Patient: Male, age 52
Element: Water
Number of years coming for treatment: 2 years
Last treatment given: 1 year ago
Problems today: Recurrence of irritable bowel syndrome, and minor flaring of psoriasis in the scalp. Less worried about his family troubles (one son was in trouble at school, but now appears to be settling down better).
Treatment given:
1 Co – St block (Co 20 – St 1)
2 Bl 38 (43)
3 Bl 66, Ki 10 (winter seasonal)
At the end of treatment: His darkish blue-black colour had lightened, his face looks rounder and less drawn.
Time of next treatment: We both felt that he had left it a bit too long since the last treatment. Appointment therefore made for beginning of February, but will cancel if he feels very good in himself.
Proposals for next treatments: Ki 16, AEPs or Ki 25
Note on Water: I like to think that I can see two different kinds of Water colours, one a darkish-bluish-black, which I see as being more related to the dark, yin side of Water, therefore the Kidney, and a lightish, translucent kind of colour which seems to reflect all the colours, and which I relate to Bladder, the more mobile, less static, more yang of the two Water officials.
Hi Nora,
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying this blog very much but I do have a small(?) request. Could you perhaps explain why you have chosen the points you used which I take it are most likely based upon the spirit of the points. BTW, I'm not referring here to those points you've used to remove any form of block. So for example with this patient what drew you to use Bl 38(43). As you are presenting case histories I appreciate the "why" may not be available any more, but if it is!!!
Regards,
- Sean
Sean: My understanding of when to use Bl 38 (43) is based on one of the rare occasions I heard JR Worsley discussing in detail why he was suggesting a particular point. A patient with multiple sclerosis arrived in our classroom in a wheelchair, shaking very badly throughout his body. I expected JR to suggest a very complex series of points for such a severe condition. Instead, all he told the practitioner to needle was Bl 38 (with moxa of course) and the source points of the patient’s element. After the treatment all the shaking had stopped. JR explained that he chose Bl 38 because “it reaches every cell in the body”. On thinking about this later, I realised that part of the explanation for this lies in the fact that the point is at the same horizontal level on the Outer Bladder line as the AEP (back shu) point of Heart Protector on the Inner Bladder line. The Heart Protector is the guardian of the blood, and blood, of course, feeds every cell in our body.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of my patient, the psoriasis in the scalp was a sign that blood was not flowing freely. Psoriasis is a condition in which dead or dying cells remain trapped on the surface of the skin, in effect throttling the life out of the cells lying below, so that they in turn gradually die. Because Bl 38 encourages the flow of blood throughout the body, I decided that it would help restore life to the affected cells in the scalp. I also thought that it would prevent the spread of psoriasis, which in the past had reached his arms and legs.
Your question has prompted further thoughts about point selection which I am drawing together for my next entry on my other blog, norafranglen.blogspot.com. So thank you for stimulating my ideas, Sean.