Down the rabbit hole…
The trouble with alternative medicine is …it’s alternative. It’s either/or. Not both.
Let me give you the backstory here. I’ve been battling a health problem (weirdly spiky liver numbers – and no, I'm not a drinker) so I went to a bunch of specialists, got a biopsy, filled a lot of blood vials, and then, just to cover my bases, I went to, well, an alternative practitioner.
He’s a medical doctor but he doesn’t prescribe pharmaceuticals. He works with diet and supplements.
Which sounds very nice and pleasant and why-not until there’s a ‘real’ health problem, like my liver attacking itself. So his plan is to de-tox me with a completely new diet (no wheat, no red meat, no dairy, no sugar) and build my insides back up.
Meanwhile, the traditional ‘western’ specialist wants me on immuno-suppressants (as if anyone in New York needed less resistance to diseases!) and prednisone (which is, btw, the strongest psychosis-inducing drug on the market. I kid you not.)
Two very different approaches. And of course, my actual life is at stake.
The trouble is, when a choice like this comes along, you have to go down the rabbit hole. I can’t do both therapies, I can’t do half of each, and I can’t listen to both sets of counsel because the underlying philosophies are completely different. Completely
In the traditional med view, I’m a victim of a dread thing, and I must take the medicine and stand by, like an invaded country. In eastern med, I’ve contributed to the lack of health and I have to participate in the restoration.
But it's not fast, and it's not fancy -- it's hard and it takes a long time. That's so not our get-it-to-me-overnight existence. So when my husband objects that I’m not listening to the big hospital specialist with the big practice, I understand where he’s coming from. But a little voice in my head says, “if eastern med didn’t work, wouldn’t China be the least populous country in the world?”
Oh my. This rabbit hole goes on and on.
Let me give you the backstory here. I’ve been battling a health problem (weirdly spiky liver numbers – and no, I'm not a drinker) so I went to a bunch of specialists, got a biopsy, filled a lot of blood vials, and then, just to cover my bases, I went to, well, an alternative practitioner.
He’s a medical doctor but he doesn’t prescribe pharmaceuticals. He works with diet and supplements.
Which sounds very nice and pleasant and why-not until there’s a ‘real’ health problem, like my liver attacking itself. So his plan is to de-tox me with a completely new diet (no wheat, no red meat, no dairy, no sugar) and build my insides back up.
Meanwhile, the traditional ‘western’ specialist wants me on immuno-suppressants (as if anyone in New York needed less resistance to diseases!) and prednisone (which is, btw, the strongest psychosis-inducing drug on the market. I kid you not.)
Two very different approaches. And of course, my actual life is at stake.
The trouble is, when a choice like this comes along, you have to go down the rabbit hole. I can’t do both therapies, I can’t do half of each, and I can’t listen to both sets of counsel because the underlying philosophies are completely different. Completely
In the traditional med view, I’m a victim of a dread thing, and I must take the medicine and stand by, like an invaded country. In eastern med, I’ve contributed to the lack of health and I have to participate in the restoration.
But it's not fast, and it's not fancy -- it's hard and it takes a long time. That's so not our get-it-to-me-overnight existence. So when my husband objects that I’m not listening to the big hospital specialist with the big practice, I understand where he’s coming from. But a little voice in my head says, “if eastern med didn’t work, wouldn’t China be the least populous country in the world?”
Oh my. This rabbit hole goes on and on.
posted by Whoopla at
6:43 AM
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2 comments
