Stick it to me

Among my swaps at the NY Gift Fair, I mentioned I got an acupuncture treatment. I give this woman all of our New Age books and she'd give me acupuncture. My back has been really bothering me since then, and now I'm afraid this woman used some sort of voodoo on me.

It wasn't your typical acupuncture treatment with needles, she used an electronic acupuncture tool that shot electricity into my "trouble spots" to "open up my vessels". Essentially, I was being electrocuted. When she was applying the tool all over my upper back, I would spontaneously spasm and my arm would move and I'd get goose bumps, then I lost feeling in my hands. They've been a little tingly ever since.

While giving me the treatment, she said I had a lot of tension in my shoulders. I explained it was probably because the night before I had carried four laptops over five avenues from the Javits Center to my office. Now, since getting the treatment I keep getting a sharp pain in my right shoulder blade.

This isn't the first time I've experienced adverse effects post-acupuncture. Last summer, I tried it because my doctor - whose waiting room has a serenity waterfall - suggested it. She said it wouldn't hurt (it did) and it would alleviate my stress (it didn't). I was in her office because a few weeks prior I had fainted on a subway platform at Astor Place. I was taken to the hospital and they recorded an irregular heartbeat. Apparently, my irregular heartbeat is likely to be activated by stress, which at the time I had plenty of: the same weekend my boyfriend of five years was moving out of our apartment, my grandfather died.

When she put a few needles in my ears, I was immediately uncomfortable and lost sensation in my hands. Then, she put a needle in my calf and I instantly burst into tears. I wasn't in physical pain, but she hit something that all I could do was cry. Buried emotions? Hitting a nerve? I have no idea, but I immediately asked her to turn off the Pure Moods CD and let me go home with a prescription for Prozac.

If I have to find a silver lining in all of this, it's that now my back feels extra sensitive. So sensitive, I finally have found that stray hair that I know has been growing on my back that I couldn't feel until now. I have one over-active hair follicle and my ex-boyfriend used to groom me and it hadn't been found since we broke up. So, you can imagine my excitement of extracting a two-inch hair from my back while in the car today.