Why Not Add Needles to Your Kitchen Tools?
Sliding scale payments might change your quality of life.

The first time I felt the pain of not having employer provided health insurance came about two months after working as a fish butcher apprentice at a Japanese market. Almost at random I began waking up in the middle of the night with my right hand completely numb, and sometimes with this intense pain in my forearm. I would literally wake up, punch my right forearm with my left hand until it wasn’t aching to the point of keeping me up. Despite my renowned medical intervention, it kept getting worse, and there would be days doing anything with my right arm without some level of pain was impossible. I started feeling this pain in my shoulder, my fingertips, my neck, but I couldn’t really do anything about it.
I know from my parent’s own bills that medical debt is no joke. With a $13/hr “salary,” I was understandably terrified to go to the doctor and accrue some absurd invoice that I couldn’t front. And I know enough about doctors that going to an Urgent Care or a Primary Care Provider wouldn’t provide any solution because they would just refer me to a specialist. $$$ another invoice. At the very least, said specialist would need to take X rays. $$$ another invoice. And then probably prescribe some level of physical therapy. $$$ multiple additional invoices. Nope. I would just deal with it! Suck it up and try and position my body differently, or as one of my fellow butchers shared, “You’ll just eventually stop feeling it because it’ll go numb.”
I am (almost) ashamed to admit that there was actually a period in my life where the solution I desperately desired to a problem that I was facing was for part of my body to just go numb.
My girlfriend was maddened by my stubbornness and disregard for my health, and as she works in strength training at a college, set up a time for me to meet with her school’s physical therapist. He basically said it was awful, awful inflammation and since I was literally picking up 30+ pound fish every day to scale, clean and cut, my body wasn’t getting time to heal from the these pesky tiny muscle tears, therefore worsening the existing condition. He recommended taking Aleve twice a day, every day for a week and to see what happened. I did it, and after the third or fourth day it basically gave me an hour each day at work when I wasn’t in intense pain. I balked at the thought of spending the rest of my days popping Aleve, and went back to my original plan of sucking it up, anticipating numbness.
Some time passed, and at some random event I found myself working for additional income I was, as had grown customary, complaining about my forearm pain. At this point the pain was basically chronic and there were more hours in the day that I was hurting than wasn’t. Someone lucky enough to be within earshot of my grievances suggested going to acupuncture because they had faced similar back pain and acupuncture was providing relief. I chuckled a little because I had sought out acupuncture a year or so ago for stress, back in the glory days of possessing a quality health insurance plan, and it was still upwards of $100 per session. I only went once, so my takeaway was that it was expensive and made no difference. But then, this magnificent, fantastic stranger uttered three words that still trigger fuzzy feelings in my body.
“Sliding scale payments.”
Since I truly had no other solution in mind for my pain, I figured the opportunity to pay what I wished to seek treatment was worth the risk. At least I got a choice in what I contributed even if it wasted my time! I took down the place they mentioned going for acupuncture and later that day went to the website and made an appointment. Granted, such a glorious institution willing to provide sliding scale payments for a typically expensive procedure would be in high demand, and my appointment was 2 weeks out. But if could possibly resolve this nearly unbearable aching in my arm and neck, then I could wait. I still had plenty Aleve anyway.
The price of the first appointment was set by the business, but every following appointment was up to me. They provide a nice bracket at the welcome desk that has suggested payments based off of income; ie. you earn more, you pay more. Since my income was that of a part time butcher earning less than minimum wage, I would be making minimum acupuncture payments of $20/session. What makes the sliding scale possible is that this acupuncture is “open,” meaning it’s a large open room filled with massage tables, chairs, and other people receiving treatment. There is a given amount of space between each treatment area, but still, you have to have a certain level of comfort knowing there are other people around you, but seriously, for $20, I had very little I wouldn’t allow. The room was warm, and that sort of calming massage parlor music was softly playing.
My first session included a ten minute conversation with a practitioner describing my pain and her suggestions for treatment. Afterwards, I found a massage table, took my shirt off and laid face down. She talked me through what she was doing and then the most incredible thing happened. As she was putting needles into my upper back and shoulders (the needles themselves don’t hurt) my muscles started spasming like crazy. I mean it was out of this world. It felt like there were tiny gremlins in my shoulders trying to escape.

My practitioner helped me breathe through this weird discomfort of my body moving in ways I couldn’t control, and she assured me that this was normal. Basically, tension had built up so badly in these regions of my body (my neck, shoulders, around my spine) that it was to blame for my forearm pain. My nerves were so inflamed that the pain was extending all the way down to my fingertips. After my muscles stopped freaking out, my practitioner finished placing the needles and told me that I should focus on sleeping for the next half hour or so and that she would be back around then. She offered to put this acrylic sort of blanket, honestly it was like human aluminum foil, over my body, that wouldn’t weigh on the needles, but just provide warmth. I kid you not, I slept harder in the half hour than I had in months.
I felt relaxed if nothing else after leaving, and I went ahead and made an appointment with the same person two weeks out. The next week I didn’t experienced significantly less pain, but the first few days did feel less intense. I started going to acupuncture every other week and gradually, maybe a month after this habit, my pain had considerably decreased. I wasn’t waking up punching myself in the middle of the night anymore, and there were no more numb fingertips.
I’m not working on the line, or as a butcher anymore, so I decreased the frequency of acupuncture. Truthfully, I got lazy, but my faith in it as treatment is unwavering, especially for other folks in the culinary world. My regular period of acupuncture taught me that I carry my stress primarily in my neck and shoulders and that acupuncture provides relief for that tension that stretching or over the counter pain relievers can’t. I am eternally grateful for open acupuncture and businesses shifting the model of healthcare with the intent of increasing access. I hope for more sliding scale acupuncture practices so other folks, particularly those without insurance and with small paychecks, can afford to take the risk and try it and see if it works for them. It definitely beats just sucking up the pain day in and day out and might save a bit more of stomach lining than popping Aleve like Altoids.
