Mighty Michael-man

This story is shared with permission.

Now this is a story all about how my life got twist turned upside down...

Imagine a newly released fresh-faced accountant after graduating, getting married, living abroad, completing her articling to obtain her designation, ready to conquer what's next.

What's next was welcoming my beautiful baby boy, one of the greatest teachers I've had.

Infant cradle cap and dry skin was the warm-up to skin conditions that would change the direction of my life. As a baby his skin seemed to change each day, some days would be great and other days the dry skin would be uncontrollable. We gave Baby Aveeno a try and it did the trick for the longest time. I applied it religiously and his skin was so soft, smooth and clear. He gained his weight, was sleeping well and by all measures was a thriving baby. Any sign of unhealthiness was off the radar.

As a toddler, he was eating a larger variety of foods. Food allergies came into the picture when he started solid food and he was off all eggs, fish and nuts. My chubby little baby started to stretch out and slimmed down but as he got older he got more and more skinny, and more and more itchy. And since he wasn't a baby anymore he was able to scratch at will. Eczema flares up came with dried blood under his fingernails and bath-water tinted with blood. Sitting at school and entering the bathtub was unbearable for him. We armed ourselves with the steroid creams. If he was an older child/teen I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought, but applying layers of it to his skin as a toddler made me wonder about how his skin would be as an adult, so I tried to minimize the use and it became a balancing act between the cream and the scratching. Everything that touched this boy's skin was re-examined - his creams, lotions, soaps, shampoos, clothes, sheets, blankets, detergents. His nails were always kept trim and I was in a war with dust in case that was a culprit. Interestingly, whenever we visited Vancouver, his skin would fully clear up in 2 days, so we got a water-softener installed. But the eczema kept coming back, and since we couldn't make it more humid in Calgary, we decided that we needed to move to Vancouver. We sat clicking on mls doing the mental math, ready to go into financial ruin for our son's skin, and it was during this time we tried TCM.

I was a skeptic and didn't think it would work. And I was also biased because I really wanted to move to Vancouver. So with that thought in mind I went to check off that TCM box so we could move in peace. What could a few needles possibly do?

I had no idea what I was in for. But it worked, omg it worked. Our amazing TCM Dr Sharon Lu and her father knew exactly what to do. She was so amazing that she convinced toddler Michael to try a few needles and at each visit he would hold up his fingers to let her know that she could only put in those many. 2, 3, 1 (yes sometimes I packed up him and his little sister for a 40 minute drive for a 1 needle hour long visit). In the later visits he held up both hands wide open and allowed 10 needles in! She prescribed acupuncture, herbs and dietary changes. He was already off of eggs, fish and nuts, and she took him off of beef, shellfish, dairy and sugar. Seemed like there was nothing left for him to eat in cowtown anymore. As soon as his sister was weaned and eating table food, the madness of cooking separate meals for all of us ended and we all ate to what Michael's skin could handle. It was an organic, very nutritious, cooked, bland, neutral diet, and him and his baby sister thrived on it. It was not perfect or pretty all the time, but now we had a direction and base line to fall back to when things got out of control, and diet is one of the easiest health factors to control, if we want to.

It was during this time I was consuming TCM textbooks for fun. Needless to say, we did not move to Vancouver and stayed in Calgary, and as soon as the kids were in full-day school, I enrolled myself at ACATCM. I needed to know how this worked and what else I could do for Michael's and our whole family's health.

Michael stayed off beef for 8 years until there was only beef available to eat while we were away. Instead of letting him starve we gave the beef the green light, all four of us knowing full well that it would mean more acupuncture and herbs when we got back home. But the eczema did not return! He couldn't believe he was missing out on beef all these years and he had beef everyday for the following week. The scratching came back very lightly but it was very manageable by controlling beef intake. Twenty years later he's able to enjoy his burgers, steaks, galbi and soups at will.

The importance of TCM diet principles cannot be stressed enough. Something so seemingly benign as refraining from all forms of beef (meat, soups, stocks, gelatin) was the key to solving this case of eczema.

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In TCM-speak, Michael had internal heat in his liver, which was made worse by dampness. Once his liver calmed down his other food allergies dropped off. Consuming tons of his past allergens/sensitivities doesn't make him feel good so he generally avoids those and while he still has an allergic reaction to peanut, he's not anaphylactic anymore, which is a huge relief. He may need to be careful of his liver in his later years which may be involved in conditions like high blood pressure and migraine. These conditions are also successfully addressed with TCM.

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In CM-speak, I reflect back on that time and see clearly how Dr Sharon and her father were our noblemen, and will always hold a special place in my heart. Whatever destruction, punishment or cycle we endured made for much healthier lives for all of us. To think what could have been if we went to a different TCM. When I first met Michael it was in my taiji nobleman year, which is why I refer to him as one of my greatest teachers and the bringer of great realizations, Mighty Michael-man, what an itch to scratch.