I've gone to see a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) doctor. I wasn't quite sure what to expect; my family isn't particularly traditional and although continually intrigued by TCM's promises of natural herbal remedies and Herculean immunity, I'd never been good at sticking with the nasty voluminous tonics when I was growing up. As such, my brushes with TCM were brief and for the most part, ineffective.
But I was both desperate and naive enough to rationalise that even if it didn't help, acupuncture and Chinese tonics might improve my overall health, so off I ventured to a Chinese medical hall at Upper Cross Street, with wall-to-wall medicines and jars of herbs and tiger penises. The doctor sat at the back of the hall and she was so famous, she was known as the TCM baby whisperer. Indeed, the seats were lined with couples and the receptionist looked me up and down and said "Here for Fertility?".
The group at this clinic didn't use Blackberries, they played 4-letter Boggle on their iPhone or watched Chinese dramas on their iPad. We sat on ass-hard wooden benches and the doctor didn't close the door, so all these personal details from the loud discussions of the "day of ye jing (period/menstruations)" and "this year we went to watch F1, so couldn't that day" drifted down the corridor. One thing that all clinics seemed to have in common was that the waiting list was 2 weeks–1 month long and they sold hope, hope charted in binders upon binders filled with thick sheaves of patient records and bills.
Dr C was a 55-year-old lady, diminutive but firm, and she asked me a myriad of questions, are you thirsty often, do you go to the bathroom at night, at what age did you start menstruating? She had requested for and looked through my gynaecological records and didn't pull any punches.
While Dr N the gynaecologist had told me that my FSH was slightly high but not to worry, she looked me in the eye and told me "your FSH is high, notwithstanding your age, you will be menopausal soon", while Dr N told me that a 6.7 to 19 range for egg reserve was normal and at 6.8, I was on the low side but normal and hence I shouldn't worry overtly about my mum's comments; Dr C said "your egg reserve is low, 19 is normal, 6.8 is low; this is why you should try for children right after getting married".
There was no hand-holding, no niceties, no reassurance that you would be a parent soon. This fatalistic approach toward medication is, I think, common to TCM and central to its approach not to change, but to try to counterbalance your existing condition. Still, it was, like her medicine, hard to swallow and it was one of the hundred times that I wondered, would I be better off without these test statistics and expectations?
