decisions and soapboxes

“It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” --Hippocrates

I’ve decided to never ever go back to my current medical doctor… or as I like to call her, Cruella Condescension, MD. The reasons for this decision are threefold.

1.      She spends less time in the room with me than I spend in the waiting room perusing outdated parenting magazines. And when she finally decides to grace me with her presence, she looks at her laptop the entire time and I have to remind her of every reason why I have been in her office before.

2.      She told me to get over my issues and push through the pain. To which I replied, “You’re my doctor… not my personal trainer.”

3.      She would NOT like the fact that I sought a Naturopathic physician’s advice without consulting her first. If the name of the medicine doesn’t have 17 letters and end in “ine,” she doesn’t prescribe it.

Thus, per the quote above, Cruella did not know/understand me at all, so how could she possibly know how to help me? Luckily, my NP recommended an OB/GYN that she knows is very accepting of natural healing methods. Score! And I’m hoping that the OB/GYN will have a good recommendation for a General Practitioner that is similarly open-minded. Who knew this type of person would be so hard to find? It makes me a little sad for the world.

I would now like to take a moment and get on my soapbox. Bear with me.

I read somewhere that the difference between modern medicine and traditional healing is that you go to the doctor when you’re sick in the former and go to the doctor when you’re well (to continue to stay well) in the latter. That seems a little bass ackwards to me. Why do we continue to pay doctors to help us fix the same problems over and over? Shouldn’t they get it right the first time? Heck, I’d even be ok with it if they got it right the second or third time. We pay them every time that we are sick. Luckily, I can now remove myself from the “we” in that sentence. But I want everyone else to do the same.

Healthcare costs continue to rise and people keep saying that my generation will be the first that will not outlive their parents. That is really scary. Granted, most of this is due to the insanely high prevalence of obesity. That’s a whole other issue, but is a part of health all the same.

I have no authority to tell anyone what to do about their health. I’m not any version of a doctor and I’m definitely still figuring a lot of things out. But I do know that having an open mind and taking charge over my own health completely changed my life in the best way possible. So often we believe everything that our doctors say and don’t do our own investigation. I know I did. And because of that, I was miserable and in a great deal of physical pain for 5 years.

Learn from my mistake. Research your own problems and know why you are taking the medications that you take (do they have long-term side effects, do you need to modify your diet for them to work, what are the biologically doing to help you, etc.). I’ll be the first to admit that I had no idea what 3 of my medications were physically doing to me. Man, I wish I had.

Clarification: I’m not telling everyone to go see a Naturopathic physician. I know it wouldn’t work for everyone and I know some people can’t afford it (thanks, insurance companies). What I’m saying is that, your health is your responsibility. I relied on a crappy doctor and Zyrtec commercials for way too long. Sometimes you have to be your own advocate. Strike that. You always have to be your own advocate. Sometimes it involves exercising more often and eating more nutritious food. But a lot of times, it’s much more complicated. But no one knows your body better than you do. And it took me 5 years to learn that if your body is screaming at you, throwing the mother of all temper tantrums, it won’t simmer down until you stop and listen.