If you have read my previous blog here: How Learning Acupuncture Can Help a Family Member in an Emergency Situation? - Acute Urinary Retention, you would know that my father-in-law had an acute urinary retention a few years ago. Actually, he went through the same thing once a year. This the 3rd time it happened.
The reason he went through one episode a year is due to his daily beer. According to him, he didn't drink any more beer than the usual one nor did anything out of ordinary. Well, I believe him. The reason he still got the urinary retention was because he's a few years older now. The body gets a little older and weaker every year. It's impossible to make him quit his daily beer. So being a good son-in-law means I have to be ready to solve the problem when it happens, I think.
This time, he started notice something wrong at 4:00 am in the morning. By the time I got there, he almost couldn't pee. He was bloated in the lower abdomen and feeling the urgency to pee but couldn't. Every time he would feel like he had to pee but failed when he was in the bathroom.
I learned a few new tricks during my last seminar. So I used San Cha San (which worked really well the 2nd time), combined with BL 67 (for acute bladder issue), and Red 24 (imaging the lower abdomen). The points I chose are convenient enough to let him walk with the needles in. He went to the bathroom every 3 to 5 mins due to the urgency he's feeling and hoping that he could pee normally. Until about an hour in, he was finally able to empty his bladder. Honestly, I wasn't satisfied with the result of my treatment, but had to leave for work after that. I promised to come back again after work just to make sure everything was ok. Just before I got off work, he started having trouble again.
The point I chose that morning didn't work as quickly as I wanted, so I had to rethink about what caused the urination difficulty. Basically, the beer was too cold that cause whatever meridians and organs in the proximity of the bladder and kidneys. My in-laws happened to have some stick-on moxa cones that I gave them. I decided to moxa Lv 1 to warm up the liver meridian, which circles around the genitals, plus Wan Shun Yi/Er (22.08/22.09) to warm the bladder and warm kidneys. This time it worked very well. After 3 cones of moxa, he was peeing normally again. I told him to do moxa for a few more days just to make sure he would be ok.