If all my health care practitioners got into a cage fight to the death, who would win?
I am a pill popper. I’ve divulged this before. Every doctor I have gone to in the last year has had some vitamin they wanted me to take; but they have all thought that was all I needed –along with a healthy diet. It’s actually become comical, because they have all said I don’t need whatever vitamin or supplement the last one told me I needed, but I did need the one they were pushing.
Do Doctors have vitamin contracts?
In order to avoid missing out on anything, I have just taken every single vitamin any doctor has told me to take. Beyond that, I've added a few I've read about online. I figure it can’t hurt anything, except when I have to explain what all I am taking to a new practitioner.
Then it becomes embarrassing.
And they all tell me I don’t need to be taking so much.
But they all also have something they would recommend.
I really wish Doctors would all get on the same page.
The funny thing is I don’t take over the counter drugs for anything. I have all the hardcore pain pills prescribed to me, but it takes a lot for me to ever take one. After both surgeries I have cut off pain pills within 24 hours. I don't even like taking Aleve unless I am just non-functional. I don’t like putting unnatural drugs into my body. I’ve done it when I’ve had to (for instance with the Lupron), but if I have a choice I won’t do it. I get nervous about all this synthetic stuff floating around in my blood stream.
But I will take 20 different vitamins a day, just on the off chance that one of them might help.
The good news is I haven’t had so much as a cold this entire winter.
The bad news is I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to invest in one of those old lady pill organizers at some point!
I’ve actually been looking forward to trying to conceive, because I know at that point I will give up all the rest and turn to just one trusty prenatal (which I will be picking up this weekend – milestones ladies – milestones!)
But since I started acupuncture, Teeny has put me on two different Chinese herbal supplements – and my Western doctors are not pleased. They humor me with all the vitamins, but they are not humoring me with this.
Today I got an e-mail from the office of Dr. RE stating that none of these Chinese herbs are FDA tested and I need to stop them now because there is no telling what effect they may have on my baby making plans. I know my OBGYN feels the same way.
I was never planning on taking any of them during my cycle - I was never planning on taking anything beyond prenatals at that point. Teeny would never let me do that anyway. They are simply a few herbs meant to balance my hormones, get my lady parts ready, and hopefully ease my upcoming period pains while also bringing it on this next cycle as naturally as possible. I was 2-3 months between periods before, and if this IVF game can't get started until I get a period; I could use the help.
But my Western doctors are so against it, and I feel very torn.
The thing I am most confused about though is why my doctors didn’t hesitate to put me on Lupron, but they are so freaked out by these herbs. Lupron has been around maybe 20 years (I have no idea what I’m talking about – so my facts could be totally off there!) It is synthetic, it made my hair fall out, my stomach expand, and every meal I ate at risk of coming up. It also made me painfully tired, and it didn’t even work. How could they be so quick to push something like that, but so adamant that I not take a supplement that is 100% natural and has been around and used to treat the same problems I have for hundreds of years.
I just don’t understand the divide here, and I am torn.
I don't want to lie to my doctors about what I am taking, but...
I trust Teeny. She went to school for 6 years to do what she does. If I trust Doctors because of their education, why can't I trust Teeny because of hers? If she says this will help, I believe her. Western medicine hasn’t exactly done me a whole lot of favors in this fight against endo. It encouraged playing the “wait and see” game for 7 months, as this disease inflicted more and more damage upon my entire body. It cut me open twice within a 6 month period. It put me on a difficult drug that didn’t really work for me, but then Western medicine didn’t offer any reasons at all for why I may be that odd case. It hasn’t tried to find answers or the root of the problem at all. Instead it has continued to tell me I am a rarity while still treating me as though I fit in that spectrum of "average" - I feel like they only know how to treat the norm. The protocols for treatment haven’t changed at all for me throughout any of this. As much as I keep being told I’m abnormal, I am still getting the treatments all the "normal" patients would get.
On some level, doesn’t that just seem strange? At what point is someone going to say to me “Hey – maybe we should try to figure out why you are so odd. Why your case is so aggressive. Why you seem to be treatment resistant. Maybe if we figured out what the reason for all that was, we could come up with a better treatment plan designed specifically for you!”
But that hasn’t happened. I really do love my doctors. I believe they care and I think they have done the best they can given what they know. Obviously at this point my damage is so bad that I will not ever get pregnant without the beauty of IVF (a Western medicine miracle), but why am I meant to put my faith 100% into that? Why am I not allowed at this point to seek alternative treatments as well?
And why are they so against these herbs even though we have watched my condition just get worse throughout every one of their treatment options?
(community discussion in need of your input right now: Eastern vs. Western Practices - How do you decide?)
But then I get scared. What if they are right and I shouldn’t be taking these herbs. What if it could cause a problem.
Granted, if my baby came out with two heads – I would be much quicker to blame that on the Lupron than on these herbs, but…
Why are they so against it? Why are they not open at all to the possibility that it could help?
Am I missing something?
ADSPACE
