Diana's blog

Kudos to all my colleagues who have addressed the primary issues of fairness, access and cost, all of which, I believe, will be greatly harmed if the FPD becomes law.  I have found your writing to be inspiring, amusing and articulate.  Today, I got thinking, though, (and pardon me if six of you have already addressed this point, my memory could use a little acupuncture)

I asked a patient if she had anything she wanted to share on the CAN blog -- here's what she wrote.

Community Acupuncture on Cape Cod just finished a great 3 Year Anniversary celebration.  I am exhausted/delighted!

Next month, our clinic will have been offering community-style treatments for 3 years.  Let me begin by letting out a big celebratory WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP to go with the above statement.

I have been writing various blogs in my head the past two months, this time I will try to actually get one down on “paper”. It starts with my end of summer wish list:
1) Everyone who can reads Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. It connected the dots for me between nearly every major political upheaval since the 1970’s and a bunch of neocon economists funded by multinational corporations. I didn’t find it depressing – it is much less depressing for me to understand exactly what is going on than not to understand. If you need a hope antidote, follow it with “Blessed Unrest” or “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, both recommended elsewhere on CAN.
2) All the clinics that have been up and running a year or more blog in about how it’s all going. Details are great, not just numbers, but how you feel about your job.
I’ll start:

OK, so things have slowed way down the past 3 weeks... how much slower? Say, 30-40%.  I know acupuncture busy-ness can be a cyclical thing, especially in a beach/summer community like ours, but I had expected a boost as we moved into summer, not a cut back.  Combining this with the very high cost of gas is leading to the departure of one of our team --  Antonio.  He is a great acupuncturist, and our staff and patients love his gentle, "straight from the heart" manner.  For seven months he has been driving 160 miles round trip to treat in our clinic.  It has been a gift to have him, and you new CA clinics that are closer to Boston are lucky he will soon have a little free time on his hands, though not for long, I am sure.

My brother in law, Keith Leon, has just written a book called “Who Do You Think You Are?”  No, that’s not a challenge to your sense of self or family lineage; it’s a book about finding your life purpose.  In the book, Keith interviewed 64 people regarding their life purpose, how they discovered it and what advice they would give to those who are still searching.  He drew his interview subjects from many fields, but leans heavily on folks who are involved in the human potential and new thought movements. If you’re not sure who those folks are, they are a big part of the movie/book phenomenon “The Secret”.  

On good days at work, which really are most days, I feel
like my grandson Zach’s favorite storybook train, Thomas.  Thomas is happiest when he feels really
useful, and being a Community Acti-punctur-ist * definitely gives me that
feeling.  I feel way more useful than I
did for 10 years of conventional practice. 
Beyond that, I feel useful to folks who, due to class status, income or
age, have fewer options. 

We at Community Acupuncture on Cape Cod
have just passed our two year anniversary. We’re still riding the wave of
publicity from last month’s press coverage, flirting with 100 patient visits in
a one week period and getting ready to add a third acupuncturist to the staff,
yet somehow I find it hard to figure out what to blog about. I do know that lately I have been asking
myself, “Did 10 years of solo practice teach me much about how to run a micro
business with more than one employee? “

I think there is a good chance that it did not.
Mostly I learned how to do acupuncture and talk about acupuncture and
not much else. Along with this, I have
been thinking about things I wish I had done sooner, and thought I would
mention a couple: