Road Trip!

We are taking a trip. To New Mexico. So someone can stick needles in Daddy’s head. And fix his brain.

With Santa Fe as our destination we headed out in parallel to Historic Route 66 (which Daddy pointed out several times along the way). We saw windmills for miles, ate at an Oklahoma-Discovery-famous eatery and got in a few sights in Santa Fe upon our arrival. We topped it off with wine, cheese and chocolate on the patio, a good primer to what will hopefully be a successful week.

Friends and co-workers of #2 tipped us off to scalp acupuncture after seeing some amazing results of their own. The relatively new form of treatment combines the ancient form of medicine with western knowledge of the brain. That is, new developments have created a pretty good map of the brain and what parts control different functions (e.g., speech, movement, cognitive thinking, etc.); acupuncturists use that map to target “needling,” which has proven effective for treating nervous system disorders. (Many apologies to all acupuncturists and neurologists for my overly simplistic and likely inaccurate recitation.)

Jason and Linda Hao are leading experts on scalp acupuncture, and have a clinic in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Their book Chinese Scalp Acupuncture was published as a practitioner guide, but provides some good reading for those researching the technique. According to the publication, studies have shown that scalp acupuncture yields at least some improvement for stroke survivors living with aphasia (in 93% of 109 cases) and paralysis (in 95% of 20,923 cases). While Daddy has a few things working against him (his type of speaking affliction, and lapsed time since the stroke occurred), the case studies presented engendered enough excitement, optimism and curiosity to get him in a car for twenty hours over the course of a week.

The number one hope from mom is that we see some improvement in Daddy’s swallowing. He’s at high risk for pneumonia, and has already had a few trips to the hospital stemming from his brain’s inability to tell his esophagus to put food and liquid down the right tube. Daddy’s priority is to walk better, which will inevitably lead to that new PR.

Here’s our baseline:

• He has almost no movement in the right hand, but decent command of that shoulder (he can lift his hand to about head level)
• He can walk unassisted (though almost always uses a cane), but is deliberate (i.e., slow) and often drags the right leg a bit (friends have clocked his quarter mile walk so we’ll have to get those digits to compare)
• He speaks in single words, but can usually find the one to get a point across. Challenges create themselves when we can’t ascertain what he means based on that one word. While cognition is good, he isn’t able to communicate through writing or hand gestures any easier (though sometimes it helps).

Daddy has four appointments this week; he doesn’t seem disturbed at all by the needle part and is in good spirits. I’ll report back after tomorrow’s session with pinhead photos and hopefully positive news!

-#1