Acupuncture College -Canadian Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine- TCM School Calgary Alberta Canada

I was born in the early 60s which was a very difficult time in China. Foods were sending away to pay the diet and the whole country was starving. Each person was given only half a pound of meat and threepounds of rice a month. My mother naturally lacked nutrition during her pregnancy with me and I almost did not survive.
I don’t remember how many times my mom had told me that I was a sick baby. From her, I learnt that from my birth until I was 5 years old I had countless flu’s, colds, fevers, swollen tonsils, joint pain and so on. At the time, doctors believed that if tonsils are frequently infected it may lead to arthritis, rheumatic fever, or rheumatic heart disease. My mom, who was a western medical doctor, was afraid of the above condition happening to me so when I was five years old she decided to have my tonsils removed. Unfortunately that did not improve my health conditions.

First taste of Chinese herbs

When I was about 6 years old, there was a hepatitis A outbreak. There were about 20 kids in the neighborhood many of them were my friends and we were all infected with hepatitis A at the same time. All of us were yellow and none of us were enjoying to play as much because we all had poor appetites, felt nauseous, and were fatigued. I still remember that all of us were taken to the hospital together to get blood tests done, and after that we had to drink the bad tasting herbal tea. That was the first time from what I can remember I had tasted herbal tea. It was so bitter, I had to plug my nose to drink it and after the tea my mom would always put some sugar into my mouth. Fortunately, the herbal tea worked very well. Within about 2 weeks our yellow faces went back to normal and my friends and I were able to play together again.

Encephalitis B and Full Recovery with Chinese medicine and Western medical care

Just a few days before my 8th birthday, I suffered from a fever and headache. Doctors diagnosed me as having the flu and gave me penicillin injections. However my fever and headache didn’t go away. On my birthday my mom bought me a new jacket and asked me to try it on. After I put it on I could not bend my head to look forwards. My fever was still high, my headache was worse, and I had thrown up a few times. My mom was worried, and decided to take me to another hospital. It was 1969; the whole country’s top priority was revolution. City services were almost all paralyzed. There were no busses. My parents had to carry me on their back to another hospital that was further away from my home. By the time we got to the hospital it was 8 o’clock in the evening. The line up was so long, we finally saw the doctor at 11pm. After a spinal fluid test, I was diagnosed as having encephalitis B. From there I was sent to the epidemic hospital, which was about 10 km away. My mom always tells me how lucky I was that day, because when we came out of the hospital, it was already midnight. As my parents were wondering how they were going to get me to the epidemic hospital, they heard a bell ring. This made them so happy because it meant that there was a three-wheel cycle coming. The person was heading home. My parents quickly said hi and explained that I was very ill and needed to go to the other hospital immediately, he agreed to bring us there. When we got to the epidemic hospital, after a quick check, the doctor announced that I was in critical condition. I was admitted to the hospital right away. Whenever my mom mentions this story, she always emphasized how quick the doctors reacted in that hospital. Within an hour, she told me, a five hundred mL bottle of herbal tea was sent to my room. For 10 days I was in that hospital, I was on an IV with supporting nutrients as well as herbal tea every day. I came out of that hospital barely escaping from any permanent physical and mental damage from this horribly debilitating disease.

Poor appetite and a miracle old fashion TCM doctor

After coming out of the hospital, I was still in recovery for over 2 weeks with a high fever, a great loss in strength, and no appetite. At that time my mom had to leave me with a nanny due to being transferred to another town for work. Because I was so weak and particularly did not eat much at all, my nanny was worried that when my mom came back, I would be so skinny she would think that the nanny was not doing a good job taking care of me. My nanny heard that there was a famous doctor who practices at home who may be able to help me. She took me to this place and I still remember some of it. It was a very narrow street curving many times; a very low roofed house was at the end of the street. We entered a room that was almost empty; the only thing in the room was a desk, a couple of chairs and lots of herbs on the ground. The doctor was old and had a long goat beard, he told us that he collects his own herbs and dries them at home. I was attracted to the herbs because they looked so pretty. One of them I picked up was a gold colored, fuzzy hairy root, and the doctor told me that was good to stop bleeding. After the doctor looked at my tongue and felt my pulse, he prescribed me three bags of herbs. Later on, my nanny always tells me she thought that doctor was a miracle worker because after finishing the three bags of herbs, I was a completely different child, I had my appetite and strength back, was much happier and healthier.

Misdiagnosed with a good outcome

When I was 11, my parents moved to a new place where I had to walk about 25 minutes to school. I started to have knee pain making the walk to school become harder and harder. Very often I needed my friends to help me carry my backpack. I also became very sad because I was unable to do any physical activities that my friends did. Because I always had joint pain here and there, when I complained about my left knee pain it was automatically diagnosed as arthritis. I was prescribed with anti-inflammatory and Prednisone because my knee was sore and swollen. In the hospital my mom worked at, there was a TCM department; my mom didn’t want me to take pharmaceuticals due to the side effect so she took me to the TCM department in this hospital. I was treated with acupuncture and herbs. After a year of treatment, my knee pain was better but the pain and swelling didn’t completely go away. When another doctor heard my case, he mentioned to my mom it might not be arthritis. He asked my mom if I had any prior knee injury. Both my mom and I remembered that I did have a fall from a bus when I was trying to jump out and someone had stepped on my skirt a year ago. This doctor suggested I should have an x-ray for my knee. To everyone’s surprise, the X-ray showed that my knee cartilage was broken. So I had been taking a full year of herbs to treat arthritis which was a misdiagnosis and wrong treatment. I had a knee operation and that broken cartilage was removed. My knee recovered fully after the operation. Years later, one day, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t complained about my joint pain ever since that one year of drinking the herbal tea to treat my “arthritic pain”. I was very happy about that. If it was not for the misdiagnosis of my knee injury as arthritic pain, I may not have drank the tea for a year and I might still have my joint pain today.

“Heart Yin deficiency”

In 1977, I was in my last year of high school. 10 years of culture revolution had left all the universities closed for just about 10 years. Re established national exams for the entrance into universities gave all the young people a hope to further their study and fulfill their dreams. 10 years of accumulation of candidates, everyone wanted to catch the boat. In order to pass the entrance exam, we all had to study extremely hard, only the most outstanding students, a ratio of 1 in 100 could enter into university. I, like everyone else, put myself into 12-14 hours of study every day for my last year of high school. With this intensive study, I developed insomnia, palpitations, poor memory, poor concentration, hot sensations in my palms and soles. Again, sleeping pills did not help my condition. My mom sent me to see a TCM doctor again. I was diagnosed as having “heart Yin deficiency”, and again was prescribed with herbal tea. In 1978, I successfully passed the national exam, I had the opportunity to choose what I wanted to do for my future, unfortunately I did not know what I wanted to do because I had never been asked that question before, all the years I was in school there was only talk about “revolution”.

Choosing a career as a TCM doctor by my mom

After I heard back from my exams that I had passed the admitting mark, we had a big discussion at home in regarding which university I should enroll in. Although I never had thought about what I wanted to do for my future at the time, I did have some influence from my dad who was an engineer. He had told me some stories about Scientists and I thought scientists were the greatest people in the world. I did dream myself to be a scientist sometimes. However, when I was trying to fill out my form to choose the university, my mom, who was a western medical doctor insisted that I should study Chinese medicine. Her reason for that was that I always had poor health, Chinese medicine is much better to improve and maintain health and better to treat chronic health conditions, and the practice of Chinese medicine was not as stressful as western medicine. She said I should learn Chinese medicine so that I would be able to take care of my own health. In 1978, I started my study at Hunan University of Traditional Chinese medicine where I was trained in both Chinese medicine and western medicine.

Esophagitis and self medication with Zuo Jin Wan (left metal pill)

University study was very intense. Our class had students ranging from 15 to 35 years old, because it took such a long time for some of the older students to gain this opportunity to study at a university, they devoted themselves completely into studies. I was just a high school graduate, influenced by these bigger sisters and bigger brothers, I studied very hard, again, it was about 12-14 hours of study every day. I believe it was because of the constant stress in the study, I developed heart burn and I started to feel a stuffy sensation in my chest and behind my sternum, I was having difficulty swallowing. Every meal was so painful because every swallow gave me pain in the chest. As we were studying Cancer at the time, I thought I might have developed esophagus cancer, I went to the hospital and the check up showed that my esophagus was fine. I was diagnosed as having esophagitis. I was given antibiotics and anti-acid drugs. Taking the conventional treatment for a year, my symptoms were not relieved, that made me think again, was it esophagus cancer? Finally as I was reading some reference books, a formula came up as modified Zuo Jin Wan (left metal pill). In the description of this formula it was mentioned that it treats the TCM syndrome of liver and stomach disharmony, this syndrome is characterized as acid regurgitation mostly caused by stress and improper diet. I decided to try this formula. I went to a local herbal pharmacy and bought the pills, which were extremely bitter. As I started taking them, a miracle happened again. Within 2-3 days, I felt my chest pain was decreased, and within a week, my symptoms of difficulty swallowing were gone and it never bothered me again. This experience had again strengthened my belief in Chinese medicine and I was happy that my mom had pointed me to this path.

Fear of “bronchitis leads to heart failure”

In 1980, at my third year of study, we started western internal medicine. I learned that chronic bronchitis can develop into congestive heart failure over 15-20 years. At that time being medical students we all started to self-diagnosis as we learned any new diseases. I was sure that I had already had chronic bronchitis because I was frequently catching colds and each time, it would develop into a cough that would last for 2-3months. I was so afraid that I may suffer from congestive heart failure later on, I decided to do everything I could to improve my immunity, prevent frequently catching colds and prevent bronchitis. I started to do lots of exercises, got up early and ran for half an hour. Practiced Qi Gong and Tai Ji, and took a herbal prescription called Jade screen powder. A few years later, my efforts had made a huge difference, I seemed to get rid of the cycle of being sick all of the time, that seemed to be my turning point for my health condition.

“Western medicine is a fire fighter, Chinese Medicine is a house keeper”

I was reading a book called building your jade screen with Traditional Chinese Medicine. In this book there is a quote that says: “Western medicine is a fire fighter; Chinese medicine is a house keeper”. I thought this is a vivid way to identify different roles of Chinese medicine and conventional medicine. From my experience, using Chinese medicine to promote and maintain health is natural, safe and it is a better way to promote health maintenance, provide treatment for people particularly needing long term care, or for those people who need lifelong treatments.

Talking about my experience of Chinese medicine, I can go on and on, if you are interested to hear more or learn more, please feel free to drop me a line at dr.cheng@citcm.com or join us to learn more at CITCM.