Twenty seven years ago, in the first week of my training (21 years before I opened my acupuncture clinic in Kansas City) a lanky, 18 year old, Sri Lankan man, named Prethap, came up to me and ask “Will you treat me today? My doctor is away for 2 days.”
“What are you being treated for?”
“Epilepsy” he replied.
“I don’t know how to treat epilepsy.”
“Ask one of the teachers” he suggested.
The teacher told me what points to use. I inserted the needles.
Prethap seemed pleased.
The next day he came to our clinic in Kalubowia hospital to be treated again. I used the same points.
Then his doctor, who’d treated him 6 times per week for 2 years to no avail, returned and I was out of the loop.
A friendship, though, had began between Prethap and myself and we would visit everyday. After a few months had passed, Prethap confided, “Paul, since you treated me, I’ve not had a seizure.”
I was stunned. He was my first patient. I didn’t know how to treat epilepsy, and I’d had to ask a teacher where to put the needles.
“What do your parents think?” I asked.
The next day Prethap answered, “My father says, ‘God is never late.'”
