What does it take to regain and maintain health?
I recently had two conversations about regaining and then maintaining health into the future. The first was a person not yet a patient of ours that has been suffering needlessly over the past 10-15 years with multiple “medical conditions”. The second was a retired couple that is beginning their 3rd year of care under the Maximized Living Model. The biggest difference between the conversations was the confidence and certainty the retired couple had that they were doing the right thing and feeling better as they are getting older.
The first conversation was with a middle aged female that we will call Sue. Sue had been battling with multiple problems since she was a teenager. The number of problems and their severity have increasing over the past 15 or so years. When I asked her was she was currently doing to help herself, she told me she was seeing 5 specialists currently and taking 14 Rx medications. One specialist was for her female disorders that included endometriosis, PMS and multiple difficulties with pregnancies. This doctor had her on 3 medications to help her regulate her cycle and decrease symptoms. She was also seeing a pain specialist for what she states is an ever changing diagnosis. She was told she had fibromyalgia, then MS and now chronic fatigue complicated with fibromyalgia. She had received multiple pain injections over the past few years along with multiple daily medications to help her deal with pain and fatigue. All of these medications and specialists and still no answers. She stated a few years ago she was sent to a mental health specialist for evaluation because a few of her doctors were starting to wonder if the “pain was in her head”. She was evaluated and told she was moderately depressed and given Paxil for treatment. After about 2 months she reports having a follow-up appointment where she was told her depression was not responding to treatment so they added a second medication. About 1 month later she reports she was under a lot of stress and she had an manic episode and felt tremendous anger towards a co-worker that she remembers got her in trouble with her boss. So the next visit to her doctor included the addition of bipolar drug. She told me she felt her life was totally out of control at this point. She felt mentally unstable, had thoughts of suicide and still had the pain she was originally being treated for. Suewas feeling lost and hopeless. She has not been given any reason to feel differently. When your only option is more medication and that already hasn’t been working, where is the hope in that? I hope and pray that she will come into our office to find out what we could do to help her.
On the other hand, my retired couple met with me to discuss recommendations for continuing care in our office. First I want to say what a delight it is to have these people as part of our chiropractic family. We started our conversation with me asking them how things have been going. A question you would not typically want to ask a couple in their early 70’s, unless you had lots of time and wanted to here how terrible things are going. To my delight the conversation started with how they used to have some pains and problems that limited them in numerous way. Now these problems are a thing of the past. They are more active than they were 5 years ago, have less health issues holding them back from truly enjoying life. The have done a good job of plugging into the 5 essentials of Maximized Living we teach in our office. Admittedly they told me they can do better than they are but are already getting great results.
So which life do you want? The much younger lady has lost hope, deals with daily pain and has been told things such as “its in your your head” to “you will just have to learn to live with it.” Nobody has to learn to live with it. That would be one of the worst things someone could say. You always have a choice to do something different. You need to realize that when you empower yourself and take control of your health, things change. You are the one that is responsible, not your doctor. Doctor means teacher, to help teach people what they need to do to be healthy. I take that definition literally. I want to teach and lead each of my patients to better health through Maximized Living.
The choice is yours! We are waiting with open arms to show people a better way. The questions is, are you ready to make a commitment to your health and improve your life?
Be well,
Dr. Tim