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Thirteen had her acupuncture this morning. I was really glad to have the appointment because the cold snap of the past few days has been really hard on her. I must admit I was hoping that the cold wouldn't affect her as much as usual. But that hope turned out to be overly optimistic. Once over the weekend I saw Thirteen having difficulty standing up. It hurt to see her like that.

We had Dr. Pagel today. I think she's the more expert of the two acupuncturists. We talked about the impact of the weather and she (Dr. Pagel, not Thirteen) suggested Chinese herbal medicine. I must admit I'm rather dubious, but I'm willing to give it a try. I have an empirical approach: if a treatment works, we'll do it.

So we brought home a bottle of pills. I was hoping for a tea extracted from a variety of obscure ingredients, all stored in an antique apothecary cabinet, but no such luck. I asked Dr. Pagel how it works and she was pretty vague. Basically she said that the explanation is all in terms of Chinese medicine & wouldn't mean much if I wanted the kind of explanation you would normally get when you ask how a medication works.

I don't know. I'll try this once, but the pills were expensive. If we don't see substantial improvement, I'm going to drop the herbal medicine and suggest we instead increase the frequency of acupuncture. Which would actually be more expensive than the herbal medicine, but at least I know it works. In any case I'm going to wait until next week to start the herbal medicine so I'll be here to watch for side effects.

On the bright side, Thirteen seemed to respond really well to today's acupuncture session. While we were there and she still had the needles in, she rolled over on her side for me to scratch her stomach! She loves that, but I don't think I've ever seen her do it outside our home. Normally when the needles are in she just stands there looking nervous. Although sometimes she does lie down.

In even better news, Thirteen's weight loss program has been effective. She's lost 7 pounds: almost 15% of her starting weight. Dr. Pagel said that if Thirteen were otherwise healthy, this would be a fine weight to stay at. But the purpose of the weight loss is to ease the pressure on her arthritis, which is fairly severe. So we are going to keep at it until she loses another 2-3 pounds. I deeply hate restricting Thirteen's food, but it's worth it to make her life more comfortable or even maybe extend her life.

One funny thing about Thirteen's weight: at the acupuncture appointments, I often ask them to check some new lump on Thirteen that I just noticed. It's always been a harmless fatty tumor or cyst or whatever. But this time I told Dr. Pagel that I had noticed a new lump on Thirteen's side, about midway between her front and back legs, and I was concerned about it because it was kind of hard. Dr. Pagel felt Thirteen's side and informed me that the "lump" was actually a rib! It's been years since I could feel Thirteen's ribs.