The New Medicine documentary
Netflix is my buddy during this time of pregnancy hibernation.
I've watched "The New Medicine" this morning, which is a documentary miniseries hosted by Dana Reeve.
If you haven't seen this, it's a terrific documentary. I am in deep reflection as I watch it.
I watched the first part, which had to do with the body-mind connection. They showed people using deep relaxation, hypnotherapy, guided imagery, meditation techniques. These were real people - a young girl with chronic pain, a teenage boy with cerebral palsy and chronic pain, a man undergoing spinal surgery, a woman whose water broke too early in pregnancy and needed to stay in the hospital while she attempted to stabilize herself and her baby so that she didn't go into labor yet, and more. Everyone profiled did extremely well using stress reduction and positive affirmation techniques. They also showed a Buddhist monk undergoing an MRI while using meditation.
The second part has to do with caring as integral to healing. I heard a great quote, which went something like this: "We need to understand not what kind of disease the patient has, but what kind of patient has the disease".
They showed 3rd year medical students who were in a training situation: they were to speak with a woman whose young son, suffering from cancer, has just learned that he is not able to recover. The woman was an actress and the situation was hypothetical. One medical student was really engaged with the woman, sympathetic, understanding, acting like someone who actually cared. His body language also portrayed this (leaning in to the woman's energy field, providing her with tissues, putting his hand on hers). Another medical student was so clinical and cold. He actually said "I'm sorry that this has come to this... and that your son is not going to recover." While looking down at the desk he was sitting at.
It reminded me of the day my mother passed away. We were in utter shock at the hospital and we were being marched to a chapel, spoken to in a clinical manner by the doctor who delivered the news and spoke as quickly as he could, then marched to the room where my mother's body was, spoken to in a very scripted and automatic fashion by two nurses or nurse aides who barely looked to be 19 or 20 years old, then marched out into the lobby, where an administrative nurse acted as if we were a hot potato that needed to be tossed out the door. When we asked "what do we do?" her response, standing about 3 feet away from us and looking vaguely over our shoulders: "You call the funeral home and they'll take care of the details. That's all for now. Sorry for your loss." and I was handed a little box of cheap, abrasive tissues and directed to the door. One day, many months later, I found the tissues, stuffed in the door of my Honda Element, and I could not throw that frigging box away fast enough. It was like a purge to toss that thing onto the floor behind me when I saw it, and I felt relief to throw the box into my outside trash can with great force upon returning home.
I am sharing this because I love the idea that medical students are being put into the situations where they have to deal with an aggrieved family member/patient/etc. I don't know the percentage of medical schools who are incorporating personal relationships into their training, or how many med schools are now teaching integrative medicine (I have a niece-in-law through my husband's stepfamily who is a 3rd year med student and she had a "unit" on alternative medicine, but no real training in any alternative medicine and she clearly did not care about the subject matter!)... but the increase in these programs being offered to the mainstream health community is promising.
On a related (pregnancy) note, we had our first official OB appointment yesterday. Actually, I saw the midwife at about 7 weeks, and had an ultrasound at 8 1/2 weeks, so this appt. was the big "welcome to the practice, fill out lots of forms, big questionnaires, etc" appointment.
Charlie and I agree that home birth is the direction we wish to pursue. Going to this OB/GYN practice is helping me to get off to a good start with regards to prenatal care, but even this all-women practice with 2 midwives is too clinical for me. I discovered it when it came to THE WHEEL. The wheel is this thing (shaped like a wheel, duh) that looks like a planisphere only with hundreds of little lines. It calculates your LMP (Last Mensrual Period) and is considered THE tool for calculating date of conception and a delivery due date. It can be helpful, if you have a 28 day menstrual cycle (mine is closer to 45-60). Or if you have sex like rabbits and you just can't remember how many times you had sex around your ovulation. With the stress of 2006 and all of its activity, having a major yeast problem, and being exhausted, sex wasn't a regular activity in our house for a few months. When we went away to Florida on vacation for a long weekend, we had no demands and we could get down ;). Therefore, we KNOW date of conception! But the intake nurse, and then the second nurse midwife we met, both argued with us about how my LMP "CLEARLY shows a due date of August 1". And when we attempted to explain that my cycles are so erratic, and not only that, but during that time, we know exactly when we had sex, we were spoken OVER and essentially shushed.
I am so not into that. I'm looking for the empowered, nurturing approach. Working with a person who is still in touch with what has made her choose the path of the healer, and not someone who has become disconnected and lost in a world of clinical protocols and talks to patients like machines.
And the ultrasound was really an awesome experience! That is something we seriously debated whether we'd want to do - after all, it is not medically necessary and is typically done for the parents' benefit (assuming the mother is healthy with no risk factors for complications), but I really am glad that we did. We saw little arms and little legs swim out at one point, and it was magical. Plus, luckily for us, an early ultrasound such as the one we had measures the fetus and can provide great accuracy of a due date calculation. So although the midwife we met yesterday absolutely refused to listen to us, she said with a strong voice "well, based on this discrepancy between your LMP and the sonogram, we WILL go with the sonogram. End of story."
End of your story, honey. I can't wait to meet the awesome midwife who knows that I am a sentient, intelligent woman who knows her body and will honor our birth plans.
;)
OK, so I'm a bit of an activist. But at the same time, I am holding positive energy for the fusion and integration of the medical profession with the holistic community and whole-person healing and growth.
I've watched "The New Medicine" this morning, which is a documentary miniseries hosted by Dana Reeve.
If you haven't seen this, it's a terrific documentary. I am in deep reflection as I watch it.
I watched the first part, which had to do with the body-mind connection. They showed people using deep relaxation, hypnotherapy, guided imagery, meditation techniques. These were real people - a young girl with chronic pain, a teenage boy with cerebral palsy and chronic pain, a man undergoing spinal surgery, a woman whose water broke too early in pregnancy and needed to stay in the hospital while she attempted to stabilize herself and her baby so that she didn't go into labor yet, and more. Everyone profiled did extremely well using stress reduction and positive affirmation techniques. They also showed a Buddhist monk undergoing an MRI while using meditation.
The second part has to do with caring as integral to healing. I heard a great quote, which went something like this: "We need to understand not what kind of disease the patient has, but what kind of patient has the disease".
They showed 3rd year medical students who were in a training situation: they were to speak with a woman whose young son, suffering from cancer, has just learned that he is not able to recover. The woman was an actress and the situation was hypothetical. One medical student was really engaged with the woman, sympathetic, understanding, acting like someone who actually cared. His body language also portrayed this (leaning in to the woman's energy field, providing her with tissues, putting his hand on hers). Another medical student was so clinical and cold. He actually said "I'm sorry that this has come to this... and that your son is not going to recover." While looking down at the desk he was sitting at.
It reminded me of the day my mother passed away. We were in utter shock at the hospital and we were being marched to a chapel, spoken to in a clinical manner by the doctor who delivered the news and spoke as quickly as he could, then marched to the room where my mother's body was, spoken to in a very scripted and automatic fashion by two nurses or nurse aides who barely looked to be 19 or 20 years old, then marched out into the lobby, where an administrative nurse acted as if we were a hot potato that needed to be tossed out the door. When we asked "what do we do?" her response, standing about 3 feet away from us and looking vaguely over our shoulders: "You call the funeral home and they'll take care of the details. That's all for now. Sorry for your loss." and I was handed a little box of cheap, abrasive tissues and directed to the door. One day, many months later, I found the tissues, stuffed in the door of my Honda Element, and I could not throw that frigging box away fast enough. It was like a purge to toss that thing onto the floor behind me when I saw it, and I felt relief to throw the box into my outside trash can with great force upon returning home.
I am sharing this because I love the idea that medical students are being put into the situations where they have to deal with an aggrieved family member/patient/etc. I don't know the percentage of medical schools who are incorporating personal relationships into their training, or how many med schools are now teaching integrative medicine (I have a niece-in-law through my husband's stepfamily who is a 3rd year med student and she had a "unit" on alternative medicine, but no real training in any alternative medicine and she clearly did not care about the subject matter!)... but the increase in these programs being offered to the mainstream health community is promising.
On a related (pregnancy) note, we had our first official OB appointment yesterday. Actually, I saw the midwife at about 7 weeks, and had an ultrasound at 8 1/2 weeks, so this appt. was the big "welcome to the practice, fill out lots of forms, big questionnaires, etc" appointment.
Charlie and I agree that home birth is the direction we wish to pursue. Going to this OB/GYN practice is helping me to get off to a good start with regards to prenatal care, but even this all-women practice with 2 midwives is too clinical for me. I discovered it when it came to THE WHEEL. The wheel is this thing (shaped like a wheel, duh) that looks like a planisphere only with hundreds of little lines. It calculates your LMP (Last Mensrual Period) and is considered THE tool for calculating date of conception and a delivery due date. It can be helpful, if you have a 28 day menstrual cycle (mine is closer to 45-60). Or if you have sex like rabbits and you just can't remember how many times you had sex around your ovulation. With the stress of 2006 and all of its activity, having a major yeast problem, and being exhausted, sex wasn't a regular activity in our house for a few months. When we went away to Florida on vacation for a long weekend, we had no demands and we could get down ;). Therefore, we KNOW date of conception! But the intake nurse, and then the second nurse midwife we met, both argued with us about how my LMP "CLEARLY shows a due date of August 1". And when we attempted to explain that my cycles are so erratic, and not only that, but during that time, we know exactly when we had sex, we were spoken OVER and essentially shushed.
I am so not into that. I'm looking for the empowered, nurturing approach. Working with a person who is still in touch with what has made her choose the path of the healer, and not someone who has become disconnected and lost in a world of clinical protocols and talks to patients like machines.
And the ultrasound was really an awesome experience! That is something we seriously debated whether we'd want to do - after all, it is not medically necessary and is typically done for the parents' benefit (assuming the mother is healthy with no risk factors for complications), but I really am glad that we did. We saw little arms and little legs swim out at one point, and it was magical. Plus, luckily for us, an early ultrasound such as the one we had measures the fetus and can provide great accuracy of a due date calculation. So although the midwife we met yesterday absolutely refused to listen to us, she said with a strong voice "well, based on this discrepancy between your LMP and the sonogram, we WILL go with the sonogram. End of story."
End of your story, honey. I can't wait to meet the awesome midwife who knows that I am a sentient, intelligent woman who knows her body and will honor our birth plans.
;)
OK, so I'm a bit of an activist. But at the same time, I am holding positive energy for the fusion and integration of the medical profession with the holistic community and whole-person healing and growth.