He received a reply after asking his mother a question. The next thing he saw came as a shock when he looked at the table beside her. There lay his mother's hearing aid. Considering a period of 15 years, the son realized how his mother no longer needed any mechanical help to hear him clearly.
They were actually in a cubicle of an acupuncture center at the time where four thin needles were used on the sides of the mother's neck just by the ears and her jaw. On the medical examining table, she was sporting a look of surprise. She said that she was quite alright. While her hearing aid lay on the table, those who spoke without raising their voices thought she was wearing it.
The mother and son arrived in Washington from NY after a local paper ran a story about the center which used the traditional Chinese method of acupuncture to heal nerve deafness, they inserted thin needles into the body as part of the treatment. Instead of simply easing one's pain, acupuncture has now become an ideal cure for bouts with deafness.
No other condition than nerve deafness can make use of cure as a reference. There are audiometer results provided before and after treatment. There are about 35 to 40 percent of the hearing impaired who have nerve deafness and they are the only ones who can be treated with acupuncture. On the other hand, this method is not suitable for hearing loss problems resulting from diseases and the like.
All of the members of his family underwent acupuncture in Argentina and this is where the doctor's interest began, and he takes caution in giving patients exaggerated claims about the procedure. Eight treatments should be accomplished for an improvement of 75 to 80 percent. The improvement often is less with older people. A full hearing ability is possible for a child aged from 7 to 12 years. After the initial treatment, follow up sessions done within eight months to a year is valuable.
For the US deputy undersecretary of labor for legislative affairs it needed some waiting for his tenth treatment to be given since other patients were getting their own treatments inside. A young Montanan that he is, his job is to provide precise and unemotional reports to the Administration with regard to the chances for passage of legislation affecting the Labor Department not to mention the mood of Congress. Due to a virus attack in 1968, he lost hearing in his left ear. Nerve deafness was the preliminary diagnosis he was given without any chance of recovery. Numerous hearing aids could not help him with his problem.
He accepted his fate and learned to adapt to the loss of hearing by asking people to talk to him on his good ear at his right side. Like in hunting, there were occasions when his hearing loss would be a distressing think and he could not get away from the fear of losing ability in his good ear. At first, he doubted all of the abilities of the acupuncture center. The people will normally question such a cure that appears so simple. But he decided to give acupuncture a try, and in the initial audiogram examination registered total deafness in his left ear.
The inserted needles drove him to suddenly back out of the treatment for he had a dread of needles to begin with. A beeping sound came from the audiogram machine. In the nine treatments that followed he regained about 70 percent of his hearing and said to keep coming as long as there is improvement.
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