The Lane Cove rooms are at 2 Austin Street, directly opposite the Lane Cove Library and a few metres from Longueville Road. If you are coming from the village it is a walk of two or three minutes, and the parking behind the library is the easiest option in the middle of the day.
Lane Cove sends a particular mix of problems through the door. There are the desk-and-commute necks and low backs from St Leonards and the city, the shoulders and elbows of a suburb that plays a lot of tennis, and the knees and Achilles tendons that come with living on a hillside — the stairs down to Tambourine Bay and the streets off Burns Bay Road are their own kind of training load. Lane Cove also has a lot of people in their thirties and forties carrying small children, which is its own demand on a back.
A first appointment is mostly questions and movement testing: where the pain is, what makes it worse, what it stops you doing, and how it has behaved over weeks rather than days. From there you should leave knowing what is proposed, roughly how long it is expected to take, and what would mean changing the plan.
Worth bringing: any imaging or specialist letters you already have, a list of medications, and the shoes you actually walk or train in. If the pain is new and severe, follows a significant fall, or comes with numbness, weakness, fever or any change in bladder or bowel control, see a doctor first — that is a medical assessment, not a treatment question.
The nearest alternative if Lane Cove does not suit you is the Freshwater side, about 14 kilometres away across the Spit.
Occasional powders and capsules are easy to forget. Bring a full medicine and supplement list, plus your granule bottles, so the herbal conversation is about what you actually take.
People living with ongoing aches often gather a small collection of remedies: an anti-inflammatory for bad days, paracetamol in the bag, fish oil or turmeric from the supermarket, magnesium before bed, perhaps a tea a friend suggested. Prescription medicines are usually easy to recall. The occasional powder or capsule is the kind of thing that slips the mind mid-appointment.
When Chinese herbal medicine is being considered, an accurate list keeps the discussion specific rather than general. Two products both described as natural are not automatically compatible, and an over-the-counter pain medicine can matter as much as a prescription.
Rather than relying on memory, bring the details to Dr Christine Shen, Acupuncturist, at the Freshwater clinic. A phone photo of each label works well. Include:
Herbal prescriptions at the clinic are granules in bottles with printed labels. If you already have one, bring it or a clear photo of its label so the conversation concerns the actual preparation rather than a vague description. If you are thinking of adding a new product while on herbs, ask first rather than combining things and hoping they get along.
Once a herbal plan is in place, keep the product name, written directions and review arrangements with the original bottle. When another clinician alters a medicine, update Christine instead of assuming the earlier herbal plan still holds. If you notice a new symptom and are unsure whether a product is involved, contact the clinic rather than changing doses on a hunch.
A note on your phone, refreshed whenever something changes, takes only a few minutes. It spares everyone guesswork and gives you a clearer view of what passes through your week, which is worth knowing for its own sake.
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