american know how trumps anything going on over here in this area!...credit must be given where it's due!

during WW2 vets started coming home with a variety of disabilities and injuries by the hundreds and thou- sands...leaps and bounds of innovation was introduced in pt/rehab to meet these needs and this medical field made great strides...much later more were made when many public schools were required to start providing pt for students with special needs...now the field has expanded once again to meet the needs of the soldiers coming home from iraq with unique challenges...well things are a bit different here: this is by far the weakest link in the entire program that's offered...we all get at least one hour in the gym 5 or 6 times/week...sounds good, right??...except that there is insufficient evaluation/examination before exercise in the gym starts...we're talking stroke survivors!...basically no one is clearly instructed what to do or what not to do on any kind of ongoing basis...there is a doctor whatever-his-name-is, the head of rehab down there, who consistently leaves me underwhelmed everytime i see him...here in china holding a higher position in a company or other work situation often has no relation to merit...personal connections will get one someplace much faster...or buying your future employer a load of cigarettes and candy...AKA some kind of bribe...i'm not saying that there aren't plenty of highly skilled and highly competent chinese in elevated work positions attained by merit...there certainly are...but what i'm talking about has been oc- curring here forever and is firmly entrenched in the culture...it's all around... so...we enter the gym and kind of figure out on our own what we'd like to do...an exercise bike, treadmill, strengthening equipment, mat work, etc...all the assistants are unequivocally helpful and attentive enough but their english is limited or nonexistent which often makes a challenging situation more challenging...and they will rarely risk intro- ducing something new or take any kind of authoritative lead with instruction for fear of their uninspiring leader losing face which is another cultural situation that is inevitable in china..it all adds up to a fairly dys- functional less than adequate experience...but this is china, not the west and i make do with what i have to work with being the resourceful urban dude from nyc that i am...the most important thing to me is the acupuncture...my hour in the gym is important also but it's not in any way as critical as the needling...to cover all the bases, the tuina doctors are usually available in the gym...there's 3 or 4 of them.... for more personalized intruction but this is literally catch as catch can...no one is assigned to specifically work with you...my new tuina doc is a marvel...she offers high quality pt/ot in my private session with her and just today we saw slight extension of the fingers in my left hand!!!!...woo hoo!!!!...and i mean woo hoo!!!!...i believe that this is the promise of what's to come with continued tcm here...!!!!...and you know i'll keep you all updated...my best from the far far east, richxxx