Last Notes from Home

Hopis have two types of medicine men, neither the particularly metaphysical type often associated with Native America.  One is more of an herbalist, prescribing various teas and concoctions for what ails you.  I was once given bear root   for a sore throat, and it had a local anesthetic effect. The man who gave it to me said it would impress the Hopi grandmas if I carried some around with me...

The other type is called a bonesetter.  You can guess what they do.  The Hopi have been living on the tops of three mesas in northeastern Arizona for oh, a millenium or so. They are bound to have learned a thing or two about putting bones back in place.  More than once, I saw a patient that had been to the bonesetter, who did what they could and sent them up to the pahana (white guy) hospital. 

Primal/paleo medicine is about getting back to common sense.  So when the latest victim of zombie attack in Utah State's annual "humans vs. zombies" student campus game came in to the clinic...common sense dictated my next move.  The zombies had chased him over a flower bed and into a dislocated elbow, his humerus now several cm impacted away from his olecranon. Common sense said feel around for a fracture, check his pulses, and turn down the lights in the room.  Talk to him soft, soft, with no urgency or panic and ask him to relax, feel his muscles soften, feel the edges of the bones that want so much to go back to their rightful anatomical position. Oh, they want to.  They just have to be coaxed.  And with a quick squeeze of my hand and a gasp from him, he had an elbow again.  And didn't go to the ER to have the same thing done for a grand or so.

And when I have the privilege of doing these things for people, I feel the ancient connection to those medicine men, doing their best to bring some comfort.

Now THAT's paleo.