Sharp as a needle thanks to acupuncture

My Chinese colleagues advised me to give TCM a whirl. Deep joy, my chance at last! The Beijing University of Chinese Medicine and its adjoining hospital are near the office so off I limped, bounding down the road like, well, the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The young doctor there threatened to dampen my spirits. "Massage better than acupuncture," he said, before his senior colleague interjected. "No, acupuncture better" he instructed, and so it was. Three sessions should be enough, they said. As they started inserting the needles I couldn't feel a thing. What's all the fuss about, I thought. This is a cinch!

Years of excruciating dental surgery had made me immune to anything acupuncture can throw at me. I was even jolly enough to ask a friendly young doctor to capture the moment on my digital camera and laughed when I was told I actually had 10 needles up and down my back. Then the doctors dispersed and I regressed to the 1970s and the soothing sounds of Supertramp on my MP3 player. I was wrapped up in my time-warp when I was rudely brought back to reality by a searing pain that seemed to engulf my entire torso.

The doctor, it turned out, had returned to check the needles were all firmly in place and found one that needed shoving in further. Naturally, it was the very spike at the epicenter of the inflamed area.

"It only hurt because it was your first time and you were nervous," they told me. I duly returned for the second and third visits. Now, another 10 days on, the pain has largely disappeared, although whether I have East or West to thank, I have no idea.

What I do know is that "no pain, no gain" seems to apply to both treatments. Three sessions in Auckland set me back $210 NZD ($105), while the TCM was just 150 RMB ($22) so in that regard, it was much less painful - and wins hands down.