Let’s Twist Again – Not Chubby Checker’s

This is nothing to do with that song, Let’s Twist Again, made famous by  Chubby Checker in 1960’s, over which Pakcik’s age group went crazy doing the ‘twist’,  or doing the ‘rock’ to Bill Haley’s Rock Round The Clock. No, this is something more serious.

This morning Makcik and Pakcik decided to accompany a husband-and-wife couple to town.  They are our close friends, known to Pakcik from my school days in 1950’s.This morning the wife was going for her second appointment with an acupuncture practitioner. She was suffering from weak knees. For that matter, who at our age does not have some weak spots somewhere? Her husband, still very active in tennis, has knee problems too.  Makcik has her complaints and I have mine no less. But we all pretend to be young and strong like a hundred-year oak tree with all the knots and twists.  

Accordingly, while the wife was being treated by a Chinese lady Makcik decided that she too should also have a go, and she did. While the ladies were having their needles in one room my friend and Pakcik sat talking to the lady’s husband, also a practitioner. Knowing our interest in his medical practice he  began to tell us about his grandfather who came to Malaya from China bringing with him the special skill that was handed to his father and later to him and wife. That does not end there. One son is practicing at a hospital. Another son and a daughter are now undergoing the course in China. ( What are we doing with our children, forcing into them biology, chemistry and all to become doctors? )  By then I was sufficiently conned into admitting that I had been having slight pains in my shoulder joints whenever I tried to TWIST my upper arms to reach for something behind my back.

 

Before I knew it I was already unbuttoning my shirt. Needles after needles were planted on my shoulder, knees and feet. I thought there must be about a dozen of them, and I must be beginning to look like a balding hedgehog.  But I would not dare to look directly at them. There was no real pain which I had been anticipating. Instead it was gentle wriggling of the needles here and there – at the nerve nodes, according to him. Hardly five minutes later the good ‘doctor’  asked me to  do the ‘TWIST’  with my upper arms to feel the lessening pain. I am not sure whether it was auto-suggestion or fear that made me admit that the pain had indeed lessened. After a bit more of wriggling and twisting of the needles he began to pull them out and threw the used needles into a waste paper basket. Well, I thought, there was no fear of being infected with that dreaded whatever. My friend, who was watching the act throughout confirmed the use of new needles on me.

Finally my good wife was poorer by sixty ringgits and I was by forty – one hundred in all for two. I think my friend is going to be the next to do the TWIST.

And now, as I am writing this, I recall the time I had

an attack of Bell’s Palsy three years ago ( posting of

21^st Nov 2009 - click here ). In that posting I noted

down that Awang Goneng had suggested acupuncture after doing a well researched thesis on Bell’s palsy. On hindsight if I had followed that advice the duration of my embarrassing ‘half smile’ suffering could have been a few days shorter.

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