Clean Bills of Health vs. Patient’s Persistent Complaints:
Recently I received a call from a friend, who was one of my patients asking me to come over to her home in a hurry. Upon arrival I saw her 81-year-old father lying in bed. He seemed too exhausted to talk. Moreover, he was hard of hearing and using a pair of hearing aids. This made it impossible for me to talk with him directly.

This is what his daughter told me. A couple of weeks before, her father lost appetite and began to feel so tired that he became unable to take a bath by himself and to sleep well, losing weight day after day. She took him to several hospitals where he had blood tests, ultrasonic scans, electrocardiograms, CT scans, all of which found nothing unusual in his body. At the hospital he visited last, pulmonary emphysema was suspected and oxygen inhalations were tried. Trachea expanding drugs and sleeping pills were prescribed. But he kept calling her at her workplace, complaining of persistent exhaustion.

Hearing my friend talking like this, I directly asked him where the problem was coming from. He stroked the left side of his chest, which made me suspect a problem in the heart. I examined his facial expression, pulse, the tongue and touched the heart-related “point.” These checkups indicated a high possibility of a myocardial infarction. The medical instrument I use is my five senses. In any case, I treated him carefully and helped him lie in bed.

My friend later showed me many different test results from hospitals. What I saw was far from the “nothing is wrong” diagnosis that I had been told about. The CPK value was unusually high, which meant the excessive enzyme contained in the skeletal and smooth muscles and the heart might cause damage to muscles. The enzyme is called “creatine phosphokinase.” A high numerical value of this substance could mean a strong possibility of a myocardial infarction. But the problem is that it is not evident in the electrocardiogram, and makes it hard for a doctor to suspect anything wrong. But why was such a painful symptom of the patient ignored? According to my friend, her father’s most favorite diet were oily foods and alcoholic drinks. Smoking had been his half-century long habit. He had been taking care of his wife and moved to his current house a few months before. He was living in a rather stressful environment.
The Smiling Face of the Patient:
When I came home from the patient’s home, my friend called me. She reported that her father was feeling much better and even hungry and was eating. This was a surprise to me, because when I met him first he was able to eat only a couple of mouthfuls of rice. Although optimism at this point was not permitted yet, the effect of the acupuncture treatment I’d given him was nonetheless remarkable.

The next day when I paid him another visit, he sat up seeing me. His behavior and the color of his face indicated that his power was back. Intuitively did I feel that he was in a much better condition. The complexion, pulse, tongue and condition of points appeared much better than on the day before.

He also was more talkative and interested in telling about many aspects of his physical trouble. For instance, after subjecting himself to more than six checkups, he was able to tell what the doctor would say next. He had been a valuable asset at his workplace at 70 and was not let go even after. He seemed to enjoy such small talk with me. His happy smile made me feel happy, too, that I was helping him so much in this way and this manner. As I was leaving, he sat up again and waved at me with a smile.

Checkups Based on Four Approaches (Observing, Listening, Questioning, Touching):
I explained these four approaches in my column 35. When I visited this patient for the third time, he had recovered his power to such an extent that he was enjoying both drinks and games of “Gate-Ball” (a favorite sport among aged Japanese men and women). Observing him getting so well and so quickly I felt no doubt about the excellence of the acupuncture-moxibustion treatment offered by the Hokushin-Kai (See Column 35).

Observing the color of the face, the pulse, the tongue and the condition of the relevant points take only a few minutes. I want to emphasize how important it is to touch and feel the body of the patient. The astounding effect of this acupuncture-moxibustion treatment comes from the instructions provided by my mentor Mr. Rempu Fujimoto, the head of the Hokushin-kai, to whom I owe so much for the system of my treatment which is the product of his long years of helping hundreds of thousands of patients and the tremendous amount of medical knowledge he has acquired through his clinical experiences. I have written this to advise against depending solely on the results of mechanical medical checkups.