This person’s got a whole lotta sway. And that’s fine – as long as you’ve chosen the right doctor for you. Doctors hold so much authority in our culture that sometimes we may forget who is working for who. Your doctor is your employee, not the other way around, and if you’re not satisfied with his performance, you may and darn well should fire him and find someone better. I have a client who wanted to fire her doctor but she was afraid to hurt his feelings and afraid that he might call her to find out why. I asked her what she was more afraid of – experiencing the discomfort of facing someone squarely and telling them an unpleasant truth, or putting her health – her very life – in the hands of the wrong person.

Today I want to ask you a few questions to jog your thinking about your doctor and whether or not he or she is the right one for the job. Remember – inviting someone in to help you heal is a sacred role. Your doctor should honor that and honor you.

The Doctor Quiz

Do you and your doctor share the same fundamental beliefs about MS and how it should be treated?

Does your doctor treat you like an equal partner in deciding the best course of action?

Does your doctor respond respectfully and without being condescending if you disagree with his suggestion?

Does your doctor ask you what you think would be best for you?

Does your doctor make you feel like you are the only patient in the world?

Does your doctor take time with you to find out how you are feeling and what stresses might be effecting your life?

Does your doctor or someone in the office return your call promptly if you have a question or concern?

Do you feel comfortable with your doctor?

Do you feel like your doctor gets you?

Do you leave your doctor’s office feeling hopeful and positive and with a renewed sense of determination?

The Results

If you answered no to more than one of these questions, I advise you to consider finding yourself a new doctor. You deserve someone who you can answer YES to for all the above considerations. But part of deserving a great doctor is being willing to take the time and effort and potential discomfort to find that person. Sometimes you just get lucky, but more often than not, finding high quality professionals is the result of first believing you deserve it and then demanding that you receive it by doing whatever it takes to find the right fit. Your health is the only thing that really matters. Settle for a mediocre hairdresser (if you must, though I don’t necessarily advise that either). Don’t settle for a mediocre doctor.

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I thought this was fascinating and sadly ironic. A doctor fresh out of med school who doesn’t understand why she has a chronic cough! Here was a real-life example of how our medical system, beginning with how we educate our doctors, is failing us. It’s obvious, no? Inflammation comes from infections caused by viruses, bateria, fungus, yeast, and parasites, as well as from nutritional deficiencies and toxicities, psychological stress, and environmental toxicity.

What’s the Problem?

I’m not a doctor, but when I hear that someone has a chronic cough that’s been going on for months, the first thing I wonder is how is she eating? If she’s eating a lot of sugar and carbs she’s feeding the virus and encouraging inflammation. The fact that she’s addicted to Ricola drops, which contain sugar, tell me that she’s coating her throat in a constant sugary syrup. Of course her cough isn’t healing! And both Ricola and Cepacol contain many potentially toxic chemical additives, which weaken the system and hinder the body’s ability to heal.

Since she’s a doctor, she’s also probably not getting enough sleep and is probably under significant stress, which taxes the adrenal glands and doesn’t allow the body the time or proper resources to heal. She needs to sleep more and find more time to relax.

The Root of the Problem

What’s disturbing here is that the doctors being churned out of med school today (or at any point in Western Medicine’s history) are not being taught to get to the root of illness with dietary changes, detoxification, and supplements to rebuild and regenerate the body. This all seems so simple to me! And yet, for various reasons that we could speculate about, from Big Pharma’s financial hold on medical schools, or the narrow belief that diet has little to do with illness, or a slew of other reasons, doctors are not being taught these very basic tools to address disease. Instead, new doctors with chronic coughs are popping chemically-laden cough drops and visiting their doctors, who are telling them they look fine.

A chronic cough is a red flag, an indication that a system is not in balance. And a doctor with a chronic cough who doesn’t understand why they have it is an indication of a medical system out of balance – one that’s failing it’s current and future patients by not teaching its doctors basic tenets of health.

What do you think?

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Photo by Chad Johnson, Flickr

Yesterday I had an appointment with my neurologist, who I’ll refer to from here forward as Dr. N. This was my second appointment with him. My first was a month earlier, when I explained that I had been treating my MS with diet and supplements alone, and LDN beginning in March of 2009, and hadn’t been to a neurologist in a year and a half because I found my last one to be a condescending jerk. I had explained that I wasn’t coming to him with the intention of beginning a drug regimen, but rather to develop a relationship with a doctor who would act as my partner in treatment and respect my choices. Dr. N had been enthusiastically referred to me by a friend who also has MS and has been seeing him for ten years, so I had reason to believe he would be a good fit for me.

He is – as far as neurologists go – pretty cool. When I explained my treatment philosophy and reasoning, he threw a few light-hearted barbs my way – asking me where I went to med school and such (which I appreciated because I like a doctor with a sense of humor) but he didn’t pressure me into taking the medication and did not condescend to me the way previous neurologists had. He played his role – letting me know what the studies show about the efficacy of the drugs and what he’s experienced first-hand in his practice, all of which indicated that the drugs did indeed work to reduce frequency and severity of attacks and slow progression of the disease. But, and this was the important part, he stopped short of telling me what to do, which left me feeling cautiously optimistic about this new relationship as I left his office with my MRI script.

Yesterday, MRI films in hand and winged insects flying around in my stomach, I drove north on I-95 to Dr. N’s office for my second appointment. All my talk about diet and supplements and lifestyle would either be supported or not by the black and white, objective, irrefutable results of these films. I considered the possibility of the news being bad, of having the doc tell me that I had five more spots lining my corpus callosum and should seriously consider beginning on the drugs immediately. I even had a speech planned in the event of that result.

What was I so afraid of? I guess, in part, it was ego. I had chosen a path – the path less traveled for sure – and didn’t want to be proven wrong. But I’m so stubborn and believe so strongly in what I’m doing that I don’t know that it would be possible to prove me wrong. Information worth noting? For sure, but I don’t believe for a second that I would have abandoned my path. More crucial than the threat to my ego, however, was the threat to my hope. Hope is the engine that drives me, and most everyone who has an illness (especially those pesky ones without cures). If my MRI had shown that my disease was progressing despite my best efforts, it would have sent a grenade through that hope, and sent me digging even deeper, down into the hole that was left behind, to find the remains to keep me going. Also, I didn’t want to feel stupid. I didn’t want to be wrong. And the truth was I felt an unexplainable confidence that my MRI would show me exactly what I believed to be true – that what I was doing was working.

When Dr. N came into the exam room, he sat down and said “I know you know your body, but every now and then, patients are wrong, so let’s go have a look.” We walked down the long hallway to a lightbox mounted on a wall. He placed my old scan next to my new scan, explained a few things, and said, casually, “OK great, no change. Everything looks the same.”

EVERYTHING LOOKS THE SAME!!!

Everything looks the same. Everything looks the same. It hadn’t sunk in yet. We walked back to the exam room and sat down. Dr. N said, “Based on your MRI, I’m comfortable saying you can keep coasting, doing what you’ve been doing. You’re clearly doing something right.” Then he went on to say, “It’ll be very interesting to follow you over time. Very interesting. Maybe I’ll be writing you up in ten years.”

I left his office elated. I was diagnosed in July of 2007, and immediately began a strict diet and supplement regimen. Since that time, 2 1/2 years ago, my MRI has remained unchanged, and I have never taken any of the traditional MS drugs. Put another way, I have successfully halted progression of my illness with diet, supplements, LDN, and a positive attitude. What will the future bring? I have no way of knowing, but yesterday’s results have even further bolstered my belief that what I’m doing is working, I’m on the right path, and my effort has paid off. My hope is becoming conviction, and I like it that way.