Woody Cavenaugh

This story starts out like any good joke would.

A guy (me) goes to his regular western doctor with a problem and the doctor orders a huge battery of test including a month on a heart monitor.

I go to my Eastern practitioner and tell her the same problem, she asks me a couple of questions, checks my pulse, looks at my tongue, and fixes the problem.

I'm not knocking the western philosophy, I grew up with it and I am still alive, but nothing I have ever experienced demonstrates the real difference between the two styles like what I described above.

On the downside, I am now having no problems at all yet, I must keep Blinky wrapped around me for another three weeks. I keep telling myself it is "just in case" but that doesn't help the fact that I have a digital readout on the center of my chest like some sort of 1960's cyborg. It isn't comfortable and it looks lumpy resting between my man-boobs. Very unsexy. Add to that the fact that yesterday I accidentally activated it while I was trying to screw the lid off of my coffee cup. It took me several minutes to figure out what was making that tea-kettle sound.

However, being obedient to both hemispheres, I will not remove it until the appointed time just in case something happens. Plus I know if I break a bone, or my nose suddenly falls off to spite my face, my western doc will be my go-to person.

I get the best of both worlds, though it is a lot like a divorce situation. I've got the equivilant of two parents living in two places who won't even speak to each other.