As promised a long time ago, I am going to spend some time talking about the book, Acupuncture is like Noodles: The Little Red (Cook) Book of Working Class Acupuncture by Lisa Rohleder and et. al.
It’s taken me a while to flesh my reading of this book out because of life getting in the way–but also because it’s a good book with so much stuff to unpack–I wanted to give it a “proper treatment.” 
So, what I decided to do here was break up my thoughts into little chunks that sort of follow the layout of the book–while also leaving room for other ideas that may pop up in between.
But before I get into the actual posts, I wanted to first cover why I think that following a discussion about acupuncture will be relevant to ALL people, not just acupuncturists (because trust me, I can see *everybody closing their eyes and sighing–there she goes with the acupuncture again…groan :->).
This book is first and foremost about the health system in the U.S. The method of health care that Rohleder provides (acupuncture) is generally a treatment that the average citizen in the U.S. can’t afford and doesn’t have access to–which is oddly reflective of MOST of the health care choices in the U.S.. How many of us have not gone into the hospital when we probably should have–because last time we went in, we got charged $80 for the x-rays, $20 for aspirin they gave, $400 for the visit itself, and $25 for each month our payment was late? All to not get any diagnosis at all besides a “follow up with your doctor we can’t find what’s wrong?”
The issues of accessibility and affordability run throughout Noodles–and do so in a way that is relevant to the every day lives of most of us, including doctors AND acupuncturists. In fact it’s probably more relevant to people not connected to the acupuncture world because those of us who exist outside that world don’t usually have the words much less the analysis to understand our place within the health care system in the U.S. (because as I’ve asked before–if health care suddenly became free of charge tomorrow, do we *really* believe that there will be a massive influx of people getting help? Or maybe there are other things wrong with the system outside of accessibility that “accessibility solutions” just aren’t going to solve?)
Noodles brings up questions and offers answers to problems like: What do working class people expect out of their health care? What risks are they taking when they walk into a health care facility? Are there reasons besides lack of money that patients don’t get treatment? What kind of treatments do they need? What kind of treatments do they actually *want*?
The major solution that Noodles offers to these problems (amongst others) is offering acupuncture in a way that is relevant to working class people (which I will be discussing in short in later posts). And I find their solution to be 1. easily transferable to other health care community type clinics (for example, the five point ear treatment can be done by most social workers/health care workers (i.e. nurses, assistants etc) simply by completing a short training), and 2. a viable business solution/career choice for many people who “want to help” but have limited resources, access, etc (i.e. a working class student living in rural/urban areas).
So in writing the following posts, I am going to be talking to people who are interested in acupuncture and may possibly choose to become a patient–but I am ALSO (and probably mostly) going to be talking to people who are struggling to deal with health care type spaces in ways that are relevant to them. In other words–these posts will not so much be about how great I think acupuncture is (um, hello, it’s a given!)–but about interacting with a radical analysis of the health care world in a way that I wish I personally had access to when I was chronically sick, without insurance, and prone not to go to the doctor anyway, even if it was free.
I hope you’ll join the conversation!