to calm down repeatedly, the man was jiggling the whole time and cursing and verbally abusing everyone in sight. People like that would be escorted out of the hospital immediately. But she took pity on him. After all, she was used to all kinds of verbal abuse. As she was inserting the needle into his lower back, he jerked unexpectedly and her needle pierced an inch deeper at the pressure point. Almost instantly, he became docile and quiet. The effect was so sudden and shocking that she thought she must have damaged his nerves. She quickly retracted the needle and watched. But he turned to her and smiled.
“How are you feeling?” She asked while looking at him anxiously.
“Oh, that felt good.” He replied.
“Do you feel OK?”
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“You are a miracle worker, doctor.”
The one talking was now a totally different person. She could not figure out what had happened to him. Neither could he understand himself. For once, he was nice to everyone. After getting up, he took from his wallet a wad of money and gave it to her and waltzed out of the clinic, singing his favorite nursery rhyme, ‘Oh, I am so happy.’
She was dumbfounded and surprised and gladly accepted the much-needed gift. She did not know what had happened. The next day, she met the patient on her way to work and he was cursing and cussing loudly at the street again. He saw her coming and cussed even louder than before. In her most calming voice, she asked him to come back to the clinic. After some persuasion, he agreed and followed her back to the clinic. One could hear him a mile off coming. When they arrived at the clinic, all the patients were standing at the door wondering what was going on.
She took him straight to the treatment room at the back and told him to lie down. As she pushed the needle back into the same spot as the day before, he instantly became docile again. This time, she left the needle in for a much longer period before releasing him.
For the following week, Jar-Li was not found or seen at all. Just when she was wondering how she could find him to check up on him, she heard some loud cussing and cursing coming down the street. She knew that voice well. She quickly finished up with the patient that was in her office, came out of her office, and met him in the waiting room, still cussing and cursing loudly. Breaking with the tradition of seeing the patients in order, everyone gladly let him go first. As soon as he arrived, she ushered him to the treatment room and administered the same treatment as before. Surprisingly, he became calm again.
After the treatment, she spent some time talking to him. She found out that he had a hard childhood. His father died while he was still very young. He was raised by his mother until he was nine when he ran away. He joined one of the neighborhood gangs and became the leader of the gang. But recently, his ill temper had caused a significant amount of trouble between him and the other ruling leaders, and he was essentially ostracized by the gang. The loss had aggravated his ill temper, and he was forced to live on the streets for quite a few months.
Her heart was touched by his difficult situations. Indeed, he had a hard life. But she was glad to hear that since he had been coming to the clinic the last two weeks, he had not lost his temper once. But he lamented that the effect only lasted a week. After six days, his violent tendencies seemed to get the better of him, and he would begin to curse and cuss again. She told him to keep coming every week. Since then, he had been coming in every week for the treatment.
For a while, she thought that her treatment was working well. In fact, she documented his progress and wrote a short paper for the Chinese Academy of Acupuncture Medicine. She recalled she had other patients in the past years that had responded favorably to similar treatment. But none of them had as dramatic effects as him. She was about to nominate him as the patient of the month. But the event this morning changed everything. In fact, the event troubled her greatly.