The Doctor and the God Complex

Original Art by Steve Dean
http://www.stevedeanart.com/

Massachusetts, the state that we live in is the most conservative state in the country when it comes to health care.  Naturopathic Medicine is not recognized in our state which makes caring for my mom with all natural remedies extremely difficult.  The difficulty is with doctors, Cardiologists specifically.  Traditional medicine is all that they know and the idea of natural remedies is out of the question even when a Naturopath Doctor, someone trained in the remedies has prescribed supplements.

My mom sees a Naturopath Doctor as well as traditional doctors, traditional doctors who do not like that my mom is not taking pharma drugs, lots of drugs for reasons that make no sense to me at all.  When my mom was on all the pharma drugs, she was sick, very sick.  Her quality of life was non-existent.

Changing my mom to all natural remedies, with food being the first line of medicine to treat all her ailments, transformed my mom's life.  Losing weight was the best action my mom could have taken in order to elevate her fun quotient.  She can move around more easily after losing 100 pounds; she rediscovered her passion for dancing.

My mom has high blood pressure.  When it gets too high like it did last week, she loses her ability to communicate.  It's frightening.  Scary for my mom because she thought she was dying, scary for me because traditional doctors don't want to understand that my mom wants to take natural remedies over pharmaceutical drugs.

Traditional doctors want to treat my mom aggressively with cookie cutter treatments, drugs that are given to everyone based on studies.  Who wrote the study?  That's always my big question.  Was a pharmaceutical company behind the study, making sure that the results are tweaked in order to sell more of the medicine?

New medicines come out so often, I wonder how safe they really are; to me it appears that people are being given these drugs, not knowing the long term effects on the human body, creating more issues that require more drugs.  My mom was on this cycle of drugs, one drug leads to another, which leads to another and so on.  My mother was a piece of meat, just another patient to give drugs that are not tried and true.

Modern medicine is archaic, based on profit for a hospital corporation.  People are put on a subscription plan for drugs, drugs that they are told they need to live.  Never are alternatives discussed and if you the patient (or the Care Giver with the Healthcare Proxy) attempt to educate doctors, you are immediately dismissed.  Even with real results, results that a doctor can see but choose to ignore.

"Doctor, can't you see a difference in my mom since she first started to see you?"  I have said to my mom's Cardiologist in the past when she stopped taking all the pharma drugs.

His reply, "In what respect?"

In what respect?  Are you fucking blind?! ... doctors are educated to the point of ignorance.

Friday, my mom had her follow up with a Vascular Doctor, a Cardiologist.  He never seemed to have the God Complex until this past week when we saw him.  It's his way or the highway.  He reprimanded me for an hour because he didn't understand my mom's natural supplements and why she was on each, what each one did and how it interacted with traditional medicines.  He was mad.  He threatened to call our ND.  Go ahead I told him, I had wanted him to work with our ND for over a year now and he wouldn't.

The doctor contributed to me becoming upset which made my mom upset.  Her blood pressure went up.  He didn't check her out.  He usually listened to her arteries, checked her blood pressure as soon as he saw her; this time, he used the same tactic that my mom's other Cardiologist used every single time my mom and I would visit him for a check up.

Getting me, the care giver, riled up and in turn, make my mom upset... then check blood pressure where it was elevated.  No shit Dick Tracy!  YOU are the cause of the elevated pressure, pressure you seem to have wanted to raise so that you have an argument to feed my mom your poisons.  Poisons that provide money to your hospital so that new elaborate wings can be built.  It appears that it's in a doctors interest to prescribe pills, pills that will bring new equipment that is "donated" by a drug company affiliation.

I am upset that traditional doctors don't honor my mom's choice, to take natural supplements to treat all that ails her.  The natural supplements don't have side effects; they are gentle on her system.  Instead, the doctors want her to take an arsenal of drugs, drugs that would put her in a nursing home.

Doctors seem to have lost their focus, helping people to heal their bodies.  Prevention.  What about prevention?  Why don't doctors spend more time educating patients on proper nutrition, teaching people how to use food as medicine first?

Personally, I see the benefit of using food as medicine; not only in my mom but my family and me too.  How can a medical doctor ignore food as medicine?  I really need to understand because the approach most doctor's take is barbaric.  People suffer unnecessarily.

My mom's traditional doctors here in Massachusetts are ignorant to natural remedies.  They don't chose to learn and educate themselves and they absolutely will not recognize Naturopath Doctors as part of a health plan for patients.  If it's our wish, our choice to use natural remedies, then damn it, we should be able to do it without getting shit.

My shit taking days from doctors is over.  My mom has way more good days than not so good days.  It's our focus, our mission is to have her enjoy her life right up to the last day she takes a breath.  Natural remedies that are prescribed by a TRAINED Naturopath Doctor are making my mom's life better.  Acupuncture has helped her find her words, she can say complete sentences.  How is this bad?

Yes, my mom's blood pressure went wacky last Saturday.  It shot up and she lost her ability to speak coherent words and sentences.  Gibberish.  She was in the hospital and it was a traumatic experience.  Why? Because the hospital wouldn't honor our ND's recommendations for supplements, supplements that help my mom's cognition.  Supplements that allow her to have better days.

Instead, they allowed her to suffer and add to her stress, stress that was raising her blood pressure.  Even though I hold my mom's Healthcare Proxy, the doctors ignored me.  I was getting flipped off because I wasn't agreeing to convince my mom to take pharma drugs, drugs that I witnessed give my mom serious issues. Doctors, they don't care!

Why do doctors feel that they are Gods, where they are superior to patients and their care givers?  God Complex, it is all about the doctors ego.  They seem to lose sight and become amiss with providing the patient with healing, treating each person as an individual.  Screw this!

Fortunately, going over the border in to New Hampshire, Naturopath Doctors are recognized.  MD's work with ND's.  Wednesday, my mom meets her new doctor, a doctor who will work with our ND.  A doctor who will respect my mom's choice to see Dr. Barton, a man who has helped her to have more good days than not so good days.

My mom, she dances and laughs.  If she drops dead dancing, what a way to go!  We would all prefer to see her dancing her way to Heaven's bus than sitting in a home, frightened, scared, unable to speak and waiting for the end.

Care Giving is more difficult when a doctor has the dreaded God Complex.  It takes thick skin to stand up to the self proclaimed God, but it can be done.  Don't cave in, stand your ground and know that the doctors can not force you to do anything that you don't want to do.  Intimidation will be used, but stand strong, don't back down.  The only way a doctor can feel like God is when we do what they want us to do.  It's not their life, we chose the risks we feel comfortable taking.  We chose the natural path and I'm grateful to have found my mom a doctor who understands that there are alternative medicines that have been around since the beginning of time, tried and true.  Why on Earth would we want to take drugs that make us sick when the natural remedies bring healing?

Doctors need to change, they need to let go of their egos and treat patients and their families with respect.  Once they let go of their supremacy over the general public, they'll have more success helping the people who need help to feel well.