Burn Baby Burn: Pain, Acupuncture, and Recovery

Two years ago I got 2nd° burns on my upper thigh and 3rd° burns over my ankle joint. My camping stove collapsed on a camping trip and boiling hot water spilled on my inner thigh and foot.

Without a doubt this was the most physically excruciating experience of my life. I let out some of the loudest screams and felt surges of the most horrific pain shoot through me.

It was six weeks before I could put any weight on my foot and eight weeks before I could take my first step. During every waking moment I was very, very aware of the pain in my foot. There were times when a slight breeze would cause me to go from being in a medium amount of pain to being in really intense pain. If someone or something got too close to the exposed nerves of my burn I would feel the pain from it for hours. 

During this injury I learned an incredible amount about the experience of pain in general and about myself.  Excruciating pain makes a lot of people lose their will to live and my empathy for people who live with chronic pain deepened everyday of my injury. I often felt defeated but simultaneously one of the biggest things I learned about myself was that I really, really value my life-and that I was willing to fight hard to get it back to normal. 

I had four main goals at this point. I wanted the wound to heal, I wanted to prevent infection, I wanted to regain mobility and I wanted to not be in pain. Unfortunately sometimes these goals were at odds with each other. For example, pharmaceutical painkillers might help with short-term pain but studies show they can slow down wound healing. Doing physical therapy exercises (which was essential for my mobility) was also intensely painful. Every day I was trying to find the balance of short-term pain relief and long-term healing. 

My acupuncturist showed up on the night I burned myself and used a technique used in China to move heat from one side of the body move to the other. He showed up again and again using different techniques for pain relief. It was remarkably effective at dulling the pain and helping me sleep.

I also worked consistently with an herbalist and a nutritionist. I ate high-protein meals to help with the wound healing. I took tinctures, teas, and supplements internally to prevent infection. Using exclusively herbs, nutrition, and supplements I managed to avoid infection. 

Topical poultices and preparations were made for me. I used manuka honey directly on the deepest part of the wound every day for weeks to help with the wound healing. I came out the other side with some discoloration on my foot but I made it through the injury with no skin grafts and no long-term nerve damage.

My commitment to being an acupuncturist, to working with herbs, and to my own health deepened during this time. While future burn prevention seems easy enough (I hope!) pain is something many of us will be wrangling with in many different ways throughout our life. As an acupuncturist sometimes I am sometimes able to provide complete pain relief to others and other times it is pain management I must focus on. Acupuncture treatments can also be used preventatively for pain and illness. I hope to provide space to discuss the role that herbs, nutrition, and emotional support play in pain relief, prevention, or management. The lessons I learned from my own injury have informed and improved my work as an acupuncturist.

Excerpt from the book "Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness" by Will Hall

Community Acupuncture by Lee Entel Hurter

Getting stuck in the ears with needles may not be the first thing
someone thinks to do during an extreme episode of trauma, mania, or
depression. Maybe it should be, though.

I ran the Freedom Center’s weekly acupuncture clinic, one of the first
of its kind anywhere. We gave hundreds of people entirely free
acupuncture treatments. Through this clinic I witnessed firsthand how acupuncture can benefit insomnia, addiction, mania, depressed states, and trauma — as well as
psychiatric drug withdrawal. Sometimes acupuncture feels subtle, while
other times it breathes life back into an emotionally drowning person.
You can become more grounded in your body, feel like you stand taller,
and maintain a deep, peaceful state of mind.

The NADA (National Acupuncture Detoxification Association) protocol is
simple: 5 needles in ear points corresponding to body energy
meridians, administered in a drop-in, peaceful setting. Treatment is
anonymous, silent, and in a group circle, which can feel safer than
talking about traumatic events or meeting one-on-one with a
professional.

One example of acupuncture’s power is Jenafer Andren. After sleeping
pills, psychotherapy, and Baystate Medical Center failed to help her
insomnia, she came to the Freedom Center clinic. Jenafer told the
Hampshire Gazette newspaper, “I don't have to take naps anymore, I
don't have meltdowns, where I'm so tired I start crying. My overall
health is so much better.”

As acupuncture becomes more mainstream, many professionals have made
it an expensive, elitist ‘boutique treatment.’ A community approach is
vital now more than ever, so the benefits of traditional Chinese
medicine can be accessed by all.

Lee Entel Hurter was a main organizer with Freedom Center in Northampton, MA
and went on to become a licensed acupuncturist. Lee is now based in Denver,
Colorado.

To and Through Acupuncture: My personal journey

January 25, 2013

I first learned acupuncture at the Lincoln Recovery Center, a drug rehab clinic in the South Bronx.  The Lincoln Recovery Center was a truly inspiring place for me to first learn acupuncture. The Lincoln Recovery Center was started in the early 70’s as a response to the lack of attention given to addiction treatment in the neighborhoods in and around the South Bronx. Community organizing and civil disobedience coming from local groups such as the Black Panthers and Young lords were actively involved in the creation of this center. People literally locked arms outside the hospital and demanded drug addiction be taken seriously. Eventually, they had a bit of a victory and were given some money to start the clinic.

A friend of mine, Anna Grace Keller told me about the Lincoln Recovery Center. Her description and my visit to the center interested me enough to do Lincoln’s free training and before I knew it I was with several good friends in NYC for two weeks getting trained.

Lincoln used the NADA protocol (National Acupuncture Detoxification Association) which is a simple, safe, and effective ear acupuncture treatment for insomnia, addiction, and trauma. The nuances of why learning NADA turned me on to acupuncture for life is sometimes difficult to explain. I loved the treatment, but it’s not like in the two weeks I was there I was watching overt miracles.  I didn’t even know the name of most of the people whose ears I put needles into and I knew nothing about their stories. I will probably never see any of them again. Some of the people getting treatment were grateful when I approached them while others looked annoyed. Regardless, when I walked out of Lincoln I walked out realizing a few main things:

-Acupuncture is extremely easy to learn and to do

-Acupuncture can be cheap and has the potential to be incredibly accessible

-Acupuncture works, whether you believe in it or not

-Acupuncture has the potential to offer a deep peace of mind

I was turned on quickly and started to try and do something with these lessons almost as soon as I got home to MA. At the time I was working with a grassroots, mental health justice oriented group called the Freedom Center.

Around this same time I heard of Barbara Weinberg, an acupuncturist in western MA who had been trained in the NADA protocol and who had also attended ITEA in Colorado. I contacted Barbara and asked her if she would be willing to do a free/donation based acupuncture clinic for the constituents of the Freedom Center. The Freedom Center wanted to start a clinic that could serve in some way as a safe space for people withdrawing from psychiatric medication.

Barbara agreed, and this clinic started and then took off very quickly. Within 6 months, we had a local newspaper article written about the clinic that resulted in between 30-40 people showing up for treatment every week.

I worked at several other NADA clinics in the years to follow. Each seemed to bring folks who didn’t usually seek out acupuncture and who appreciated the relative anonyminity of the whole experience.

The Freedom Center also referred folks to an affordable community- style full-body acupuncture clinic run by Claudia Sperber. For $15, I went and got my first full body treatment. It altered me dramatically, and I kept going back for more. I eventually started mentoring with Claudia and it was Claudia who first suggested I consider going to acupuncture school.

After Claudia suggested this, I visited a couple schools around the country and then talked to Barbara about the school she went to. Barbara told me that at this school (ITEA- the Institute of Taoist Education and Acupuncture in Louisville, Colorado) that sometimes they had class by the river. This intrigued me. So in 2006, I started the process of applying and taking pre-requisites for ITEA. I was accepted and started attending in the summer of 2008.

There were a lot of things I loved about the philosophies of 5-element acupuncture but it was no Lincoln Recovery Center as far as accessibility and philosophy. Traveling between Massachusetts and Colorado every few months for a couple years had it’s challenges and somewhere amongst the whirlwind of intensives, I decided it was time for a break. In addition to being exhausted from the travel, my partner of 6 years was pregnant and I wanted to support her through her pregnancy and birth and in the early stages of the baby’s life.

This year off was more action-packed than I suspected it would be. It was a year of many intimacies, birth, death, breakups, cut-offs, betrayal, and deep transitions and it was a wildly roller-coastering and rapidly life-changing time for me.  Yet as tumultuous as a lot of it was acupuncture itself— and the tiny, thin, sterile, needles that were inserted into my body were there for me each step along the way. Sometimes the effects of the needles were simple and subtle, while other times they breathed life back into me when I felt like I was emotionally drowning. Treatments from a huge range of people helped me feel more in my body, feel as though I could stand taller, and helped maintain my vision for what was to come. The inspiration and perspective I would feel after treatments were a constant reminder that I was on the right path by studying acupuncture.

My clinical time resulted in hearing some painful or even horrific stories from clients. I  had a client of mine pass away.   I was somewhat consistently reminded through the personal stories of my clients of the horrific things this system chronically does to people. I was reminded of the terrors of military abuse, of psychiatric abuse, of domestic abuse, and of drug abuse. I was also just reminded of the everyday suffering that comes from chronic illness, from an empty and dead culture, and from just boring disempowering jobs.

         While acupuncture needles may not be able to penetrate through all the pain,  it does seem everyone feels a little lighter after  a good treatment. I love working with people, I love hearing their stories, and I love feeling their pulses change. I love watching symptoms ease up, moods improve, and a light come back into the eyes of my clients at the end of a good treatment. I often leave treatments with a vicarious buzz and a sense of rejuvenation that I hope can stick around for clients and practitioner alike….

View fullsize