needles

I had my first ever acupuncture session yesterday, quite by accident (and no this isn’t a euphemism for anything hypodermic). I’ve been having a problem with styes and odd lumps on my eyelids that have come and gone for well over a year now, and the last wonderfully disfiguring bunch have been with me for nearly three months now. My GP has put me on courses of antibiotics, eyesdrops and stuck me on a waiting list to see a ophthalmologist, an appointment that I will recieve notice about in the post. One day. Maybe.

After a chance meeting with a friend who mentioned that chinese medicine is good with styes I stopped to pick up a leaflet outside of my local oriental herb establishment yesterday and was unwittingly invited in, handed over my details and within 10 minutes I was in a dark room, half naked and with a dozen long needles in my extremities. Apparently I have bad heat energy that is getting trapped in my eyes. Combined with bad circulation, slightly low blood pressure, staring at the computer all day every day and probably some general ju-ju as you get a setting perfect for lumpy eyelids.
After falling asleep, waking up, removing needles and receiving a massage I was fleeced for lots of money in the aid of a complete course of remidies and walked away with a large plastic bag full of herbs which I am to boil down and knock back twice a day. They are brewing away now and have filled my house with a pungent bitter aroma that reminds me of experiments I performed with ‘Yuba Gold’ legal highs of my youth – thrying to steep an intoxicating tea which invariably tasted gaggingly foul.
I think this might well taste much worse.