Cancer is very tough. And because we do not have a reliable cure
for cancer, we must use every tool that helps to deal with
cancer in a loved dog. One of these tools is acupuncture for
cancer pain. Acupuncture in cancer has in the past been debated,
and the use of acupuncture for pain relief has been addressed in
the Guide and elsewhere in this blog (here and here). It is
clear that it can help. Yet Guardians find their vets or
oncologists may resist the idea. One of the reasons is that the
Chinese use a system that is more of a metaphor, or is symbolic,
to talk about their medicine. And to us in the USA, especially
those condemn-before-investigation types, those funny Chinese
medicine words may sound like a bunch of garbage. But the good
news is there is now some pretty sound science that can explain
how acupuncture works. And the science uses words that don’t
sound like mumbo jumbo to a western-trained conventional vet or
oncologist (and just for full disclosure, I’m a Cornell alum and
have a conventional m