The journey with acupuncture

          The first visit to the acupunture place was not exactly exciting for V. Two persons took his pulse, getting data from each finger and a few other things. He was actually fine through all of this. We were then shown into a room where the doctor arrived, asked me with what was going on and went on to put a few needles in different spots on V's head. Now this might seem scary but it wasn't. The needles had to be maintained this way for an hour or so. This meant that I had to find some way of keeping him with those needles for an hour – couldn't have been a more challenging task. The good thing was that he didn't necessarily have to sit in the room for an hour. While the needles were in place till the time they were to be removed, he could roam around the clinic. There was a turtle and a crocodile further down the hallway. There were patients of all ages for all kinds of treatments. V loves to talk to everyone – he always did – and the office staff always talked to him, entertained him, kept him occupied.

            It took two to three weeks for V to get used to the routine. I would bring along a snack, some toys, books. A few weeks later we bought an iPod for V – he loved to listen to music so much and the earphones and the music combination was a great security factor as well as a way for him to stay in one place. He was so used to going there – come Thursday morning – he knew everyone in the clinic and they would look forward to his visit; at the time he went there were practically no other kids. We would do the needles and get back.

            The one thing that I believe the acupuncture helped him with was his sleep. I had written about how his night sleep wasn't great at all – the yelling stopped at about this time and despite his seizures in the night, he seemed to sleep more soundly. A couple of months later, the acupuncture doctor suggested that we try giving him the herbal medicine. We decided to give it. I had to boil all these herbs with lots of ginger, strain it, put it in the fridge, giving him a spoonful once a day. For some reason, V never complained while taking this medicine. The frequency at this time seemed to be a little less. Now when I say less or more, he has so many that it was almost impossible to keep a track of the count. However, if he didn't have one for several minutes it was great, the situation was such.

 I also don't remember if I mentioned this but V continues to sleep with me - I didn't atttempt to move him to his room once his seizures had started and it is my only way of monitoring his night movements as he will often just have jerking - no sounds and there is no other way of monitoring how he is doing.

            With the regular acupuncture and the helmet on V's head, we started keeping his hair really short – that way he would get less sweaty, feel a lot less hot, the points on his head were easier to find. The strange thing is that when we would go for his haircut, using the machine would cause him to have a head drop. Even while inserting the needles on his head. If one touched those spots on his head with fingers it would cause a head drop.

            We continued acupuncture for about a year and when it seemed like it was status quo, we decided to stop both the acupuncture as well as the medication. I still want to take V back one time to meet with the doctor so that they can see the change – the staff was really extremely nice to him.