Just a breakdown on how much these “alternative remedies” have cost me in the last FIVE years:
$8,000
Grandmother suddenly developed jaundice. Took her to the hospital. Doctors suspected liver cancer and warded her. Did all sorts of tests. Finally she told us she was consuming a herb called Brotowali(I think you may have heard of it), which has been shown to elevate liver enzymes in a small percentage of people. False scare. Could have just ceased taking it and supplemented with liver supplements.
$30,000
Bone infection in leg which caused fluid buildup, finally resulting in the need for an operation to scrape the bone. A simple course of antibiotics when the pain started would have solved the problem, according to doctors. But no, she went for fucking accupuncture and Chinese herbal prescriptions instead. Till today, she refuses to tell me which TCM clinic she visited because “they had good intentions”. The bastards “treated” her for months.
Why didn’t we detect the problem earlier? Because she’s an old school Chinese woman. They are like fucking Jedi when it comes to pain tolerance. She won’t tell anyone about any pain she’s suffering or let us notice any discomfort until it gets unbearable. I couldn’t even get her to the GP because of the traditional family hierachy we follow and had to bring the GP to her. She’s the kind of people those charlatans prey on.
$7,000-8,000
Relative in China takes schizophrenic son to TCM practitioner. The fucker says he has “head wind(tou feng)”. Does accupuncture and puts his fucking head under a HEAT LAMP for half an hour each session. The kid, 22yrs at the time, decides he’s feeling better after a couple of sessions and goes off his meds. Then he leaves home and starts wandering the streets.
I have to fly over and pay a bunch of guys to abduct him on a busy street and take him to the mental hospital, which is a miserable shithole an hour’s drive from the city. Then I have to pay for his hospitalization and token bribes to doctors and selected nurses for better treatment(yes, this is the norm when healthcare is socialized and doctors are being paid peanuts).