He smokes cigarettes. Even holding a telephone will cause his hands to go numb. He reported that his birth was very traumatic and that he had to be pulled out with forceps after a 36 hour labor. He has had a tendency to headaches and upper body symptoms all his life. While we were able to deal effectively with his cluster headaches and other acute symptoms such as torticollis and severe numbness, there has been no real improvement in his neck, arm, and hand pain and numbness.
Some symptoms abate for a few days or weeks, only to return just as bad as before.
Overall, I would call my attempt to treat this patient a failure. It is my feeling that he has had too many surgeries and too much unconscious psychoemotional armoring for any treatment that I am capable of giving to be effective for him. He had quit smoking and since gained about 25 lbs. His neck and arm symptoms were getting worse. I treated his wrists with direct thread moxa and bled the jing points TH 1 and PC 9 on both wrists and also needled the Jia Ji points lateral to the 5-7 cervical vertebrae.