The Wu Smoothie

I didn't start swallowing pills until my late teens and I don't think I stopped gagging when I swallowed pills until I was well into my twenties. Actually, I gag each morning when I try to get down the prenatal vitamin and DHA I have recently resumed taking with my other prescriptions.

My acupuncturist has prescribed some herbs which he thought to be helpful, but ultimately advised to stop taking them once IVF treatment began, and then only use the needle therapy.

The herbs are difficult to take because they have a foul taste, but the shear quantity makes it nearly impossible to get it down. My gagging keeps it at the top of my throat. Charlie thought it may go right down if hidden in a smoothie, so he was on the task.

In went the daily doses:

The contents of two waxy balls, the volume of which is comparable to a handful of Nerds candy.

And sixteen round pills.

Behold my breakfast: The Wu smoothie....


Mine is the one on the left and no, there isn't any chocolate in there! It'd be nice and strawberry pink like Charlie's without the herbs.


This one sip was about all I could stomach of the thing. It was way too "herby" tasting. I'm not even so sure that a milkshake from Bud's would help me get those herbs down. But, I'm not against trying.

Needle Treatment

Today, another visit to Dr. Wu. He looked at my tongue and checked my pulse. He also explained that soon my cycle would become that of a "younger woman," and to take notice. My eyebrows raised and I must have had a doubting look, because he further explained in Chinese and had his assistant translate. My eyes bounced back and forth from doctor to assistant as they discussed, and he finally smiled knowing I was watching and explained they were discussing the patterns of my body.

While the needles pulsed, I heard a woman and a baby speaking to the doctor in the next room. Before I knew it, she was at my side telling me her story. Every woman with infertility has one. They are pretty similar, but hers I've never heard before.

She was visiting from Washington and came to visit Dr. Wu to get a recommendation for a doctor and some herbs. She revealed that she was in her forties, and explained she had been a patient prior to the birth of her 14 month old daughter. She had spent 6 years and in excess of $75,000 at a local clinic. She knew my former doctor and nurse and relayed all of the "remedies" and solutions they advised, just as I had been advised. After 5 IUIs and multiple IVF procedures, she looked into alternative medicine, as she wasn't giving up.

In the year she spent with Dr. Wu, she got pregnant 3 times, after never having been pregnant before. Each time she was pregnant, before missing her cycle, when arriving for acupuncture treatment, Dr. Wu would take her pulse and tell her she was pregnant and therefore he would not administer the electrical therapy with the needles. Wow. He knew. He knew before she did. He knew just from the change in her pulse.

She carried to term in her third pregnancy as a woman over 40, conceiving naturally. And she seemed very confident that she'd do it again in the next year.

Dr. Wu. What a guy.

Not sure how my story will go, but Dr. Wu is now a part of it.