Chiaroscuro/Confessions

So, like, I’m seeing this old Chinese wizard about the choking feeling in my throat. It’s been going and getting worse since summer.
My psychiatrist says it’s called “globus hystericus”, a known and rare symptom of severe anxiety. He doses me with more and more Xanax, which does work, but I’m not happy about being drugged like that.

My acupuncturist tried and tried. He finally concluded I need to see the big guy, Choi sifu. His practice comes from Kung fu energy healing knowledge stuff. The people who hang around his clinic just to hang out with him (the ones who speak English) told me that he had to study Kung fu for many years before he could learn the tradition Chinese medicine style he uses. He’s the only guy in HK who knows this stuff. I had to wait months before a translator could take me.

Choi sifu is a character. He holds court in this Yau Ma Tei clinic in a dark alleyway. He wears his wife-beater and flip-flops, and he’s mean as hell. Peter says he’s hard on the outside but has a heart of gold. He see a hundred patients every day.

In my case, I have to go every day. The people say that’s not the normal treatment. They just come as needed, maybe go back 2-3 times. Something about the way the qi goes when he works the pressure points in a specific order, they can only be reset every 7 days (so I guess I’m off the hook after I’ve completed 7 days of treatment?

Everything he does is terrible and painful. I just have to get it over with every time I go in. He beats me up. He punches my shoulders, tried to dislocate my arms, puts his knee into my spine to pop my back, pops all of my fingers, then he goes in for the Vulcan neck pinch. He pinches the fool out of my neck, going back for the small lymph glands. It hurts like hell. Then he cracks my neck. Both ways.

I still feel like I’m being strangled, but I generally have more energy. Zeno said I was in a surprisingly good mood.

Every time I go in, I hear “guilow” this and “guilow” that. I asked a friend who takes me there what the deal with racial epithets was, and she excused it as “an old people thing”.

But wait! There’s more!
After being brutalised, I go down the street to a Chinese medicine shop and drink a tea that gets grosser every day.
The first day tasted like chocolate. I thought, “this is going to be great!”, but every day is a little more bitter. I can take the root tastes. Today it had a weird fishy-fungus under-taste. They make you drink it all the way down right away. Now I know what the candy is for.