The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim - Chapter 292

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 292

A middle-aged woman with a gentle impression.

Since I had briefly seen her face on the internet when searching for art exhibition information, I immediately recognized that she was ‘that’ Kawasaki Yumi.

“Director Hanyewon, nice to meet you! I’ve heard a lot about you from CEO Heo.”

Her English wasn’t as smooth as a native speaker’s, but it was good enough for us to understand each other.

Since Grandmother Heo Sunnam had just told me it was a wrist problem, I could simply check the pain points and treat it.

But I couldn’t resist my itching mouth and showed off my knowledge.

“I’m pleased to meet you too. Actually, I went to your art exhibition yesterday. An acquaintance told me they had met you the day before, so I was really disappointed that I should have gone just one day earlier. I never thought I’d get to meet you like this!”

“Ah, really? You should have contacted me!”

“What? You went to my art exhibition? Really?”

Kawasaki even confirmed with Grandmother Heo Sunnam whether she had heard correctly.

“I really enjoyed reading The Silver Mage when I was a student. Seeing the art exhibition this time was truly… moving beyond words.”

At my words, Kawasaki smiled shyly.

And for some reason, Grandmother Heo Sunnam puffed out her chest proudly.

“Oh my, I’m delighted that you were my reader. It’s all thanks to the CEO preparing everything so wonderfully. We held this art exhibition in four countries, and Korea captured the atmosphere of the work and presented it the best.”

“Ahem!”

As I suspected, she hadn’t just provided the venue but was involved in the specific exhibition details too.

Anyway, she really is an amazing person.

If I started talking about favorite characters or internal story details, there would be no end to it, right?

I controlled my constantly itching mouth and brought up the main topic.

“How long has your wrist been hurting? Is this a long-standing problem?”

Since she’s a manga artist, it’s probably a chronic issue, right?

I swallowed nervously.

The fact that Kawasaki had stopped by the art exhibition in Seoul the day before yesterday and came all the way to Busan today meant someone sitting next to her had significant influence…

If this was a chronic wrist condition that had lasted decades, even I couldn’t cure it immediately.

“Eh, two days, today makes it the third day. I used it a lot on Saturday and it suddenly started hurting severely.”

“The teacher did some signing yesterday, didn’t you? After that, she couldn’t even lift her arm, so I brought her here saying I’d get it fixed up nice and cool.”

But fortunately, I should say.

The duration was much shorter than I expected.

“Did you never have wrist problems before? Is this the first time in a while that it’s hurt?”

“Even during my busiest serialization period, I was confident about my wrist health. I didn’t even understand why others made such a fuss… But maybe it’s because I’m getting older, just a few hours of overuse and my wrist feels uncontrollable.”

It really was just two days.

“Ah, with signing, since you’re repeating just one motion, it can be even worse. Could you press on the painful area?”

Kawasaki said it all hurt and rubbed from the back of her wrist to her forearm muscles.

Several possibilities immediately came to mind.

It could be simple muscle fatigue, or there might be tenosynovitis or TFCC injury.

I checked her range of motion by bending her wrist back and forward, and examined pressure points by pressing on areas that might hurt.

“The middle is a bit painful… ah, ahhh.”

Her wrist only had tenderness at the Yangji acupoint in the center, but she screamed when I pressed her arm.

“Let me take a quick ultrasound look.”

Just in case, I did a simple scan of her wrist, elbow, and forearm.

As expected, there were no visible tendon injuries, inflammation, or muscle tears.

“I don’t see any particular lesions. Even if it’s not enough to show up on ultrasound, given that this location hurts when pressed, there’s probably some tenosynovitis. It’s not severe though.”

“Is that so…?”

Then why does it hurt so much? I could hear the unspoken words in her suspicious eyes.

“The severe pain is because your forearm muscles are tightly knotted and spasming. It’s a muscle problem, and since you came as soon as it started hurting, it’ll get better quickly.”

If it had been decades-old pain with frayed tendons, that would have been troublesome, but this was essentially muscle pain.

Just one treatment should improve most of it.

Fortunately, it seemed I could handle Grandmother Heo Sunnam’s boasting and save face sufficiently.

“Will I be getting acupuncture?”

“We’ll also do physical therapy and herbal injections, but acupuncture will be the main treatment. Have you had it before?”

“A few times before when my back hurt…? Will you also prescribe herbal medicine?”

“Yes, I’ll prescribe three days’ worth of medicine to relieve muscle fatigue.”

Only then did Kawasaki nod satisfactorily.

Had she come expecting a prescription? Surprisingly, she didn’t seem to have much acupuncture experience.

Anyway, in a situation where muscles were completely stiffened like now, it was definitely advantageous to release the trigger points with acupuncture, so I recommended both acupuncture and herbal medicine.

“Let’s go for treatment right away. Heo Sunnam, it’s the same back problem, right?”

“Mine is just managing my usual spinal stenosis. I couldn’t come for a few weeks because I was in Seoul, so it’s feeling stiff.”

“It wasn’t difficult when walking around though.”

“Not to that extent!”

I sent them both to the treatment room with physical therapy instructions and assigned them to beds 1 and 2 respectively.

This was where we placed young children with guardians, or patients with mobility issues alongside their caregivers.

It was a measure in case Grandmother Heo Sunnam’s interpretation was needed, since communication was somewhat possible but not perfect.

Grandmother Heo Sunnam warmly greeted the staff and introduced Kawasaki.

The two finished their hot packs and physical therapy without any issues.

Meanwhile, I performed acupuncture treatment on other patients before heading to Kawasaki’s bed.

“I’ll do the herbal injection first. For the wrist tendon sheath, I’ll just do one point at the Yangji acupoint.”

“Oh, yes. An injection?”

“Yes. The herbal medicine components go in through injection.”

Since the inflammation wasn’t severe, I injected herbal acupuncture with anti-inflammatory properties only at the exact spot that hurt when pressed.

“I’ll do acupuncture treatment all the way to the forearm muscles. It’ll sting a little.”

“Okay.”

Next was acupuncture.

Kawasaki smiled and closed her eyes comfortably.

Poke.

The first needle penetrated the skin and entered the Waiguan acupoint.

“Eh?!”

Suddenly Kawasaki was startled and tried to sit up.

I hurriedly pulled out the needle and supported her body while calming her down.

“Are you okay? Did it hurt?”

Did the first needle happen to hit a nerve?

I wasn’t the type to insert needles painfully, but since I didn’t have X-ray vision, it was unavoidable if I accidentally touched a nerve or capillary.

I tried to reassure Kawasaki that there would be no problem if I removed it right away.

“No, it didn’t hurt… What, what was that? Something like ‘whoosh!’ came over me?”

“Whoosh? Not a tingling sensation in the nerve?”

“No, no. It was like stimulating some kind of mana circuit…”

Mana circuit was a pathway inside the body from Baegeun’s mage works.

Roughly like meridians.

“When you get acupuncture from our Clinic Director, you always get that special feeling. A cool energy spreads throughout, and you feel refreshed after the whole treatment.”

While I was wondering what she meant, Grandmother Heo Sunnam added her comment.

She spoke English without dialect, pronouncing like a news anchor?

“You feel like this every time you get acupuncture?”

Anyway, thanks to that I understood what she was talking about.

“You were talking about deqi sensation. When I perform acupuncture, my energy is transmitted and disperses pathogenic qi. In that process, you might feel slight soreness, numbness, heaviness, distension, cold sensation, warm sensation, or something like being electrocuted.”

“Ah…! Deqi, there’s such an expression. It really felt like energy was entering.”

“It’s not unbearable, is it?”

If it was deqi sensation, that was a normal reaction. Rather, when you felt that subtle sensation, the treatment effect appeared much better.

Though there were variations depending on the person and condition, I tended to stimulate only to a degree that wouldn’t cause discomfort.

“It didn’t seem to be. Could you do it once more? I was too surprised just now.”

“Of course.”

Poke.

I inserted the needle with delicate energy similar to the first time.

“Oh…! Good. It feels like the needle is penetrating through the tense muscles. Did the whole needle go in?”

“Yes, about 3cm went in.”

Kawasaki looked at the needle with great curiosity.

“Oh my, I was rude. I made too much of a fuss. When I got acupuncture in Japan, it felt like they barely touched me, just light tapping… This is really a unique sensation.”

“I’ll continue inserting. There are slight differences in acupuncture techniques between countries.”

Since she said she’d had it done three or four times, I didn’t expect her to find the needle sensation awkward, but I hadn’t considered the differences between countries.

I explained to Kawasaki while inserting needles.

“In Japan, they usually use extremely thin needles with a diameter of 0.12-0.16mm for gentle stimulation. They sometimes use intradermal needles or contact needles that don’t even fully penetrate the skin, and they emphasize minimizing pain so much that you barely feel any stimulation.”

“That’s right. They just lightly tap… Actually, I didn’t feel much effect. Though they say you need to receive it for a long time.”

Kawasaki awkwardly scratched her head with her left arm.

“In Japan, people get acupuncture not just for pain but also for fatigue recovery and cosmetic purposes, right? In South Korea, there’s a strong perception that acupuncture is good for diseases, especially pain conditions. Like when your neck is stiff, you need to get acupuncture to relieve it. So we emphasize producing clear effects on pain and try to induce deqi sensation. The needles themselves are relatively thicker, mainly using 0.2-0.3mm diameter.”

There might be institutional differences.

In Japan, since doctors prescribe herbal medicine in prepared forms, the usage rate of herbal medicine was very high.

But acupuncturist licenses were separate, and health insurance was applied only restrictively for some conditions.

Among younger people, there was a perception of it being more like health management than treatment, so acupuncture also developed to be comfortable and gentle accordingly.

“Ah, this is very interesting. Does everyone in South Korea do acupuncture like this? If I look for it when I return to Japan, would there be places that treat like this?”

“Well…”

I was about to say that if you looked, there would naturally be some.

“How could there be? No one in our country provides treatment like our Clinic Director except for the Clinic Director herself!”

From the next bed, Grandmother Heo Sunnam interrupted and shouted majestically.

Listening to it, she was right.

“Ah, I am rather unique.”

Since I could sensitively feel qi sensation and control the force put into needles, I could induce appropriate deqi.

‘It’s all relative. In the Martial Arts World, everyone was amazed that my needles didn’t hurt.’

Back then, I even heard people ask if such gentle needling could be effective.

Somehow in modern South Korea, I became the type who gives strong stimulation.

“Unusual? Clinic Director, at times like this, words like unique, gorgeous, amazing are appropriate!”

“Yes…”

I let Grandmother Heo Sunnam’s advice go in one ear and out the other.

“Even if it’s not exactly the same, if you look around, there are plenty of places that use Korean-style or Chinese-style acupuncture. The Chinese side would use much stronger stimulation than me.”

“Is that so?”

“Over there, the needle depth, thickness, and intensity are all stronger. The perception that it has to hurt for both doctor and patient to be effective is relatively common too.”

“Ugh… I don’t think it needs to hurt on purpose. The feeling when your needles go in is brilliantly good, Clinic Director.”

Just from what I saw at the Traditional Chinese Medicine University, they use long needles over 10cm without hesitation.

They also commonly do twirling and lifting-thrusting manipulation while the needles are inserted.

Since traditional Chinese medicine doctors and Western medicine doctors use the same license to handle all diagnosis and treatment, maybe they do much more aggressive treatment?

…Or not? Seeing how it was the same in the martial arts world where there was no such system, maybe it’s not necessarily because of the system but just that they like big things.

“Ah! There’s no one like our Clinic Director anywhere in the whole world, I tell you!”

“Ha, haha.”

Please only say such things inside our clinic.

Following Kawasaki’s wrist, the treatment for Grandmother Heo Sunnam’s back was also completely finished.

“I’ll just stay like this for a moment.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Kawasaki was amazed by the electroacupuncture connection too, and kept exclaiming that she could feel the qi flowing along her meridians.

And 20 minutes later.

When I removed all the needles and returned to the bed to do cupping as the final treatment.

“My arm doesn’t hurt at all. I followed CEO Heo here, but I didn’t know it would heal so quickly. I thought it was a big problem…”

Kawasaki Yumi was waiting for me with the exact same look in her eyes as Grandmother Heo Sunnam.

“That’s fortunate. Muscle pain actually has more severe pain itself.”

“Actually, I’ve been suffering from a slump for a long time, but inspiration has come!”

…Inspiration?

That word holds memories that aren’t entirely pleasant.

“Um, Teacher Kawasaki?”

Her eyes are something, how should I describe this.

“Could I borrow some paper and a pen for a moment?”

Wait, looking again, it wasn’t Grandmother Heo Sunnam’s look.

This is Park Haru.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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