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When you should come to us?
1. You have tried western medicine for a
long time. Your health problem, such as pain, poor sleeping,
depression, chronic fatigue, subsides to some extent but
you have to take that chemical drugs years and years.
2. You have to wait
for weeks or months for clinic exam, for visiting a "specialist"
for further consulting, or for a surgery.
3. When you
are very weak with poor sleeping, constipation, lot of sweat,
poor appetite or digestion... after a severe disease attack,
such as acute inflammation, heart attack, stroke, or a
surgical operation.
4. Whenever your family doctor tells
or implies that he cannot help you any more, such as
for a late
stage cancer, MS, paralysis, menopause syndrome....
Remember always come to us see if we can help you in a different
way. It is better to have a second opinion. Your life is yours.
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Frequently asked
questions
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1. How can you help me?
We can help you release your
physical and emotional troubles by focusing on the use of
Traditional Chinese Medicine which includes, but not limited
to, the Chinese herbal therapy, acupuncture, massage,
cupping, bleeding therapy, ear acupressure, etc.
For some people who fears acupuncture
needle, we may use acupressure, acupuncture machine,
cupping, etc. for the treatment, though acupuncture with
needle works much better.
2. Does Traditional Chinese Medicine
mean acupuncture?
Not that. A major part of
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is herbal therapy.
Acupuncture is only a small portion of it. Although,
it is also very useful and effective in clinical
treatments.
3. What’s difference between
acupuncture and acupressure?
They are principally the
same, in terms of working on acupuncture points. The
difference between these two is the fact that acupuncture is
using acupuncture needles – acupressure mostly uses fingers.
The healing effect is, of course, better with acupuncture.
4. Acupuncture – is it
painful?
Not really. The acupuncture needle is
not the same as the one used in hospital to take blood
samples or for infusion.
Acupuncture needles are very thin and
only pierce a very small area of skin.
Traditionally in acupuncture, the
patient needs to feel something, such as numbness, tingling,
slight soreness, a little bloating or the feeling of hot or
cold during treatment, depending upon the aim of the
healing.
5. But… I still fear the needle.
I
completely understand your feeling. To fear needle is not
your fault. Some people fears sharp material naturally, such
as needle, knife, pin… In this case, we use herbal therapy, therapeutic
massage, or cupping therapy.
6. How often do I need the acupuncture
treatment?
It depends on the kind of
disease and its severity. Typically in China, the
acupuncture is performed once every day for 6 to 10 days as
a healing period. With a break of two to three days, the
second period starts again if the condition has not fully
improved. Based on our years of experience, we recommend
acupuncture at least once every two to three days,
especially, during the first few weeks for the best healing
results. This is especially true with weight loss program
and quit smoking program.
7. Does acupuncture
mean simply to insert a needle into an acupuncture point?
Not so simple – Acupuncture
is a highly professional healing art. To obtain the best
healing effect the practitioner manipulates the needle
according to the nature and severity of the disease, and the
patient should feel something, as tingling, numb, slight
bloating, fine electric shaking, light cold or light warm
feeling on the spot. It will be excellent in the treatment
if you can feel the feeling past to other part of the body,
especially to the painful area.
Consideration is also given to the
sequence of the needle and the time of treatment (season and
time of day). It does not mean that the more needles used,
the better the healing effect, nor does it mean that the
deeper the needle, the better the healing effects.
8. How long
time do we need to see if acupuncture works or not?
To tell if it works and if it cures are
different questions. Both are affected by the nature of the
diseases and the individual person. Quite often we can have
miracles by only one acupuncture (even only with our
fingers) for only less than ten minutes and the pain
disappears (even permanently) but some times it could be so
hard to reduce the pain. Each people is quite different. It
depends very much on the person too. Some people have quite
good reaction to the acupuncture treatment and the release
of pain is so fast that it makes us feel as it is not what
we do, but God does.
9. What
kinds of clinic conditions are in your clinic that you may
have higher effective rate?
In brief, we are much confidence in the
treatment of the following clinic conditions:
allergy,
menopause syndrome,
depression/ anxiety,
quit smoking,
etc.
10. How
does acupuncture work?
Acupuncture is to
stimulate acupuncture point on the body, so to balance or
adjust the body function. The functional balancing or
adjusting is done and completed by the body mechanism, not
by acupuncture needle itself. It stimulates the body
functional maintenance mechanism by using needles just as
the massage and reflexology do the same thing by using
practitioner's finger and as moxibustion therapy using moxa
rolls.
It is still a big mystery why it indeed
works, despite of the fact that medical researchers all over the
world have spend so many years and tried so many different
ways to test. Current results could explain some but not all the
clinic phenomenon. To us, it is not difficult to understand
from the TCM point of view, but it will remain a mystery if
we keep the current way to view the structure-function
relationship of the body, the nature, and the universe.
11. I have pain, or shoulder stiff, or
diabetes, can you help me?
TCM doctor does not work based on the
diagnosis of western medicine, just as the western medicine
doctor does not work on our TCM diagnosis either. You should
know that they are quite different medicine systems, with
different view on the body structure and function. A
“disease” diagnosed by western medicine may mean several
different TCM “diseases” and also a “disease” diagnosed by
TCM may be found in 20, 30, or even 50 kinds of “diseases”
classified by western medicine. Therefore it is hard to tell
if we can help you with your “disease” if it is the medical
term told by your western medicine doctor to you.
Also, each person is different in
terms of their response to acupuncture or TCM herbal
therapy. We cannot say if it works or not without any trying. In
our clinic, we normally recommend people to try only 3 to 5
times of treatments, not keeping them for months or years to
see if it works or not. People who come to our TCM therapies usually have already
given
years to try western medicine, so it is not so difficult for them to
give us only 3 to 5 times of trying.
Anyway, we list
the names of the diseases that TCM may be able to help you:
(check
here).
12.
I have tried other acupuncturist, but not work.
The situation in the TCM practice all
through the history is that the personal skills among
practitioners are quite variable. It means that if one
acupuncturist failed to solve your problem, another one may
be so. This is not like the situation in the western
medicine, in which if a doctor fails to solve your problem,
another doctor in the same department or in a different
hospital may not be able to help you either (except for a
surgical department).
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A lot of reasons contribute to the
variations in the TCM practice. It depends on which style of
acupuncture and which style of herbal therapy the doctor
follows. It also depends on if he/she practices only
acupuncture or herbal therapy too; depends on the quality of
the herbs (this is not the big problem in the western
medicine system), on the years the doctor in clinic work,
how often he/she update his/her knowledge and so on.
Therefore we always encourage that, if
one TCM doctor cannot help you, you still should try another
one.
One more point to this question is: many
times, person's health problem is actually a side effect of
the medicine they are taking (such as impotence when people
are still taking anti-blood pressure pills), or a result of
a failed surgical treatment (such as scar tissue that cause
joint spasm), or due to lack of hormones, such as lack of
estrogen after removal of ovaries. In this case, you should
not expect fast healing effect from other treatment. To
prevent such life-long problem, we recommend you to try
no-harm therapy first, before you take advice to take
something that you may need to take it for ever (medicine
for diabetes, blood pressure, hormone disorders, high blood
lipids, etc.) or go for a surgery. The practical problem for
family doctors is that they do not know how TCM can work as
a valuable alternative choice and whom they should refer
their patients to.
13. My
acupuncture treatment works before but seems worse again.
It should be pointed out that sometimes,
it doesn't work well because you may not follow the
requirement of your TCM doctor. For example, if he/she tells
you do not have too much lifting activity when you have
shoulder pain, but you for any reason cannot follow his
suggestion. How can you expect it works? Our experience is
that something is quite a common sense in Chinese culture,
but not in other culture. For example for a person with
severe pain, he/she should have a rest at home, not to work.
But we find that once summer comes, people in Edmonton are
so eager to go out for a distance traveling even if he/she
is with terrible pain! No doubt that his/her condition
becomes worse after travel rather than improved!
Our most urgent remind to our clients is:
when you feel better with our treatment, you should NOT, for
some time, over work (physically and emotionally); NOT over
eating (no matter what food it is);. NOT have too much sex
activity (especially if you have lower back pain)!
14. Is acupuncture covered
under Alberta
health insurance?
Not so far. Most
people have acupuncture covered under their health insurance
plan with other insurance company, such as Blue Cross,
Sunlife, Great-West Life, etc. You need to check with your
human
resource department or ask your
manager which insurance company your current company is
associated. Depending on the insurance plans, you may be
covered for $500, or $1200 per year for acupuncture
treatment. Take the
benefit to solve your health
problem rather than wait for a treatment later. It may take
more efforts to solve your problem later and you have to
suffer from it for too long time. You insurance company
should be more happy that you could solve your health
problem earlier with less costs than costs them lots later,
if you indeed have health problem and you eventually do need
acupuncture treatment. We know that many people waste their
benefit every year.
15.
Do you need doctor’s referral to have acupuncture?
No, we don’t need any referral. You
simply pick up phone to make appointment and come to have
acupuncture treatment.
16. How long time is it for each
acupuncture treatment?
Usually it needs about one hour. For the
first time, it may take little bit longer since we need time
for consulting that takes about 10 to 20 min.
17. How much does it cost for
acupuncture treatment?
You can check
the price list here.
18. Do you have acupuncture
always the same way?
Not really. The principle is that we may
have to use more efforts on acupuncture treatment in the
early phase of the treatment. Along with the improvement of
your condition, we should reduce the use of needle
stimulations. No harm and less harm is our policy.
19. Is there any specific
thing I need to care after improvement of my pain?
Yes, you should be care not to have too
much physical activities if your original problem is pain in
arms, shoulders, legs, lower back… You should not eat too
much if your original problem is inside your stomach. You
should have less sex if your pain is specifically in the
lower back and in the femoral cavity or if you are still
taking some herbs that work to supply more Yang-qi to your
body (check with your TCM doctor).
20.
What about if I am still taking drugs from my western
medicine?
This is a complex question. Basically if
the drugs that you are taking are for blood pressure or
diabetes, you can still take them. If it is only for
sleeping or pain, you may start to reduce the dose but not
stop them right away, especially if you have already had
them for years. If it is only a vitamin or mineral product,
stop it during the acupuncture treatment. For most people,
they have already had such supplements for years but the
health problem still there. Why you should continue them
once you have already started to try TCM treatment? So many
times, we asked people to stop such artificial chemicals and
they feel much better after one to two days, rather than
their condition becomes worse. Our TCM therapy does not need
any “help” from other sources. So many times the side
effects from the western medicine drugs make our treatment
difficult rather than easier.
We have a case in which a woman’s problem
is hot flash that is a side effect of estrogen product. She
was given it since her two ovaries have been cut off. It
turns very hard for us to control the hot flash since she
wants to continue the estrogen to “prevent” breast cancer
for her family history of that cancer. In such case, how can
one expect a fast and excellent result with acupuncture?
21.
What about your results?
We are proud of our clinic results.
Surely we cannot say that we can help all our clients - we
are not God. But we still gets thanks from our clients again
and again. Here are some
comments.
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Understand more about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)


Healthcare Talks

Case repots
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Case reports introduced here are for the
public to understand what kinds of clinic conditions the
Traditional Chinese Medicine (acupuncture) can help, and how
fast and how good the results are. It is not for a
discussion or sharing our clinic experience with the
acupuncturist for how and why we use such therapies. If the
reader is an acupuncturist and wants to have a
professional skill update, the reader is welcome to visit our
“Advance TCM class” version in this website. It is
impossible and no need
for us to list all of our cases here. If
readers want to know if your own condition can be help by
the TCM or not, you should know that, whatever reason brings
you to your family doctor should also bring you to a TCM
doctor.
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Case 1.
Maria B. female,
37 ys. (Edmonton).
Nose stiffness, chest fullness, hard breath for many years.
Marian complained nose stiffness, chest
fullness feeling and hard breath when she came to us. She
also suffered from numbness in the left hand, craving
feeling for sweat food/cake, chronic fatigue, easy sweat,
wave-like emotion, easy to get upset. All for many years. On
her first visit to us, January 19, 2009, she was given
acupuncture and herbal therapy using Sini San and Gegen
Tang. On the second visits, January 21, almost all symptoms
are much improved.
Comments: readers will see in this case report that we
have lots of cases showing the successful effect of herb
formula Sini San in the treatment of chronic fatigue, cold
hands and feet, irregular emotion variation, waved hot-cold
feeling and so on. There are many such people in current
society. According to previous experience in China, herbal
formula Xiao Chaihu Tang might be used. However, we found
that herbal Sini San works much better than the Xiao Chaihu
Tang in such cases. Gegen Tang here used is for nose
stiffness.
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Case 2.
Sue F. female. 59 ys. (Edmonton), Acid
reflux pain for 2 years.
Sue has
acid reflux feeling for two years. She has nausea from time
to time. No vomit. Stool tends to be hard and urine is
normal. She has no any apparent problem except the pain in
the knees that has had joint replacement surgery many years
ago. She has tried various medications but the condition
remains. Her tongue is thin, young, with very little tongue
covering. The pulse is pretty normal.
She came to us on Oct. 23, 2009. She was
given acupuncture and herb therapy soon. The herb used is
Wei Shu Ning and Zhizi Houpo Huanglian Tang. On the second
visit (Oct. 30, 2009), her condition has been much improved.
She has nearly no any acid reflux. The bowel movement and
urine is normal. She is under maintenance now.
(More
reports here)

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Advanced TCM education
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If you are a practitioner in the
alternative medical area, as an acupuncturist, massage
practitioner, Chiropractic practitioner, or others, and if
you are interested and believe that combination of Chinese
herbal therapy would improve your clinic work dramatically,
you are welcome to learn and to update your knowledge in the
Chinese herbal therapy in the "Advanced
TCM Class" part. Start from here, you are at the same
starting point as the most of the TCM practitioners, no
matter they graduated from or out of China. The
case report here
should be useful to you to understand the usefulness of the
Chinese medicine in clinic work. If you decide to go to an
acupuncture school, you need to read the article here first:
TCM, its past, present
and future.
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Healthcare in winter
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In Traditional Chinese Medicine, human
being should follow and match the change of the nature to
maintain health. Here are some suggestions for you to
consider:
(1). Keep quiet in winter
Winter is a season in which all animals
slow down their daily activity to keep and save energy. In
another words, it is a time in which Yang Qi in the nature
becomes stored and rested for the next year.
Similarly, human being should reduce our
daily activity in winter to save our Yang Qi in the body for
the next yea too.
Here the daily activity includes both
the physical and emotional activity.
Physically, we should have less physical
exercise, should not let the body have too much sweat. We
don’t think that to have sport outside with too much sweat
will be a good idea to maintain health. Rather, quiet energy
exercise, such as meditation or Qi Gong exercise is
recommended. If you have no access to the Qi Gong exercise,
you can simply follow the Reiki training.
(more
information here)
Contact Us Today!
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Millwoods Acupuncture Center is
located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and serves Edmonton
and its
surrounding area, including: St. Albert, Big
Lake, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Devon, Beaumont, Sherwood Park,
Calgary, Red Deer and Whitecourt, Barrhead, Westlock, Wetaskiwin,
Camrose, Fort Saskatchewan, Grande Prairie. Our clients also come
from Vancouver and Saskatoon.
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-----------------------------------Chinese medicine,
its past, present and future
Author: Ai Ning (China)
Chapter 1
My mother is a doctor in the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
From the time I can remember, my mother was around by a lot of patients.
They came and sat down in front of her, speaking nothing, stretching out
their arm to her – they wanted her to feel their pulses and tell what
was wrong with them. So, she felt their pulse. She felt the left hand,
the right one, and looked at their tongues……
It looks as a test. Yes. It is. I guess in the whole world, only the
patients in China can dominate the whole medical
diagnosis course, though it is them who came to seek help but it is them
who tested the ability and skill of the doctor first.
These patients might know nothing about the medicine, but they are the
General, or the Master examiner in the whole course, because they knew
what is wrong with their body, and they knew the answer to the test.
After assessment, it was the time for my mother to answer the tests. She
told out, one by one, the symptom, the patients’ feeling, the reason,
the pathological mechanism… The patients listened carefully, smiled
along with my mothers talking, and finally said, “Very good, that’s
right, you are so good at the pulse feeling! So good! You are my doctor
from now. Let's continue with the treatment, please.”
It is no wonder that the Chinese medicine is regarded as a kind of
witchcraft by some people in the western world. For western medicine,
the doctor asks symptom pretty briefly. He needs more lab tests, X-ray
tests, and so on for a diagnosis. Some times, they need to cut some
tissue from the body to have a biopsy test. Or, they need to cut and
open the abdomen to have a look what’s wrong there. They need to clearly
“see” the “disease” before they start any treatment. They regard this a
scientific way, a scientific course in medicine, a “right” way to treat
a disease.
For doctor in the Chinese medicine, they will be asked, from the western
medicine point of view, did you see the “disease”? This “disease” refers
to exact diseased location, the lesion, the virus, the bacteria, e.g. a
concrete mass. To them, the “disease” can be seen, can be taken out, and
can be tested. If the Chinese medicine cannot ‘see” the disease, the
doctor is regarded to “guess” the disease. However, my mother can guess
it precisely. She can not only guess the disease by feeling the pulse,
but also guess when and what disease will happen in nearly future. On
spring, my mother wrote a prescription based on her perception to the
weather, the Qi in the nature at that time. She then asked me to prepare
the herbs, to prepare the herbal products (the pills, the tablets, the
powder, etc.), to make everything ready before the real coming of the
disease. She said: it would be too late if we prepare it when the
disease real comes.
On one spring, my mother pushed me to do the same thing. However, in my
deep memory is what she told me, that there would be lots of kids ill in
that spring. The kids would have fever and asthma. They would have high
fever so that their face would be very red in color on one side of face,
but pale on another side. I cannot believe:
how could the kids have one side
of their face red and another pale? I never noticed such phenomenon. My
mother pointed one herb ingredient in her formula, and told me that one
was the spirit and key herb in the formula.
Before the patients arrived, she wrote out another herbal formula and
asked me to prepare. She said, once the disease started to spread, some
would come to see the Chinese medicine, some would go to the hospital.
The kids who eventually left the hospital would be pale and blue with
purple tints in their small face, weak, dislike food, no willing to eat,
scaring at night… Some of them would eventually came to the Chinese
medicine. This formula was prepared for them.
When I prepared the second formula, the first group of sick kids came.
To my great surprise, every kid had high fever with asthma, and one side
of their face was red and another side was pale!
The numbers of the sick kids were so much that I became a
pharmacological technician, busy to distribute the herbs. Pretty soon,
the herbs were used up. I had to hurry up to prepare more herbs. At this
time, the kids who had visited hospital now came to our clinic. They
cried and cried, with pale faces. I started to distribute the second
herb formula. After finished all the herbs, that spring went away.
For the current Chinese medicine, they no longer work in the same way as
my mother to treat series of patients. The current diseases, the
infectious diseases, the Wenyi disease, all are the diseases that my
mother must know and be able to perception before they come. In clinic
work, my mother was almost a general in a war, knowing where is the main
battle field, where is secondary field…
She not only treated patient individually, but also in groups, so
to be able to control the overall trends of the disease. However, from
so called scientific point of view, what is the logic and what is the
reason for my mother to do so? Is this not
a way to “guess” disease? The current doctor works to consult
each patient, one by one. They believe this is the way of science. My
mother not only knew the trends of a disease, but also was able to
predict a coming disease based on the person’s life style. She knew who
will get what kind of disease, so to make the herbs ready to wait for
them.
In autumn, my mother was ready for the herbs, the movement the patient
came. When some patients asked why he or she got that disease, my mother
said: “You is rich with good living condition and you prepared for the
winter too early. You closed window, when it was only at October 1 and
started the fire warming to the rooms so early…” The patient surprised:
“how do you know this? It is true. We closed the windows very early last
year.”
Chapter 2: Birth deliver in hospital
When see a patient, my mother could not only speak out the patient’s
symptoms, but also his life style, diet habit and temple pattern. In
addition, she again told the patient, if he refused to change his life
style, to change emotion, but only depended on the medicine to maintain
the previous life style, she would refuse to treat him. Nowadays, many
people on one side to take lots medication, and on another side eat lots
and drink lots, drink lots of liquor. All of these were hated by my
mother. She thought that such life style is very harmful.
Many people came to my mother for help. Many of them respected her to a
very high level, nearly to a superstition. However, when I was young, I
myself didn’t have such wondering feeling to her. I respected and
believed science. This was due to the influence from my father. He
respected and believed science very much. My father was a fan of the
science. He always paid attention to the advance of science, and felt
exciting to that achievement. I was wondered by the picture that my
father described to me, believing science could solve, without
limitation, all problems in human life. If some problem had not been
solved, it was only a problem of a time.
Western medicine is the super representative of science in the medical
society.
My father told me: before the development of Penicillin, there were lots
of dead kids who were thrown away in the field in spring season. Their
number was much more than the grass piles in the field. Now, look at the
high increasing population, it is the results of the protection of the
western medicine. Before, a man worried more about the “before the car
and behind the horse” and a woman worried more about “before the birth
delivery and after the delivery”.
Now, the western medicine solved this problem faster and more
effective than the Traditional Chinese Medicine. I agreed with my
father.
When I was free, I liked to stroll around a hospital, as strolled around
a shopping center. The hospital is exactly a scientific technology
exhibition center. It is amazing to see the super testing and
examination techniques there. I saw some machine called what what muscle
electric detection, what what big radiation machine, in a provincial
hospital. But when I went to hospital in
Beijing, the doctors there shaved their hands:
“Have a gene test.” There were no any Chinese characters on the
examination report sheet, but all thickly dotted English letters, Arabic
fingers, symbols, attached with colorful gene picture. I knew nothing
about it but I looked it for a pretty long time. I was strongly shacked
and wondered by this super technology of science. How could I not
prevent myself from shifting from the Chinese medicine? The hospital of
the western medicine was so beautiful, huge, and bright. No matter if
the disease could be solved or not in such a heven place, there should
have no pity to die there after being checked one by one by such
beautiful machines. Because this is the course of disease “treatment”,
and all of the reports are now in your own hands, you know the
“results”, you “know” what it is in your body, you can even “see” the
tumors from the X-ray films, or computer screens. Can the Chinese
medicine do the same way? What machine your Chinese medicine has? All
the Chinese medicine has is the three fingers. My mother said: “Travel
around the world with three fingers”. My mother just saw patients at
home. Later when she was sick, she felt the pulse of patients (to make
diagnosis) when she lied down on bed.
The therapy in the western medicine is more marvelous. I have had been
in a waiting room of a hospital waiting for a specialist. The nurse told
me, he “makes hole”. After a while, she came out and told me: “He is
making a channel.”. Then, “He is setting up a bridge.” I felt that this
specialist was an engineer. He was building a new railway stem road. On
the other side, it is not over-stated to make a comment that the Chinese
medicine is very primitive. The technique used in acupuncture is simply
acupuncture needle, Guasha plate, and cupping cups. Many other Chinese
medicine doctors even do not use these, but herbs. One of local
herbalists told me that the herbs growing in the local area are enough
to cure most kinds of diseases in that area. If I was very sick and I
was given the herb tea that were cooked from the herbs that grown in
front of my door, how could I feel that I got a very serious disease and
felt that I was help by a “treatment”?
I had a friend. She told me her experience in Australia to give a birth deliver.
Her story made me stunned and I felt that the baby delivery was
not at all a natural course, but a high science technique to launch an
air craft to Mars. She first
described the exam before the delivery. I said: “Well, you cannot escape
from surgical operation there.”
She said: “Yes, but they said the surgery IS needed.”
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