It is a hard thing to leave at home, this being a rabbit person, and this can lead to the unexpected. On Sunday I attended a class, "Long's Spine Meridian", hoping to pick up a few pearls to use in clinic as well as 8 CEU hours. The class, which was held at Stanford University Medical School, was in one of those vibrating rooms. This is not some new therapy, but rather the result of some huge machinery elsewhere in the building. It feels like the mother ship is getting ready to take-off. But I felt I could over look that strange discomfort in my quest for useful information.
As the class proceeded I began to get the feeling I was attending an infomercial, not a class for professionals, since Dr. Long was not due to arrive until the afternoon, I hoped for improvement. After lunch the long awaited Dr. Long appeared, 84, she has been practicing for 50 years! Prepared to forgive the morning presenter I settled in to learn something I could bring home to my patients. Alas, Dr. Long, who spoke through an interpreter, felt to need to explain her work from the very beginning of time. I was more successful in staying awake then others, who snorted and jerked awake, only to be pulled back into the arms of Morpheus. Dear Dr. Long, who looked the quintessential Chinese grandmother in her quilted jacket and black head band, told with great enthusiasm about the animal studies she had done. These involved creating a misalignment either with manipulation or surgically in the animals spine then seeing what sort of internal pathology ensued.
She was working mainly with the thoracic vertebrae and using EKGs as the tracking data. There were 6 rabbits and 8 dogs who gave their lives to her work. She went over the fate of each animal one by one. And then she did it again to summarize. And then she showed slides of the spine. And then she showed a photo of a rabbit with it's spine exposed and I had to leave. It could have been any of our white bunny friends, Amelia, Pink, Norbert, Hugo (ATB), Gus, Tidbit (ATB) (not Nuage because he is an angora, or Wesley 'cause he's a lop)....... tears welling up I dashed into the courtyard.
Unsure what to do next, I wrote a scathing evaluation, we have to submit these on a form as part of the class. I felt a little better and realized I'd left my favorite sweatshirt inside. Tentatively I stood at the back of the class and tried to figure out what the current topic was, if she was still on the animal studies or what. I found I just couldn't stay, I felt nauseous and weepy, so I fled........fled back to my own rabbit centered universe, so you see there is a happy ending!
HAPPY BUNDAY ONE AND ALL
