Get the point?

He asked me to lie face down and try to relax.  I felt him undoing the fastenings of my tunic top, and his cool but firm fingers unclasping the hooks of my bra….. and then he started jabbing needles into my bare back….

…. So no, not ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’– but Fifty euros of acupuncture!

Somebody suggested I went for acupuncture as my blocked ears are still driving me crazy and all the pills, sprays and face-pulling don’t seem to be working.  So because it was for my ears, I was somewhat surprised when he asked me to change into a strange ‘surgical scrubs’ pyjama type outfit and lie face down on a massage table.  I did try to ask some questions but the fact he spoke French with a strong Japanese accent and I had my face and ears wedged into a hole in the table made conversation difficult.

The needles he placed in my back weren’t too painful, but then he explained he was going to place little blocks of carbon on each needle, light them and leave me for 10 minutes – and it was very important that I didn’t move because the carbon might fall and burn me.  I certainly heard that part! 

The rest of the treatment was no less strange – but by that time I was able to see from pictures and diagrams on the walls that he was also a Shiatsu practitioner (or is that the oriental dog?).  There was lots of twisting and pulling of my arms and legs and jabbing me in the muscles with his thumbs.  He kept saying that I was very tense and was I stressed?  Quite frankly I think anybody lying half-naked on a table being jabbed in the muscles and thinking they might accidentally be in a #metoo situation has every right to be a bit tense! 

He did finally turn his attention to my ears.  Needles in ears also hurt.  Quite a lot.

After what felt like well over an hour of minor torture, the session ended and he suggested I go back again next month.  Well of course he would say that, at 50€ per session that I can’t claim back from anywhere (says the cynical side of me) but now I know what to expect, I might give it another go. 

PS.  Having now had time to check out his website I see that the hot needle idea is called 'Moxibustion' - and you are advised not to drink alcohol for 24 hours afterwards.  Oops, too late...

Have a very Happy and Healthy New Year!

Yesterday afternoon, while walking the dogs in the vineyards, the loop on the lace of my right boot somehow managed to attach itself to the hook on my left walking boot, and I went crashing to the ground.  You know when you are young and you fall, you very quickly jump up and brush yourself down, hoping that nobody has noticed - that no longer applies to me as I just lay there, refusing all offers of help, while I took stock of the situation.  Luckily the ground broke my fall (as Spike Milligan once said), but part of that ground included a big stone which I must have landed on as by the time I managed to stand-up (or allow myself to be pulled up!), I could already feel a large bruise on one of my ribs.  

The ironical thing is that I had designated 2019 as my ‘Year of Health’ .  Not making huge resolutions that I would never keep but just deciding to eat more healthily, exercise more, cut back on alcohol (not ‘dry’ january but ‘moist’ january), and more specifically, to sort out all the niggling health problems that I had ignored for years.  Even though I’ve lived in France for ages, I still have the stoic British mentality that means I don’t even consider seeing a doctor unless a leg is falling off whereas my french partner makes an appointment at the first sign of a sore throat.  I have been very lucky to have been in ‘rude’ health for many many years but it seems that once you get to a ‘certain age’, your body starts creaking and letting you down, so to start the New Year off I made an appointment with the village doctor.  

He listened to my heart (still beating, apparently) took my blood pressure (11 over 6 whatever that means) and asked a few general life-style questions and then sat down and started writing the equivalent of War and Peace on a prescription pad.  He seemed appalled that I hadn’t had a blood test for several years (very regular here apparently) so that was added to the list.  Following my trip to the pharmacy I left with one of those ‘bags for life’, brimming with pills, products and potions - so much so that I then spent some time sitting at my computer turning it all into a spreadsheet so I could remember what to take or what to do at what time of day, and for how long etc.

One of the problems which I have ignored for far too long has been the feeling of having blocked ears and it is now affecting my hearing, so many of the products and potions were in an attempt to deal with this - allergy pills, salt-water nasal rinses, nasal sprays etc.  At the same time I have been following some strange exercises I found on the internet which involve pulling extraordinary faces to move the jaw-bone, and also pinching your nose and blowing hard.  Which brings me full circle back to yesterday’s fall…… my  bruised rib only hurts when I move, laugh, cough or sneeze and when I tried the exercise of pinching my nose and blowing hard it proved almost fatal.  At least being partially deaf means I can pretend not to hear my partner laughing when he remembers my fall, nor hear him telling me that I should’ve tied my laces better!  As for my ‘Healthy 2019’ - I shall restart it when I am feeling better!