Christmas Knitting

Remember how every year I say I’m not going to do it? And how every year I do it? well, this, this right here is what *grumble grumble* Christmas knitting will do to you:

Thankfully, no, that is not a knitting-induced suicide attempt, those are my acupuncture bandages.

In an attempt to lesson my tendonitis, I’ve begun seeing an acupuncturist. He’s the husband of one of my adult students, Esther. (And, incidentally, the father of two of my regular students Hyewon and Chaewon). I’m not experiencing a lot of pain right now but I was last week and all my adult students urged me to go see Dr. Park. So today I did.

First he poked me to find out where my pain was, drew some circles around my pain zones with a ballpoint pen, and I went to lay down. Dr. Park came in and poked me strategically on my hands, wrists, and elbow with acupuncture needles and left me to rest under a heat lamp.

This is about when his daughter Hyewon came in to my little cubby and started chatting me up. Her favorite animal is a gorilla and her favorite food is sushi.

When that was over, the nurse type lady came in and attached these electrostimulation muscle thingies to my wrist and zapped me for about 11 minutes. All while having thrilling conversation about what kind of books I like to read and how many brothers and sisters I have.

Finally, the nurse came in and tried to do some sort of cupping thing but my skinny, bony wrists were having none of it. The doctor came back in with this pen looking thing and says only to me “endure” and proceedes to jab me in each wrist 7-8 times with what is clearly a needle inside that tricky little pen. I believe in the West the warning I would’ve gotten was, “this is gonna sting a bit.” Now that I’ve gotten a little bloody the nurse is somehow able to get better suction with her weird little tool and sucks the area the doctor just jabbed. I am wrapped with these fancy little bandages that are full of herbs, and probably menthol because they’re cold, and told to leave them on for 2-3 hours.

And I get to come back tomorrow.

Oh yea, and I’m not supposed to knit for a few days.
If I can.