Tom's Riding Journal

Acupuncture works

I want to tell you a story about injury and healing because everyone goes through this at some time in their life especially if they participate in sports.

About ten years ago when I was 35 I decided it would be fun to race BMX in the cruiser class. I had never ridden on a BMX track before but I was very skilled on a mountain bike so I figured it would be easy. A friend of mine had been racing down south near Pearland and he encouraged me to buy a 24” BMX bike and enter the race with him so I did. My first run was a disaster. I started up high on a stating gate that was elevated about 20 feet and sloped down to the track to provide rapid acceleration to the first jump, which was a step-up. That means that you launch from a lower jump over a taller bump positioned behind it and land on the down slope of the bigger bump. At least that is the way the little kid who was right next to me on my first practice run did it. I on the other hand cased the step up, which threw me to the ground on my chest so rapidly that I didn’t even know what happened. I was racing up to the jump and the next thing I know I was picking myself up out of the dirt trying to drag my bike off to the side while breathing through a pin hole. The wind had been knocked out of me but my pride would not allow me to lie on the track to recover.

Anyway I recovered from the shame enough to continue and I raced two motos but I had another problem on a double jump which caused me to crash repeatedly and each time I did my left leg would splay out to the side causing the tendons that hold the knee joint together to pull and loosen. At the time it was just another sore knee- no big deal but it developed into a big deal later.

Later came in less than a year when I was at a sales meeting in Breckenridge Colorado. I was the Texas sales rep for Gary Fisher bicycles which was owned by Trek and for a couple of years they would have their annual sales meetings in cool places where we could do some team building through killer outdoor activities. On this trip we did a white water rafting trip and on another day we rode mountain bikes in the mountains around Breckenridge with Gary Fisher and Greg Lemond. Needless to say I thought of myself as a pretty badass mountain biker and I wanted to look good in front of the cycling heroes so I was descending in as reckless and radical way as I could and once again it resulted in knee injury and embarrassment. I crashed into a tree limb and was knocked off the bike. My left leg splayed out at an awkward angle and the pain instantly let me know that I was headed for a hospital visit. I sat there cussing up a storm while Greg rode by and asked me if I was all right and the rest of the group rode by while I made all kinds of profane noise. I told everyone I was ok and I got up got on the bike and continued the descent back to town until we came upon a big tree that had fallen across the trail. I had to dismount to hoist the bike over the tree and as soon as I put my left foot on the ground I heard a loud pop and I collapsed. O.K. if I doubted I was destined to visit the local hospital before all doubts were erased at the sound of the pop. Still I jumped on the bike and coasted on into town where a buddy of mine helped me walk to the local medical clinic where they drained the massively swollen knee. It was full of blood and some other stuff that led the doc to conclude something was torn. He slapped a $500 neoprene and steel brace on it and sent me on my way. I iced and elevated it for the remaining days of the sales meeting. I flew home when it was over and went to an orthopedic surgeon who did an MRI and basically had no definitive conclusion. He said he could do surgery but wasn’t sure if it would help. I left feeling depressed and crippled. The swelling eventually subsided but for months afterward my knee would randomly seem to slip out of socket and immediately swell up again. Months turned into years and I just deal with the weakness. I still rode and did what I did but I couldn’t count on that knee not to buckle on me from time to time and end my fun temporarily while I waited for my swollen knee to heal. I felt vulnerable and weak. I felt like I was an old man at 37.

Then one day I decided to try acupuncture so I stopped into The Houston Acupuncture and Herb Clinic on Shepherd in the Montrose area. There I met Dr. Wu who had studied Chinese medicine in Taiwan. He explained to me that my knee was like a beach. The ocean washes up on the beach and then it subsides leaving seaweed and bits of rotten wood and other debris behind. My knee had filled with fluid countless times and in the process a lot of gunk was left behind which caused my pain. He gave me some herbs to take for a while that would promote the cleansing of my knee and he stuck a bunch of needles in it to stimulate my body's innate healing activity. Within about six sessions my knee was working as well as it did before the crashes. From that day forward I go to Dr. Wu anytime I have an injury and he has healed me many times.

I tore up that same knee a couple of years later when I decided to make motorcycle motocross my main recreational activity. Again I took the sport up when I was well beyond the age that it made sense and I started hauling my Kx 250 with me when I would travel on sales calls all over Texas and Louisiana. I looked up all the track locations on the net and my goal was to ride every track I could find. That didn’t last long because one day near Beaux Bridge Louisiana I found a track and began to ride. The soil was freshly tilled. It was real soft and deep and my boot got snagged in a turn that wrenched my foot violently sideways twisting my knee badly. I knew instantly that I was in trouble so I slowly rode back to the truck hopped off the bike, asked someone to load my bike for me, hopped in the truck, drove straight to the nearest convenience store, hopped in on my good leg, bought a bag of ice, hopped back out, put the ice on my knee and drove straight home to Houston. Fortunately the truck had an automatic transmission and I tore up my left leg. I could not walk for 3 days but on every one of those days I would grab the crutches that I keep for these situations and go see Dr. Wu for acupuncture. After 3 treatments I could walk and in a week it was like it never happened.

So that is my testimony in support of acupuncture and in particular in support of Dr. Wu at The Houston Acupuncture and Herb Clinic. My wife and I love the guy. We never want to live too far away that we cannot call on him in times of sickness or injury. He makes us laugh also. He runs around his office answering phones treating multiple patients, mixing herbs all the while smiling. His wife also operates a clinic on Holcombe. She is a little less hyperactive and equally skilled. Women might prefer to see her if they feel more comfortable with female doctors. This may seem like a shameless plug but it is done out of sincere gratitude to Dr. Wu as he returned me to my normal active self when American medicine gave me no answers and no hope. I am only speaking about my knee here. This is not a knock on American medicine in general. God knows they gave me my father back when I was sure he would die from a heart attack and I am grateful for that.