that doesn’t mean you should believe everything she says or do everything she recommends.
Doctors are not infallible. Doctors make mistakes. That’s why it’s crucial to become a savvy patient and take ownership of your health.
This means trusting your instincts, questioning authority, and also building a Whole Health Team that includes numerous people, not just one. You want a variety of perspectives and healing modalities, not just one person’s opinion.
The Power of a Whole Health Team
Why put together a Whole Health Team? Why have multiple healers working together, instead of just your regular doc? Here’s a story from my own life that illustrates the power of collaboration.
When my daughter was nine years old, she was goofing around with some friends, doing upside-down yoga poses in an aerial yoga swing.
She climbed up about eight feet, but then she lost her balance,
flipped over, and smacked her head on the ground. Fortunately, she didn’t have any broken bones, but she did end up with a severe concussion.
If any of you have experienced a bad concussion, you know how debilitating it can be. My daughter’s head was throbbing. The pain was so intense. She couldn’t play. She couldn’t go to school. Her vision was impaired. She couldn’t sleep properly. Her mood was completely different. She wasn’t herself. It was really scary.
This went on for thirty days. She wasn’t improving. The pain
remained very intense. I took her back to the doctor several times, and eventually the doctor told me there was nothing more they could do. He also told me it could take a year or longer for my daughter to heal.
He told me she’d probably need to be out of school for…a year.
A year?! Can you believe that? As a mom, I thought to myself, “OK, that’s ridiculous. That can’t be the final answer. There’s got to be
something we could do to help her.”
I felt really discouraged by this doctor’s pessimistic attitude. I
decided, “I can’t accept this. I am going to take matters into my own hands.”
What happened next? I assembled the best team I could put
together. I found a physiotherapist, an acupuncture practitioner, an optometrist, a magnesium float-tank business, intense neuro-
nutrition, compression therapy, and a chiropractor. I decided we were going to try every possible solution to help my daughter feel better. I put together a powerhouse healing team and plan, and I executed that plan in one day.
The optometrist suggested putting tape over the sides of my daughter’s glasses to block her peripheral vision. If she’s getting fewer visual stimuli, it might reduce the pain. We tried that, and it worked! Her pain levels decreased. Incredible. Such a simple thing, and it made such a difference. The physio appointment followed immediately by acupuncture also brought her pain levels down.
I knew through my research about stress and injury that magnesium is a potent and necessary mineral for repair and regeneration, so I brought my daughter to a local business that offers magnesium therapy float tanks. My daughter soaked and rested in the
magnesium bath for ninety minutes. Again, her pain decreased.
After a concussion, the body typically suffers some magnesium loss, so doing magnesium baths can help to replenish the levels.
After that busy morning, I fed my daughter a nutrient-dense brain- health meal (and a veggie juice of course), and then I applied
compression therapy to her entire body. She fell into a deep and restful sleep for over two hours. This was the first nap she’d taken since she was three years old and the first deep sleep she had
experienced since she received the concussion. When she woke up, her pain levels were down to a one out of ten. It was obvious that she felt so much better. I could see the sparkle coming back into her eyes.
After more nutrient-rich brain food full of omega-3s, I took her to our
local and trusted chiropractor who did several adjustments and brought her skeletal system back into full alignment. After that, her pain was gone. Entirely. In just one day. And she returned to school the very next day and didn’t miss a day of school afterward as a result of that concussion.
Again, that first doctor told me that my daughter would be out of school for an entire year. But once we got a multi-faceted healing team together, it only took one day to bring her pain levels from a ten out of ten down to a zero and bring her completely back to normal. The next day, she was back at school with no pain, totally back to her usual routine and her joyful quirky self. What a relief.
This experience reminded me that getting one physician’s opinion is not enough. In fact, in some instances, trusting one physician’s
recommendation can be disastrous.
Can you imagine if I’d believed that first doctor? Can you imagine if I’d pulled my daughter out of school for one year, as he
recommended? That’s something that would have negatively impacted her entire childhood, and possibly her entire life.
I’m so grateful that I listened to my instincts and acted like a savvy patient, rather than a passive patient. By putting together a Whole Health Team, we eradicated my daughter’s pain and got her life back on track.
In our current system, you go see a doctor, you spend seven and a half minutes together (if you’re fortunate enough to get that much time), they make a diagnosis, and they usually prescribe some medication, because that’s what they’re trained to do. Or, if there’s no medication that can be prescribed, then you’re often told, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do. Just rest and let’s see what happens.”
I’m sorry, but that’s just not good enough. We deserve much better care than that. We need teams of healers working together,
communicating together, and using every possible healing modality to help people get better. Building this team starts with you. You have to seek it out, demand it, and build it yourself.
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