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Integrative Medicine, please.

Brenda Lloyd | 2020-03-10


In my last blog post, I wrote about what I observed and felt during a recent hospital stay; how I came out of it feeling that the relationships - the simple respect - between health care professionals and clients seems to have declined since I actively nursed years ago.

I hope I made it clear in that post that I don't totally blame health care professionals and/or patients for my sad take on our current health care system. Could we all do better?  Probably.  Yes, actually. But mostly, I just think that an overwhelming lack of human resources - combined with a paperwork heavy, bureaucratic, cover the ass mentality - has created a rather chaotic, stressful and user-unfriendly system - both for those who must work within it, and for those who enter into it seeking help.
 

No, if I am to blame anyone, at all, it would have to be those who, in the past and in the now, have dismantled our health care system into what it has become.  
 

But, I digress.
 

I just want to quickly speak here of another issue - as if there aren't enough of them, already - that is affecting the trust and rapport between practitioners and those they have vowed to help...the increasing use of natural and herbal medicines and alternative healing options.

I'm big into natural remedies these days.  I have felt so much better since I managed to detox myself from the majority of the pharmaceuticals - seven pills a day, at one point - I was once taking.  
 

*NOT MEDICAL ADVICE*
 

Now...I take concentrated curcumin capsules to fight inflammation, drink chaga tea and toss back elderberry syrup shooters to boost immunity; take a magnesium supplement for sleep and brew various organic tea blends to aid with most other minor ailments. Manuka oil and calendula, I've found, take care of most skin ickies. 
 

I also take CBD oil to calm the "chewing on tinfoil" like, grating, shrill, headachy feeling that lodged itself in my AVM after my last radiation treatment and has been bothering me ever since.  
 

It is most annoying. CBD oil makes it less so.
 

For the most part, these things work for me. I don't entirely negate the need for pharmaceuticals.  I take prescribed thyroid medication, and am grateful for it.  I also take prescription pain meds for my bad headaches, because I've had enough pain to last me a lifetime and, certain pain medications simply offer me a choice - a choice that naturals cannot - of minimizing and/or having no more.
 

Telling all this all to a conventional care doctor, any doctor, however, is tricky.   
 

Asking an insurance company if your naturopath can fill out your disability paperwork (because they know you better than your family doctor) is...well, I haven't had to do it yet, but I wonder.
 

I'm worried about what is going to happen when I ask my new family doctor (I'm going for my first visit very soon) to work alongside my naturopath. That might be a disaster.
 

On the other hand, maybe it will all be fine...maybe this new doctor will be an integrative type...one who will prescribe, but who will also have an open enough mind to see that some people can manage, all by themselves, to find natural alternatives; solutions that work.
 

I can only hope.
 

I'll let you know how it goes.