Above: Second blood-letting treatment, this time on my lower back.
I opted to return to the Chinese physician today for a second treatment, this time it is for my back. This had seized up during my 11h of airborne hell from Auckland to Hong Kong. It had been overshadowed by the butt issues so I didn’t bring it up with him in the first consultation.
As the shop was busy, I sat and waited for a while. The physician and his wife were busy dispensing medication. Each Chinese prescription is written on a sheet of paper and they gather the various herbal flakes, powder, root etc from big jars on the wall and place them on double-ply paper and wrap it up.
They are assisted by their 8 year old niece … it is funny how work for grown-up is child’s play … they like doing it for the fun of it because of the novelty.
The physician went through the same pinch and cupping pain measurement test. He again concluded that more blood-letting was necessary. Again, he did several blood-letting cupping treatments over two spots during the course of an hour.
The niece came to help every now and then, applying additional suction for the hell of it and tapping on the cup seemingly to promote the excretion of blood. Towards the end, uncle allowed her to remove a cup resulting with a tiny bit of spillage which she had to clean up. Fortunately it didn’t run on to my new white True Religion boardshorts which I bought an outlet sale for NZD5 (true price is probably several hundred USD, which is crazy!).