I had acupuncture on Friday afternoon.  I was a bit sleep-deprived from a restless night on Thursday.  Once Dr. Cao had me on the table and applied 22 needles from head to toe I fell asleep pretty quickly.  The treatments usually run 20-25 minutes.  When I woke up, the CD of Chinese elevator music was just ending, which meant that I had been on the table for a good 45 minutes.  The Dr. arrived shortly thereafter to remove the needles and we were back on the road.

I had seen (or rather, heard) some nominal improvement in my voice over the past week or so.  Saturday I was markedly better, although the voice was tired and a bit faint by the end of the evening.  By Sunday I’d say I was 75% there, and while it’s early yet I feel like it is even a little better today.  I’ll test it out with some phone work today, and see how well I can be heard.  I was able to talk with my son last night on the phone for a bit… first time I’ve been able to do that in two months!

I was hopeful that acupuncture and herbal remedies would speed the healing process, especially after our “western” doctors had shrugged and told us to wait it out.  I’m not sure if the extra time on the table last Friday was the turning point, but it sure feels that way.  Having my voice return this much in the span of about 10 days far exceeds my wildest expectations.  Dr. Cao, thank you!

I’m not 100% yet.  I still get that “asthma attack” feeling during exertion.  Hopefully I can turn the corner on that as well, and get back to regular interval and strength workouts.  I want to drop a stone or two before Brendan’s wedding in a month.

From the time I get up, I:

• Make coffee
• Drink coffee
• Make tea (3 times per load of leaves)
• Drink tea
• Make herbal mixture
• Drink herbal mixture
• Get water
• Drink water
• Make flower-bud herbal tea (those squirrel nut thingees)
• Drink said tea
• Make carrot/vegetable juice in juicer
• Drink carrot/vegetable juice

… and that’s all before lunch

I do the herbal tea 3x a day, the squirrel nut tea 2x a day, juice once a day, green tea at least twice a day.

I spend a lot of time peeing, too.

Acupuncture appointment #2 was yesterday afternoon. Dr. Cao worked on my back in this session, with most of the needles along my spine, the back of my neck, and one right in the center of the crown of my head (not a pleasant place to get poked).

He’s asked that I increase the dosing on the herb formula from 2x to 3x per day.  I also found out that I don’t have to actually eat the squirrel testicle pods of my aforementioned post… just make tea with them and drink.  I’ll chalk that one up to the language barrier & resolve to ask way more questions next time he hands me a small brown paper bag…

He had also prescribed green tea.  We stopped at a local tea shop and picked up 4 small packets, pretty much at random.  Two of the packets were some form of Jasmine tea. “No good, too hot”, says the Doctor.  I couldn’t remember the names of the other two teas we had purchased, but he recommends “Dragon Well”.  As a result, we will be heading back to Kent today to pick up some Dragon Well, at which time I will likely pick up one of these badass teacups, pictured at right.  They are double-walled with glass on the inside, acrylic on the outside, and they have a stainless steel screen in the top so that loose leaf tea stays in the cup.  Just the kind of gadget that appeals to the geek in me.  If I gotta drink the stuff, give me something shiny to drink it out of, dammit!

Shout out, kudos, all hail Ms. Lee Spencer!

After setting a goal for herself about a year ago, and busting her ass ever since, fellow Green River Rider Lee is heading off to Penticton Canada to participate in a Full Ironman competition.  This event consists of:

• 2.4 mile swim, followed by
• 112 mile bike ride, capped off with
• 26 mile run – a full marathon!

I have trouble running up my hill 50 yards doing my sprints.  After I ride 100 miles I just want to don my kilt and have a couple of beers.  I have no idea how to even wrap my little synapses around the feat which she has set as her goal.  But knowing this woman, she will do it!  Best of luck, Lee!  We will be keeping tabs on your progress as you compete this amazing journey, all 15+ hours of it!

The acupuncture/herbalist that I visited on Friday has given me two herbal remedies to drink as part of my treatment for laryngitis.  These are to be quaffed twice a day until I’m healed, or he moves me on to something even more insidious.

I mentioned yesterday my custom herb blend, 12 unflavorful ingredients that are detailed in the presciption you can see in the foreground of this picture.  What you can’t see is much light passing through the mud-puddle in the glass mug in the same picture.  I generally drive my car around, rather than through, liquids of this color and degree of opacity.  I get to drive a mug of this cloudy-goodness into my belly morning and night.

The taste isn’t so bad, actually.  It’s just the presentation that is a bit off-putting.  To make the experience better I think I shall switch to drinking it in a mug NOT made of glass, in a dark closet.  Blindfolded.

I was never given a name for the other remedy he prescribed.  It comes in a small unmarked paper bag. The Doctor says to put two of these things into hot water, let them get soft & gelatinous, and consume them.  His wife (also a Doctor and herbalist at the same clinic) thought 4 of these goodies would be better than two.  I figured I’d go for two and if I didn’t have a bad reaction, I’d step up to 3 or 4.  That is, until I had to actually consume one.  Here they are in their fresh-from-the-package state, ready for use:

Now mind you, I don’t recall ever seeing a set of squirrel testicles, attached to the squirrel or otherwise, but I think they would resemble these little brown things.  Drop two of these bad-boys into a mug, add some hot water, and wait for them to expand.  Not unlike those little novelty items your kids get from the 25 cent vending machine at the grocery, where you drop a small capsule into water and it turns into Captain Nemo’s Giant Squid.  These turd-like pods expand into a brown slimy blob, with a hard center that is oh-so hard to swallow.

I get these as far as my mouth, and I launch into a great internal debate… chew them and enjoy all the disgusting variances in texture, or swallow them whole and wash them down with what is left in my mug of mud-puddle.  Either way, it’s gag-tastic.

Thursday morning we headed up to Seattle to visit an acupuncture clinic.  Terri had known of this clinic and doctor from her recent consulting work, so we chose to drive to Seattle because of his very good reputation and qualifications in acupuncture & botanical medicine.  I had previously downloaded a handful of forms from the clinic’s website, so I walked into the clinic at the appointed hour with my patient information, current condition, and medical history clutched in my sweaty little palm.

The Doctor was very nice, and spent about 20 minutes reviewing my paperwork and asking questions about my throat-scoping, CT Scan, and treatments.  His recommended treatment is threefold: acupuncture, herbal medicine, and diet.

Poke Me!

We proceeded immediately to the acupuncture portion of the treatment.  He had me lay down on my back on the table, and applied what I think was 21 needles from my feet up to the crown of my head.  If you want an accurate count, count the needles on the way in.  I didn’t, and tried to count them on the way out.  Much harder to tell because it goes so fast.  Once I was fully ensconced in my pincushion outfit, he turned out the lights and put on what sounded to me like Chinese elevator music.  He left for “20 minutes”, but it felt much longer than that (Terri could see the door to the exam room from the waiting area, and later confirmed he was out of the room for closer to 40 minutes).

After the acupuncture, the Doctor gave me a custom blend of 12 herbs that I am to blend with hot water or green tea, and drink twice a day.  He carefully wrote out the formulation for my chart and gave me a copy, but his acupuncture skills far surpass his penmanship.  Hanging a pen on a string over a piece of paper and letting the cat loose on it would have been as legible.  I canmlake out Myhhr, Citrus Peel, and Licorice but that is it.

As to diet: less meat (yeah, that’s what they ALL say), fresh vegetable juice in the morning, less coffee, and no alcohol.  Beer and cheeseburgers being some of my favorite recreation, I may need to find some new activities.  It’s a good thing I didn’t tell him about my sex life, or I’d be living the life of a eunuch right about now.

The Doc. wants to see me twice a week.  Given the fact that my health insurance plan allows 8 self-referred acupuncture visits for any given malady, it would appear that I’m in for a 4 week journey through Eastern Medicine.  It’s kind of fun, but change is always a bit tumultuous.

I’ll be seriously “jonesing” for a beer & a Reuben sandwich about 6 o’clock tonight…

We took a trip down to Los Angeles to visit my parents, and I picked up some crazy-ass virus in the airport or on the plane.  We flew down on a Thursday, and by Saturday the virus showed up first in my left eye as conjunctivitis (pink-eye).  We got that treated, but the virus wasn’t isolated to the eyes, and soon showed itself in my sinuses, fluid in the ears, and a cough.  On June 25th I woke up and I was extremely hoarse, and could only talk in a rough whisper.  We assumed that I had coughed enough that the vocal cords were damaged, but weeks later the condition was not resolving itself at all.  Another symptom I am experiencing is that I now experience exercise induced asthma symptoms.  Since my vocal cords are not working correctly I can’t effectively clear my bronchial tubes of the everyday run of the mill mucus and stuff that accumulates.  Consequently I get short of breath very quickly when I exert myself.  I also run out of breath when talking because the air leaves my lungs so much faster without the vocal cords to meter the flow.

We’ve seen three doctors including an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist.  I’ve had the vocal cords “scoped” with a tube up my nose and down the throat which revealed that the right side vocal cord wasn’t moving… basically paralyzed.  The next medical move was to do a C.T. Scan to see if there were any physical causes of the paralysis such as tumors.  Thankfully the scan came up clean, so no tumors etc.

The “western” docs want to wait-and-see what happens over the next month.  We decided to take a more proactive approach by scheduling acupuncture starting on Friday with a doctor in Seattle.  Given enough time this will likely resolve itself, but I think that giving the neural pathways a gentle nudge at the end of a few dozen needles will help things progress a little faster.

Earlier in the year I didn’t really feel safe to ride my bike since the hand grip problem made it impossible to use the front brake on the bike.  Now I can use my brake, but I’m not all that safe to ride in a group since I can’t effectively communicate with fellow riders.  I’ve done a few sessions with Luka up at Hocevar Perfomance Gym, but it’s hard to feel like I’m accomplishing much when I’m spending half the session wheezing with my hands on my knees.  So until I have a little better handle on breathing, I’m likely going to work out closer to home for a bit.  But work out I shall!

My son Brendan sent me a “ropes gone wild” rope for my birthday.  This sucker is 40′ long and 1.5″ in diameter.  It’s totally cool, and I’ll be able to do a lot of interval stuff with it right here in the driveway.

I eased back into a workout yesterday, with the following session:

Warm ups:

• overhead lunges
• side lunges
• inchworms

3 sets of:

• 10 x 16kg goblet squats
• 10 hindu pushups

3 sets of:

• 10 x 16 kg kb military press

3 sets of:

• dumbell curls “21′s” 2 x 10lb
• 12″ step-ups with dumbells

None of the weights were huge, obviously, but I feel like I’m really having to measure my output because of the breathing difficulties.  Consequently I used the session to really concentrate on form, especially because I’ve been out of practice for a bit.

Now I just need to maintain a little momentum…

Warm ups were an absolute bitch.

• Overhead Lunges
• Side Lunges
• Inchworms with Pushups
• Overhead squats
• Plank to pushup

Then we got on with the workout:

#1, 4 sets of:

Trap Bar Deadlift 225lbs x 4, farmers’ walk the down floor, turn & walk back, then 4 more deadlifts.

#2, 4 sets of:

8 x 16 kg KB one arm swings, straight to

8 x 16kg KB x clean and press, straight to

8 x 16kb KB Squats

#3, 3 sets of:

• 10 x pushups with side-kick
• 10 x bodyweight rows on TRX
• 10 x Burpees with jump
• 10 x Dive-bomber pushups
• 10 x Jumping Lunges (per leg)

DOMS is just starting to get really good.  I anticipate being very sore in the morning.  Heaven help me, but I love that trap-bar.

A couple of weeks ago, I felt that my grip had recovered sufficiently that I would be able to resume.  What was missing was my stamina!  30 sets (15 minutes) and I was toast.  Today’s attempt went much better, thankyouverrymuch.  Back to where I started in August:

Viking Warrior Conditioning

I’m shooting for at least two VWC sessions each week, and build this back up to 80 sets.  I’m also going to dig out my heart rate monitor, just because I like posting a graph or two to show you how damn hard I’m working!

Image Copyright 2010 Jacey Cooper

This puppy belongs to one of our Ram-ily friends.  Great shot!  I’m not a Corona man myself, but I get this same look on my face after a few…

Warmups:

• Overhead lunges with pole locked out
• Side lunges w/pole behind head
• Bear-crawls
• Inchworms with pushups at the bottom
• High-knees
• Ass-kickers
• Speed-squats
• D-ball throws
• Plank holds

Set 1, 4 times through:

• Trap-bar deadlifts 8 x 225lbs
• Weighted vest pushups (2 short of failure)
• Weighted vest squat jumps (5)

Set 2, 4 times through:

• 15 bodyweight squats
• 10 bodyweight lunges
• weight bench step-ups, 10 each side
• 24kg one-arm rows, 5 each side
• 20 kg clean and press, 5 each side

Finisher:

5 minutes, as many 24 kg kettlebell swings as I could do.  In my delerium, I thought it was around 125.  No idea how accurate that is.