Panic before my first class at culinary school

My eyes sprung open at 2 a.m. My right arm still felt weak at my side like a limp celery stalk, and my first class at The French Culinary Institute was that day. I lay in bed, worried about cutting vegetables with a grimace on my face and horribly screwing up.

I thought I had left my newspaper, but it was entrenched in the muscles and tendons of my arm. For almost two months, I’ve had pain in my right elbow from typing and straining it with repetitive movements. I had tennis elbow and I hadn’t played the sport in years.

I got up, turned on my laptop and searched for acupuncturists on Yelp.com. A friend told me she was surprised how her tennis elbow arm felt better after her chiropractor did acupuncture. I found ecstatic reviews of some practitioners in New York City’s Chinatown, which was within walking distance of the culinary school in Soho.

It hurt to type and move the mouse. It hurt to write down addresses.

I lay down in bed on my back, feeling how useless my right arm was. It took a long time for me to go to sleep.

Later in the morning, I called the first business on my list, asking if I needed to make an appointment. No, the person said. I asked if there was a wait, and he answered no again.

I took the subway to Chinatown. My heavy bag with my chef’s uniform and shoes bumped against me as I walked several blocks to Lin Sister Herb Shop.

When I poked my head through the double doors to the second floor office of the acupuncturist, no one was waiting. After hearing my problem, the acupuncturist directed me to lie down and put my arms on my chest.

I had never undergone acupuncture before. My father, a physician, hated the practice and scoffed at it. I knew he might call me and yell over the phone for going.

I remembered my father wailing about the health risks of infections from reused needles. But the acupuncturist pulled out packaged sterile needles out of his breast pocket. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what he did.

I heard a soft ting and the first needle was in.

“You’re good,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. He was soft-spoken and very polite.

The acupuncturist inserted needles in both arms. My left elbow had pain, too. He pushed a heat lamp over my right arm and told me to stay still for 30 minutes. He gently closed the door.

Alone in the room, I looked down at the needles sticking out of my arms. Panic flooded my body. I fought it off, saying to myself silently, “One” as I breathed in and “Two” as I breathed out. I tried to make my mind open. I wished hard that whatever the acupuncture was doing that it was smoothing out the pain in my arms.

When time was up, the acupuncturist swiftly took out the needles.

Back outside on the sidewalk, I wasn’t sure if I felt any different. Sitting in a restaurant with two hours left before class, I wrote notes on index cards and noticed I didn’t feel as much pain. My right arm still felt a little weak.

Later, I stood in class, arms at my sides---the one position that didn’t hurt. In the second half of the five-hour class, Chef X explained the different ways to slice and dice vegetables. It was then that I noticed I didn’t detect  limpness or pain in my arm. I had stopped being so overly aware.

By the time I peeled a turnip, my right arm felt strong enough to dice it.

Next up: Chef X.