Monday, June 21, 2010

Cure for Arthritis

I don’t know if I have ever mentioned it before, but the province where I live has natural resources that can cure Arthritis. A pretty amazing coincidence considering that is what plagues me. When I moved here six years ago the first question people always asked me was “have you been to sit in the sand?” Apparently if you sit in the surrounding dessert sand for long enough your pain will vanish and your mobility will be restored.

While I have been to the city where these magical desert sands are located many times, I have never sought out this amazing treatment. Which has lead to loosing a lot of face in front of my neighbours (loosing face is the Asian way of expressing shame). To have to spend the last six years always answering “No, I have never tried it”, is very shameful. To them it sounds like I don’t believe in their cures, or that I don’t trust what they say.

So last week I took a few days off of my busy schedule to find lasting pain relief. My friends and I decided to stay in the official Sand sanatorium, where they have doctors and nurses on sight. The staff checked out my heart and blood pressure to make sure I was physically up to the heat. They also evaluated my arthritis and flexibility. The doctor was pleased to announce that there was hope for me. He said the sand could really cure me of my arthritis. I would just need to sit in the burning hot sand three times a day, every day for three months in the summer, every summer for the next 5 or 6 years. It is just a little time commitment.

When I asked the doctor if there was any point in my starting right now during the few days I had taken off of work. (I asked more for the photo opp of being able to show the picture to local friends and get points for having tired it, and to post it for all of you). But the doctor said it didn’t work. The sand is so hot you have to let your body get accustom to it. The first two days are spent just sitting on the sand for ten minutes at a time. It would take me weeks to get in as deep as this person and have my shoulders healed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I was totally going to say...."You HAVE to do this, until I kept reading and saw the time frame for committment. ;( Wow! Thats a looooooong time.