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.
Small instructions on a herbal prescription can change the preparation you receive. Here is how to make sense of them before you start cooking your formula.
Open a bag of raw herbs and you may spot small handwritten or printed notes: pre-decoct, add later, wrap separately. For someone juggling work, family and a sore back, these can look like fussy extras that are easy to ignore. Overlooking one because cooking herbs feels routine can alter the preparation your prescription intended.
Each instruction relates to how particular ingredients are meant to be cooked. In broad terms:
The exact timing for your formula depends on what it contains, so general descriptions like these are only a starting point.
Ask Dr Christine Shen, Acupuncturist, at the Lane Cove clinic to go through the steps for your own formula, especially for a first batch. Having her explain the order and timing in person, with the labelled bags in front of you, can clear up confusion before the stove is on.
Keep the written instructions with the bags. If anything seems ambiguous, such as which packet the note refers to, ask before you start rather than guessing halfway through.
Directions from a previous prescription, or a simpler method from a friend, should not stand in for the instructions written for this formula, even if they are easier to remember.
Keep the product name and review arrangements with the packaging, and update Christine when your other medicines change. If a new symptom appears and you cannot tell whether the herbs are involved, call the clinic rather than adjusting the dose yourself. Once the steps become familiar, those little notes stop feeling fussy and start feeling like a helpful map.
Copyright© 2002-2026 visuallink© SaaS - Web Hosted Solutions, Design and Maintenance by Visual Link IT Pty Ltd - Software Solutions
Please Login or Sign up to be able to comment