My doctor and I disagree a lot.
Unfortunately in alternative medicine that's sometimes just the way it goes. Alternative medicine is a huge "field" ranging from the fairly conservative approaches to the downright kooky, so there's plenty of room for disagreement.
My doctor is a naturopath, meaning he went to medical school and studied both conventional and alternative medicine. NDs have to know all of what MDs know, like drug treatments, but also herbal treatments and how all the various systems in the body interact. On top of that, mine has specialized in pediatrics and in nutrition.
I have complete respect for his knowledge and expertise (don't you love the kid checking the credentials in that Norman Rockwell painting?); I just happen to also be incredibly stubborn about what treatments I'm willing and not so willing to explore. I have to feel right about it before I'll proceed.
Luckily my naturopath agrees that I should.
A little over a year ago I quit my OB, my former pediatrician, and my insurance company. I've also listened to friends of mine discuss their doctors—both good and bad. And ever since February when I starting seeing the naturopath whom I butt heads with, I've given this subject even more thought, wondering what a healthy doctor–patient relationship should look like.
My first OB turned out to be a drill sergeant. He yelled at me in the delivery room for not pushing my baby out fast enough after he'd left me waiting at 10cm dilation for four hours while he was busy with a hysterectomy. I'd only been pushing for ten minutes. Ten months later, when I'd dropped to a scary 97 pounds while nursing and expressed my concerns over the possibility of an accidental pregnancy, he brushed it off, saying, "Plenty of women have babies at only 97 pounds." I replied with my height, reminding him that a 5'7" woman should not be anywhere close to 97 pounds, let alone pregnant. He still didn't seem to care.
My second OB was fun and enthusiastic. He always asked what book I was reading and got excited when I went into labor for our second kid. I thought that meant he was a good doctor because we got along well. But then with my third pregnancy I started doing my own research and reading very legitimate, very mainstream studies, such as the benefits of waiting to cut the umbilical cord. When I brought these up, my doctor declared it dangerous and firmly told me that he knew best and I needed to trust him.
How can you trust a doctor who isn't willing to even read the latest studies, especially when
all the recent ones are confirming the same thing?
(Not to mention that when I dropped six pounds in the last six weeks of pregnancy, when you should be
gaining a pound a week, and I ended up with a nine-pound baby (which means my body probably lost more than six pounds since the baby was still gaining), that OB brushed off my weight issues too, laughing that I should eat more hamburgers and ice cream shakes.)
In contrast, a friend of mine was having similar trouble with a too-rigid OB and began interviewing new ones during her second trimester. The one she settled on surprised her because of that very same subject. The OB she interviewed had heard in medical school that waiting to cut the cord was dangerous, but one of her patients challenged her to read the latest studies. This OB did and became converted. My friend hired her because of that willingness to be flexible and learn.
The pediatrician I quit last year was similar to my second OB. He had a great personality and was a big favorite with patients, nurses, everybody. My friend and I had both taken our kids to him (separately) for three years before we realized what made us uneasy about him and compared notes.
One is simply a conventional issue, which is that he overlooked a lot of things like bedwetting and growing pains by reassuring us they're "normal." I can't necessarily fault him for the blinders of our backwards society.
But the other issue my friend pointed out is that even though he's a young doctor, maybe 5–10 years older than us, her relationship with him felt like a father–daughter relationship where he instructed and she nodded. He dismissed her concerns (reassuringly, but still) and so she became less and less willing to bring them up. He would hand her prescriptions she had no intention to fill because of her concerns, and yet she would still just nod and smile and thank him. That's not her personality any more than it is mine, and she was shocked at herself and how she always slipped back into that unhealthy role whenever she met with him.
And just for the downright ridiculousness of this next example, I should mention one pediatrician who came highly recommended but that I only saw once (for our second baby's two-week appointment) because during that appointment he made a joke about my chest size in order to get a laugh out of my husband. Bad business move, dude. Tasteless jokes do not convey patient respect. I never went back.
But why do I keep going back to the doctor I disagree with?
It's not just because he's a naturopath. I've heard reports about other natural medicine doctors near me, and the label itself isn't enough for sainthood. Both my friend and sister-in-law tried one natural doctor who didn't explain anything well enough and seemed more interested in selling his personal health products than in listening to them.
Yesterday at a follow-up appointment with my doctor I figured why I've felt good about seeing him despite our quarrels.
In fact, one of our disagreements came up again and offered the best proof to date of why he is a good doctor.
Back in February he began encouraging me to test for Celiac, and I told him that I do not intend to avoid wheat. I explained my religious beliefs surrounding wheat and that I feel God knows better than science because eventually new studies might contradict what we think we know now. He disagreed and urged me to still consider going gluten-free because of how much I could be harming my body with gluten reactions. Yesterday he offered new info that proved he'd been listening and respected my beliefs. Out of nowhere (I wasn't the one to bring it up), he told me,
"By the way, you might look into the type of wheat. In Europe they still use old forms of wheat, not the genetically modified crap we like in America because it makes the bread fluffier, and when patients with the worst Celiac, those who can't take a single bite of bread without horrible stomach pains, go to Europe, they have no problems with the bread there. Just food for thought since I know how important wheat is to you. Something else to look into maybe."
(It was cute and humorous too because it became a bit of a rant against Monsanto. Love it! Perhaps our personalities are more similar than I thought . . .)
At every appointment he walks over to the scale with me himself instead of having a nurse do it, and he expresses genuine concern and frustration with my 97 pounds, urging me to consider more of his suggestions. (Yesterday I hit 100.5, though! Woo-hoo!) He told me that it would not be a good idea for me to get pregnant again now (not that I intend to!) and said he'd prefer I wait another year to heal whatever's wrong with my body first—a definite contrast to my previous doctors. I can feel how much he cares about me as a patient and how truly concerned he is for my health.
After talking through what to try next for my weight and discussing all my concerns, I felt good about his recommendation to do a IgG blood test for food sensitivities, to see what clues we might find there. He even asked if I was okay with the nurse doing the blood draw, looking at me and waiting for my answer rather than just asking as an aside—more signs of respect.
I left with a "prescription" for cabbage juice. It detailed exactly how to blend and strain and ferment said juice from an actual organic cabbage—certainly nothing my doctor would make money off. I told him that I'd seen good results using glutamine for my stomach, and he offered the cabbage juice as an additional remedy.
After years of having my concerns, my weight, and my research/observations completely dismissed by doctors and experiencing the results—a decline rather than improvement in my health—I think I finally know a good doctor when I find one.
A good doctor respects his patients.
Sure, there are fundamental things you should agree on, like if you want herbal options over vaccines/antibiotics, or natural birth rather than an epidural (the main reasons I quit my previous doctors and insurance company, none of which approved of natural/alternative medicine). But there are also things that it can be healthy to disagree about, like when it leads to new insights such as European wheat.
Disagreements can prompt both sides to dig deeper and look further, and a doctor who is willing to do that is one I want to keep.
