Three Doses of Chinese Medicine Resolved Amenorrhea Caused by Uterine Fibroids
My wife was thirty-four years old, pretty and plump, fond of meat. Looking at her reflection she sighed that her figure was not what it used to be and could not help envying slender ladies. Urged on by old university classmates, she secretly took diet pills together with them to build a more beautiful figure. After a few months of taking diet pills such as L-carnitine, her menstruation stopped. She was stubborn by nature and refused treatment for the amenorrhea for six months, until I escorted her to the hospital. An examination showed multiple uterine fibroids.
Now she panicked. According to my wife's view, "highly educated people mostly believe in Western medicine; less-educated people mostly believe in TCM," and she herself was highly educated, so despite having a TCM physician by her side she still trusted Western medicine. At the gynecology department of a Beijing hospital, after one course of Western treatment, there was still no sign of menstruation. My wife then revised her view as follows: whether highly educated or not, when Western medicine cannot help, everyone believes in TCM.
So she went to see a TCM physician — still dismissive of her own bedside TCM man, because she believed specialization matters and gynecological disease should be treated by a gynecology specialist. In her view, I seemed to specialize only in oncology. So she went to a famous expert, who after taking the pulse differentiated the pattern as deficiency of liver, kidney, and spleen and wrote out a grand prescription listing forty-two herbs. He wrote seven doses at once, saying that if these seven did not work, another half month should do it.
According to my own pulse diagnosis, my wife was actually suffering from qi stagnation and blood stasis; all six pulses were wiry and rapid, and there were films on her eyes — clear liver qi stagnation, with static blood surging upward to the eyes. Where was there any deficiency? Such a nonsense formula I immediately threw into the trash.
Since she was consulting TCM, then I would treat her! I had treated family members before, including my wife's own minor ailments, and one dose always worked. Patients referred by the small pharmacy near my home also mostly responded to one dose, so I confidently promised that one dose would work — and if it did not, we would see.
For quick effect, my first prescription was as follows:
Rehmannia raw (Shengdi) 10 g, red peony (Chishao) 10 g, Angelica sinensis (Danggui) 10 g, moutan bark (Danpi) 10 g, gardenia (Zhizi) 10 g, bupleurum (Chaihu) 10 g, Poria (Fuling) 10 g, Motherwort (Yimucao) 30 g, cow-belly seed (Wangbuliuxing) 10 g, Salvia chinensis (Liujinu) 10 g, Achyranthes (Huainiuxi) 10 g, safflower (Honghua) 10 g, peach kernel (Taoren) 10 g, ground beetle (Diebiechong) 10 g, Fraxinus (Qinpi) 10 g, rehmannia raw (Shengdi) 10 g (added later).
I took two doses home. After taking the first, there were some premenstrual signs, but after finishing the second, menstruation still did not come. My wife began to doubt; I had talked big, and one dose had not worked. Luckily she was my own wife, so I shamelessly asked her to try a new formula, swearing a military oath that this time one dose must work. I prescribed the following:
Rehmannia raw (Shengdi) 20 g, red peony (Chishao) 20 g, Angelica sinensis (Danggui) 20 g, Ligusticum chuanxiong (Chuanxiong) 20 g, safflower (Honghua) 30 g, peach kernel (Taoren) 15 g, Motherwort (Yimucao) 30 g, ground beetle (Diebiechong) 20 g, achyranthes (Niuxi) 20 g, moutan bark (Danpi) 20 g, zedoary (Ezhu) 15 g, seaweed (Haizao) 15 g, kelp (Kunbu) 15 g, bupleurum (Chaihu) 15 g, cyperus (Xiangfu) 10 g, raw rhubarb (Dahuang) 20 g (added later).
The second dose was basically the same as the first, only with larger dosages, with the appropriate addition of qi-moving cyperus and the nodule-hardness-softening zedoary, seaweed, and kelp to attack her uterine fibroids.
Taken on the first evening and again the next morning, by noon menstruation arrived — after an absence of seven months.