Moving Beyond Personal Fear to Seek Alternative Medicine

For many of us who have lived our lives “blindly” following the advice of a conventional doctor because they had the title M.D. following their name find Alternative Medicine a breath of fresh air.

After successfully carrying and delivering two healthy full term babies at 34 and 36 years of age I began to have some extreme health issues that my doctor, at the time, could not explain or treat. I knew in my heart that this was a sign that I needed to search down a new path. Everything inside of me was telling me that I needed to do something different. This is where the girl becomes the women because this is not an easy transition. In fact, it took me eight months just to make an appointment with someone else.

Regardless of the struggle I was personally going through, I knew that my husband and children needed me to continue searching for an answer for my problems for the health of our entire family. Ironically, at the time I was sick, my children had also gotten sick. They were both hospitalized for dehydration from rotavirus.

During my children’s hospitalizations I didn’t feel like they were receiving proper treatment and I was not receiving adequate answers to my questions and I was feeling angry! I was the mom and these professional were supposed to take care of us! Having learned from the hospitalizations of my children that doctors are professional BUT they are human, just like me, I began the search for knowledge. I began reading everything and anything about natural and/or alternative ways to heal the body. Unfortunately, I had one problem-I was paralyzed by my own fear.

The fear was far reaching: What would my doctor think? What would my husband say to me? What would my siblings say or think? The questions were endless and uncontrollable! I struggled for months.

Then one day a friend gave me a book written by a doctor named Dr. David Brownstein. I read this book in record time because it was an easy read and because it was describing me. Knowing I truly wanted to break out of the mold I had always lived in regarding my relationships with doctors, I began to set aside my fear to make the appointment. My fear was based in the unknown. All I knew was that I had gone to this doctor for years (most of my family still goes and are happy with their results) and you just don’t leave because you don’t agree because that is disrespectful! Or so I thought. After much turmoil I called and made an appointment with a doctor in the practice of the doctor who wrote the book I read. The phone call changed my life.

The day of my appointment the doctor took one look at me, checked by balance, did some muscle testing, looked at my tongue, felt my neck, asked me a long list of questions and said I needed to have some blood work done. He immediately told me that he believed that I had a thyroid problem (which would later be confirmed with the blood test). All of this in the first appointment! I could continue to go on about the appointment but the real message is there are MANY different paths that can be taken to wellness.

My message here is about me helping other people, especially moms, just like me, not to have to travel the same path I did alone. My path, as a mom, has led me to understand that my journey for optimum health ultimately began with me conquering my own fear. By working through my fear I learned I am strong and bold enough to make educated decisions about what is best for the health of me and my family.

Along with conquering fear I have also learned to become aware of what is happening around me and utilize the gift of intuition. Tapping into my intuition has given me getter strength and understanding knowing it is imperative that I am the driving force in making decisions regarding the health and welfare of my children. NO ONE KNOWS YOU OR YOUR CHILD BETTER THAN YOU!

I would like to preface what I am about to share by saying that Conventional medicine does have its place in our very chaotic and sometimes dangerous world. For example, many people may find themselves in a place where taking antibiotics can save their life. Having expressed those thoughts, I would like to share with you my journey for health and wellness for my family.

What I am about to say does not mean that I voluntarily deem myself a physician. As a mom, a parent, I am the person who knows my children better than any other person on the planet. For example, I took a major fork in the road when I decided to begin to build up the immunity of my children. By choosing to build up the immunity of my children instead of waiting to go to the doctor when they were showing signs of being sick is absurd! Or is it?

The whole idea of waiting until my children get sick to take them to the doctor is absurd! Let me put it this way- Do you wait to take your car to get an oil change when the oil is all gone? Do you let your garbage pile up around your trash can in the house until garbage day? Do you wait until you have a cavity to go to the dentist? Of course you don’t! These are maintance activities. Taking care of the maintance of our things does not guarantee there will be no problems but it certainly significantly decreases the chances. What would make us think any differently about the maintance of our bodies?

My journey for optimum health began with fixing and taking care of myself and is now focused on my entire family. After having seen my doctor for about three or four months I began asking him questions about taking my children to a holistic pediatrician. I was in search of a new path for my children. I was looking to maintain the health of my children instead of waiting for their health to fail. He gave me the name of a wonderful person who has changed my family’s life forever.

I have failed to mention until this point that I had to travel over an hour to get to the holistic doctor who has forever changed the path of my health and 50 minutes to get to the holistic pediatrician for my children. These are not distances many people would travel for maintaining health. Again, I was not going to let fear paralyze me again about taking the path less travelled so I did so without a complaint. I soon found out that I was not the only person travelling so far to see these doctors I considered “out of the mainstream “. I soon learned that these doctors had patients travelling as far as neighboring states (6+ hours) to appointments with these doctors.

I feel like I tapped into a gold mine. I feel confident about my decision; I know I am making a good choice for my family. In fact, I learned an unexpected life lesson from these doctors. I have learned that doctors practicing alternative medicine want to help others and they thrive on teaching their patients to gain knowledge about their own bodies and be their own health advocate. My message to anyone who is apprehensive or anxious about trying any type of alternative medicine is to take a chance....it has changed my life forever.