Frau Dr. Thaller

(drawing by Liz of me with acupuncture needles)

So today I'm standing in my briefs on a wooden footstool in Herr Doctor's office. Yesterday I had really bad lower back pain, brought on by the shivering from the fever therapy. (though maybe contributed to by the injection into my prostate a couple of days ago?? Lower back pain is a symptom of prostate cancer.) Dr. Thaller is gliding his hands in an intuitive motion over acupuncture points all over my body, then zooming in with a metallic tube filled with a homeopathic solution including organ extracts, and jabbing each point. It makes a noise like a staple gun, I get a little jolt to tell me something's happening, and the skin is broken slightly so that the solution can enter. It's a wild combination of Chinese and German medical styles.

Meanwhile, my eyes wander over to an old photograph that I've seen several times hanging in one of the window bays. It's of a young girl in her 20s, and her hair style is that unmistakable hippie cut of the 70s: absolutely straight long blond hair, with an equally straight part right down the middle of the head. Maybe it's one of Dr. Thaller's older daughters?? We know he has 7 kids, but we've only met Tristan, his (absolutely charming) youngest son, who's 20.

Anyway, the staple-gun acupuncture session ends, and I am sent to a bed in another treatment room where Kristina places acupuncture needles in all of the points that the doctor has treated. I lie there looking like a pincushion for a while and Liz does a nice sketch of me.

The rest of the day is pretty uneventful -- no shivering and a low fever. At one point Liz idly wonders whatever happened to Dr. Thaller's wife -- is she still alive? Still around? We've never heard any mention of her and it seems a missing presence in the whole PraxisKlinik story.

That night we treat ourselves to a dinner at the Gastätte Meyer, the only restaurant in Markt Berolzheim. It's very much a small-town joint -- only five tables in the main room, and the chef often comes out of the kitchen to chat with the guests. We're sitting there fixing to order when in walks Tristan (Dr. Thaller's son), with an elegant-looking woman around our age. He proudly says to us, "I'd like to introduce you to my mother!" As I reach to shake her hand, a light bulb of recognition goes off: this is the same woman as in the photograph this morning! We proceed to have a very nice conversation with her; she's a psychologist and Qi Gong (chi gung) instructor, and she's here teaching a Qi Gong seminar for other health practitioners. Her practice is in Augsburg (about an hour away) and she's obviously no longer with Herr Doctor (although he's never mentioned.)

Tristan is really keen to have me talk with her about Qi Gong -- and frankly, I am too: I took Qi Gong lessons many years ago and loved it. I've always felt much more easily-centered with moving meditations like that than with sitting meditation. We agree that I'll visit her office in Augsburg either next Tuesday or Wednesday. "You need something more than Qi Gong," she tells me. "For cancer patients, the best way to get the energy flowing properly is Tibetan Qi Gong."

I'm absolutely psyched -- I've felt like some kind of physical exercise that I do on my own has been the missing component of my treatment so far. And I'm glad to finally see the other half of the PraxisKlinik picture: I had seen some mention of Qi Gong on a previous version of their website, but nobody had ever said anything about it during our visits.