I was recently diagnosed with spondylolisthesis, which presented as uncomfortable and quite bothersome left hip pain. “Ah ha,” exclaimed my good friend, a local orthopedic surgeon, as he peered at my lateral plain film. “Right there,” he added slightly triumphantly, tapping my lumbar vertebrae displayed on the light-box. I'm not accustomed to looking at plain films, much less my own, but even I could see the displacement. Without having had a history of trauma, I learned that the defect was most likely present at birth and had now become symptomatic as part of the aging process.

Once I recovered from being told that I was aging and after learning how to correctly spell and pronounce my condition, I looked more closely at my choices to treat it. I was told that my options included prn ibuprofen, physical therapy, and core-strengthening Pilates exercises. Truth in advertising – I predominantly function as a medical mainstream practitioner using allopathic or Western medicine in my approach to patient care. Granted—alternative medicine with its basis in Chinese medicine has been around a lot longer. I have tried over the years to be more open-minded to the numerous alternative and complementary therapies. However, despite even my best efforts, I feel myself often skeptical and stay connected to a Western medicine mindset. So when a friend told me about a new acupuncturist in a neighboring town as a way to treat my pain, my first response was, “Hmmmmmmm.” “I used to have chronic headaches – bad ones – and I've been headache-free for two weeks now,” she said and added that her son-in-law was treated for knee pain and he, too, had become pain free. So, what did I have to lose? Apparently, not much. The acupuncturist charged $60 for an hour-long first appointment, and $30 per session thereafter, living up to his practice's name, “Affordable Acupuncture.” Initially seeing him once a week was not going to break my bank. At our first session, I told him two things: I was a PA (he and I were partners in my care, right?) and I wasn't too sure that I believed in the efficacy of what he was about to do by sticking needles into me (my inner struggle of East versus West). To his credit, he seemed fine with my skepticism and proceeded to give me a mini-lecture on myofascial trigger points and their relationship to referred pain – my primary problem. He also discussed the similarities between acupuncture and trigger-point injections. Although I wasn't totally convinced, I figured, “Why not?” My left hip was really hobbling me, bringing me face-to-face with the aging process I wasn't ready to acknowledge and a disability I wasn't ready to embrace.

Fast forward five months and I am pleased to report that I am essentially pain free. I had started my acupuncture treatments every week for a month, then every two weeks, and now every month. I lost ground several times with an exacerbation of my pain but I was not disheartened. I just had to try and figure out what I had done that I shouldn't have. As the joke goes, when the patient says, “Doctor, it only hurts when I do that,” the doctor replies, “Well, then, don't do that.” That was my game plan and it usually worked. At my last appointment, I lay on my back in the darkened room, a human pincushion, studded with about a dozen acupuncture needles, covered with a space blanket, listening to new-age music. I realized that I had become a believer and now had to sheepishly admit to myself that I was a stubborn, aging New Englander who still had a lot to learn.

Sarah Zarbock is the editor in chief of JAAPA.