Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The other side of the fence.

I work as a "fill in doctor" with Alexian Brothers to supplement paying the bills but more importantly to still stay connected to the mood of a traditional medicine practice. I dont want it to sound like I am out of touch from my "perch" of healing with integrative medicine but sometimes I find myself surroundied by healers with positive energy, ideas, and a common intent to serve others. I learned from The Chopra Center that service to others is everyones true dharma or purpose in life. It is a difficult concept to swallow at first but when you step away from childhood mentality of; everything that you do in life is for your benefit, you work hard to buy yourself things, you pay people to service your needs, you get the picture at some point that it is more rewarding to see someone else benefit. You work hard to shelter your kids, you produce a product for the benefit of others, you spend the extra time to educate to empower others, you visit grandma so she smiles. So it is hard to break away from the "me attitude" but when in the company of the like minded, it is easy to continue on and blossom new and better ideas to serve for the benefit of the whole group. Having a constant bombardment of random acts of kindness, I will sometimes forget how the dynamic of suffering feels. I dont mean how people suffer with disease; I am seeing more cancer, chronic pain, obesity, and autoimmune disease than ever before in my office. I mean I sometimes will forget how people are so frustrated with not being able to get a response from their doctor, not being able to ask questions about how they are supposed to heal, not being able to spend time with patients, not being able to get tests scheduled for weeks, not being able to get therapy because it was denied.....

I worked a 13 hour shift yesterday at a busy immediate care center, the first thing I heard when I got in was "yesterday was terrible, we worked 15 hours!!!" It's ok to vent but as my friend John says "I dont like to lament on things that have past" -I didnt let yesterdays news effect my attitude today. Obviously people suffered with a long shift but cant let that change my excitement to change some lives for the better. So I felt it was my duty to help the staff get through the day effortlessly, I used aromatherapy (frankinsense) in all the rooms, I helped call back patients, I opened the blinds and let the sun in to flood the Immediate Care with natural light, at lunchtime, I reminded them that 4 hours just went by and now we are working a regular 9-5 shift "piece of cake!". Then the first challenging patient came in, a dad who was waiting in the room for 30 minutes and counting the minutes. He burst out of the room and said "we have been waiting for 45 minutes and those other patients (whom I was caring for before he even registered) werent here when I came in, how come you are seeing them first?!". Of course I didnt accept his gift of anger and told him I am almost finished with the chart I was writing on and will be there asap. As he reentered his room where his daughter was waiting, he said outloud to her, "if we have to wait anylonger, we'll just leave!" Addressing the staff I immediately said "take a deeep breath" and gave a smile and walked into the next room in line. What kind of leader would I be if I let "a few fight or flight words" control my destiny to heal others. By the time I got into his room, I politely revealed to him the time stamps of arrival for all patients and reassured him I care and want to make his daughter healthy. He actually left happy and appologized to me several times. It seems has has had bad experiences with "the system" in the past and is very frustrated. I gave him some "Dr Saguil Approaches" of how a well informed dad can manuver within the health insurance industry and comeout healthy with little effort and frustratio. I forgot how complicated it is for a dad/parent/patient to get someone to be an advocate for their health and wellness. I forgot how unpleasant a feeling it is to get little time with a doctor, little help from the medical community, and little information to empower oneself to make an informed decision on the wellbeing of themselves or loved ones. I remember escorting a patient to a well known cancer doctor and waiting about 2-3 hours and we didnt even get to see him....saw all his support staff and got good knowledge but didnt get to meet the star doc. Little frustrating "and they know I was the refering doctor!" but in the end, my patient received great hope on her disease. I cant imagine how she would have done if by herself and without hope of life just because she didnt know where to go or what information to trust. Then I receive a text from my beloved sister that a doctor said Ryan (my nephew) has a short achilles tendon and needs some stretching exercises. I am thinking, who in the world would tell my sister/a mom of 2 that her son has a physical abnormality and just end it with "have him do some stretching exercises" as if the average mom knows the ins and outs of pediatric physical therapy. (Even regular physical therapist don't know the dynamics of therapy applied to a pediatric athlete) I gave her some good inforamtion and guidance on how to look for the right avenues of rehab.

The whole day at the Immediate Care was filled with challenging attitudes the "poorly informed mom" or like the "angry dad" but I didn't let the pervasive attitudes of helplessness with our "disease-care system" effect the way I provided healing. People are hurting with their labels of disease and the difficulty with caring for the disease alone, I don't take this personally. I am thankful for the experience since it allows me to know first hand, how people are not only suffering with symptoms of illness but stress from utilizing the system that is supposed to make them healthy but in the end is making people more diseased! I still rather live on my side of the fence but cant stop caring for my neighbors.

Help a neighbor today!!!!