I'd had enough

Frustration. Digital image. Holistic Living Annex. Alex Chin, 6 Sept. 2015. 

I don’t remember exactly when I decided I’d had enough. I guess it was building up for a long time. I knew I wasn’t getting the help I needed, but I had nowhere to turn.

Many years ago, I visited my doctor due to nagging muscle ache in my legs.  He offered a prescription for a muscle relaxant. “If I take this and it takes away the ache,” I asked, “how will I know when I am better?” He looked at me perplexed. Why would I care? What did it matter as long as I felt better? Somewhere deep down I knew the prescription wasn’t the answer, even though I had no clue what I was going to do next or where I was going to go. There was something in me that cared more about why I was in pain then getting rid it. I could have just taken the prescription and called it a day. But, I couldn’t. I needed to understand the why behind it. 

I admire and appreciate the field of medicine. If I had an emergency or needed surgery, I would run to the doctor. But, when it comes to chronic illness there has been little to no real progress. A prescription never did and never will get to the bottom of why you are sick. I don’t blame doctors-- it’s the system they work in. Doctors write prescriptions because they want you to feel better, but when a prescription only treats the symptoms, you might feel better but you won’t get better because it doesn’t get to the bottom of what’s wrong. I wanted someone to dig deeper. I needed more than a band aid.

I have spent much of my adult life with irritating chronic issues, not debilitating, just annoying. I always felt my body was trying to tell me something.  Doctors couldn’t seem to help me. I got the feeling they thought it was all in my head.  What if they were right?  I lost hope.

It didn’t help that I had too many bad experiences. I once had a reputable pulmonologist tell me, after months of throwing every drug you can think of at me and no definitive diagnosis, that more than anything, I needed to see a psychiatrist – at the time, I was 8 months pregnant, had been plagued with a cough for 4 months, had a 103 fever and a very questionable lung x-ray. I left that doctor and went to Mayo, where a doctor there made a diagnosis in two minutes – I was aspirating acid into my lungs due to reflux which was causing repeated pneumonia. I was once discharged from the hospital (with a fever) after an appendectomy even though I argued I wasn’t feeling well. Apparently, some report revealed my time there was up, regardless of how I felt.  Within 24 hours I was back in the hospital and after waiting 6 hours for a doctor to see me, they uncovered that I had peritonitis. Those 11 days in the hospital I felt alone and scared. I didn’t know who to trust and that was terrifying. It seemed no one had my back.

It’s hard when you feel dismissed by a doctor you trust.  I felt lost, hopeless, and desperate. In a way, I owe thanks to each and every one of the doctors from my past that dismissed me --because every time you let me down I let go of you a little bit more. And I found a new way.

I didn’t really leave mainstream medicine, it left me. I was pushed out because it let me down too many times. I had no choice. I would love to say I had the courage to leave while I was in the midst of my bad experiences, but that would not be true. It was actually becoming a mom that made me re-think every decision I made. I questioned every little thing. Being a parent does that to you.

I know how lonely it is when no one hears you, when what you say doesn’t matter, because someone has already decided your issue is all in your head. I know what it’s like to get test results that say you’re fine when you know you are not.  And I know what it’s like to feel like you have run out of options. That was me.  But somewhere, deep inside was a piece of me that wasn’t willing to give up. I stayed open and curious. If I didn’t like what I heard I moved on, again and again, until I heard things that made sense. When I began to view my challenges as a gift that guided me to what is good and right for me, everything changed. And it all brought me to this. Mango, where food is medicine. My mission is to work with doctors not against them because I know they have the same goal I do – a happy, healthy, empowered YOU.