I am in the kitchen with two of the French volunteers discussing whether or not snails are delicious. There is no shortage of company or entertainment here.

Today work at Shechen was very smooth. I work in the clinic with a woman named Sonam who helps to translate. It is very nice, she is studying acupuncture and very interested in helping to pull needles, or to do moxa, anything really. It’s like being able to be in two places at once.

The cases that we saw were very typical of the things I have seen thus far. Three of the patients complained of arthritis in their knees, three of back pain, one sciatica patient, several people complained of headaches, one low energy, one patient with shoulder pain, one case of ankle pain due to a staph infection and one wen dan tang case.

I am interested to follow up with all of them, but I am most curious about the wen dan tang fellow. He is in his mid thirties, complained of a left sided headache that started two years ago with a sharp ringing in his ears. At that time and since then, it is very easy for him to get startled and to have palpitations. He is fatigued and has poor sleep with lots of dreams, sometimes nightmares. Every time I went to needle him, before the needle would touch his skin, he would jump, make a squeaking noise as though he was in pain. We only have pills and granules in the clinic, so I gave him a weeks worth of herbal capsules.

We will see.