Traveling East

Today finds us heading east and in more ways than one. Literally we are sailing east from American Samoa to the Society Islands of French Polynesia. And figuratively, we are travelling eastward in that every morning Tom and the guys do a Tai Chi lesson on deck, while I have been receiving acupuncture treatments on the sea day afternoons to deal with my knee arthritis and food cravings. Both are working. (I know! Who would have thought?? Me, the tradional western pharmaceutical chemist. And on a cruise ship even???)

It's a bit serendipitous how we got to this point, but suffice to say that for me, walking on the deck of a moving ship compresses arthritic knees every time the waves move up or down and it was painful to walk even a short distance. I was gobbling the Tylenol which isn't much good for my liver, plus I was stuffing pillows under my knees for relief at night and I was waking up every few hours from the ache.

Then Tom saw the ad for the 'arthritis pain clinic' in the daily ship activity paper, held at the onboard spa. Yeah, right. Why would anyone go to an acupuncturist on a ship? I was thinking exactly what all of you are probably thinking right now....trust me. Even if it has been used in China for thousands of years, it was for other folks, not me. But then Tom said...why not just go listen to what they have to say, it cannot hurt and certainly won't hurt any more than you do already. So I did. And then, I went ahead and signed up for the free 15 minute consultation because, well, it was free. And then what the heck, let's just try a single treatment and see what it does...even if it was a bust it would be an adventure, right? So I did that, too.

And dammit, it helped. It wasn't a bust. I still have arthritis, but I can walk better (faster, full stride and with noticably less pain) today than I could a week ago, and go up and down stairs, which I could not do two weeks ago without hobbling and taking each riser with both feet at a time. And as an added bonus, my hormonal balance is also being turned right side up-all from a quick tongue diagnosis. But I have not had food cravings for five days now...and prior to that it has been maybe 35 years since I have felt satiety or pleasantly full and not really hungry. Seriously, I have had half the meals I usually eat and no desire for midnight or between meal snacks. I wasn't even expecting that, but I'll take it. So I go for treatment number four this afternoon. Tom's coming along because he wants to see the needles and is curious how I can get 20-25 little needles placed from my head to my toes and then relax for an hour, somtimes even drifting off to sleep. I have six more tretments for the full course, which is how acupuncture works in China (10 days or every other day) vs. the US method of once a week. Both achieve similar results, but you get there faster and know if it works sooner, with the Chinese style course, which does lend itself to the captive audience of a cruise ship itinerary. And I even was able to verify that with some clinical studies I was able to research on the internet.

So there you go. Just when you think I have settled into a boring routine, I go and pull a fast one on you. ☺️