Yang and I come home at 11pm from a Saturday night street cook your own leg of lamb dinner and Aidan is still awake. He is not happy because he can’t sleep because of the heat and humidity. He is walking around in his underwear and resembles the old man he will someday be. Since our air conditioning works quite well it might be reasonable to ask why was the house so hot. We don’t need to ask, we know that to Yang’s mother there are few worse evils than sleeping with the air conditioning on. I’m sure this is based on thousands of years of Chinese history because you know air conditioners have been around so long.

The lamb from last night’s dinner.

Chinese history is also used as justification for taking Chinese medicine; surely if this herb has help with this ailment for 5000 years then there must be something to it goes the argument. I tend to take a fairly skeptical view towards it thinking that most ailments tend to clear themselves up in a few days no matter what herb you take. On the other hand, western medicine is good at dealing with one cell infections  (bacteria) but mostly has no answer for those pesky multi-cell infections (viruses). Chinese medicine, on the other hand, says come one, come all.

It is with that preface that I started taking Chinese medicine (TCM) yesterday for the second time. The first time was shortly after I met Yang and I had a cold and her she mixed me a remedy in the form of a Chinese herb drink. It tasted so bitter that I immediately declared my cold gone.  The occasion for this second attempt is likely some kind of virus I have that my western doctor has essentially thrown up the white flag of defeat (or put another way, he got paid for two visits while the ailment is getting better on its own without any actual treatment).

Three weeks ago now my elbows felt very itchy as I tried to fall asleep. I woke up the next day with a rash on the outside of both my elbows and a little bit on the outside of my hands, knees, and feet. I thought it was an allergic reaction of some sort since we had just washed the bed spread. The next night I was woken by all over joint pain. Jaw, elbow, wrist, fingers, ankles, feet. If it moved and wasn’t my back it was painful to move. I took this as not a real good sign. After a couple of days I went to the main western hospital here and the doctor said the best course of action was just to wait a week and see if it went away, if it did then it was likely a virus, if not it could be an auto-immune type think like Rheumatoid Arthritis. Meanwhile nearly all of Yang’s friends said it was Gout since and my clarification that the symptoms did not match had no effect on their conclusion.

So I waited and the symptoms got more manageable day by day but definitely still there and keeping me from my exercise routines. We ended up taking Elisa in for a small rash she had and the dermatologist said the rashes were not related – Elisa’s rash is a common childhood thing. Yang piggybacked the visit and got a reluctant opinion on my rash and the dermatologist was pretty concerned that I hadn’t yet had a blood test since my body was obviously reacting to something systematically. So I went back the next day – five days since my previous visit – and got blood tests that my doctor was not super eager to do as he wanted me to sit out a few more days first. The good news is the blood tests didn’t show anything really wrong. The bad news was the symptoms, while mostly gone and fairly mild, are definitely still there.

So Chinese medicine to the rescue. One of our friends recommended to Yang a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctor who works out of a research institute down near the center of town. Yang took me because she cares and because I can’t communicate. Especially in Chinese. The doctor’s office was on the seventh floor of a new building, still a bit unfinished. On the hallway were pictures of the research institutes moral events, visiting dignitaries, oversea visits, and one of a dog being dissected. After introductions and symptom listing the doctor placed two fingers on the outside of my right wrist and later my left. Supposedly this move can detect all kinds of ailments, kidney infections to heart problems.  For me it was a pulse. The doctor said the infection was still in me as evidenced my the continued tightness in my jaw, feet, and hands. He then prescribed and elaborate combination of herbs that I will take twice a day over the next 10 days.

My single sachet of Chinese medicine

Today is day two. To say the herb drink is bitter is not fair to the most bitter thing you ever tasted. But it’s manageable. If the remaining symptoms go away then I’ll know; Traditional Chinese Medicine works. Either that, or the symptoms would have gone away by themselves anyway.

Or, I can always takes Yang’s mother’s advice upon of hearing my continued symptoms. In a voice of upmost seriousness she told me to never, ever sleep with the air conditioning on.