My Journey to a Healthy Me - Part 2: Taking Responsibility for my Health
Advocating for my health is not something new to me. As someone who has struggled with my weight for most of my life, I have on numerous occasions had to deal with the ramifications of fat-shaming and biased doctors. Certain facts about my health have been ignored and others have been over-emphasized. I learned the hard way that my health, figuring out what is wrong and what needs fixing, is up to me. I want to stress that not all doctors or health-care practitioners I’ve encountered have been biased. Doctors and healthcare practitioners are hard-working intelligent people that know how to fix their piece of the puzzle, but they are human and do not know everything. This means that the whole picture, putting together all the pieces, is my responsibility.
I am very privileged to live in a place where universal health care is a guarantee, but even within this system not everything for my health is covered. It also comes with restrictive guidelines as to what is normal based on generalized health studies. Health encompasses mind, body and spirit. Mental health, physical health and emotional health are all connected and affect each other. Nutrition, stress, energetic balance, injury, disease, hormones, mindset, etc are all pieces of the puzzle. Being an advocate for your health is knowing that everything is connected and working with both the medical and alternative health systems in order to put those pieces together to help you find the healthy you. Being an advocate also means asking questions, taking responsibility, and doing the work. Below are 10 tips I have learned while advocating for myself on my health journey.
1. Prepare for your appointments
1. Prepare for appointments
Your time is precise. The second the appointment starts, the clock is ticking. You only have so much time to share your story and get all the information, resources, and possible treatment if needed. I strongly recommend taking time to prepare for your appointments. Know what you wish to achieve; are you looking for a referral, or do you need to get medication, a doctor’s note, etc. Knowing ahead of time can have you asking for the right tests, the right referrals and streamline issues to maximize your time. Prepare a possible list of questions that you know you want answered. If you are anything like me when information starts flowing, the questions you had will be forgotten. You have the right to be informed. Write down all your symptoms because you may not know what is relevant but the more information your healthcare practitioner has, the more likely they are able to help. Lastly, if you are nervous or need support, bring someone you trust with you. Even during Covid-19 pandemic restrictions you can advocate and are allowed to have someone there to support you - you may have to push for it, but medical clinics are not allowed to refuse you.
2. Ask questions
You will be amazed at what a simple question can do. Questions such as: why do you think this is the best step? What else can it be? Can you clarify what this means? In addition, you can ask for tests to be done. Some tests are not standard procedure but based on your experiences you probably know they need to be done. If they refuse to do a test you suspect you need then ask for them to make an indication in your chart for future reference that they refused. It is a good reference point for follow up appointments. There is a shortage of GP doctors, meaning many of them are rushed and limited by time constraints. Asking questions can prevent tunnel vision, doctor bias and over all makes for better treatment because you know you were heard and you know what is going on.
3. If something doesn't feel right ask for a second opinion
You can say no if you don’t feel something is right. Get another opinion. Being heavy, I have been repeatedly told that all my health concerns are due to my weight and am told I need to exercise more and eat better. Before working with nutritionists, I followed the Canadian Food Guide quite religiously and ate the “proper” recommended portions of dairy, eggs, grains and of course, meat and veggies. I also was very active, and was in dance lessons at least five days a week. I had white patches all over my skin, serious eczema and was unrealistically heavy for my eating habits and my hours of exercise. My GP was no help, so I tried a variety of different alternative methods of medicine. I eventually came to understand I had allergies!! Serious ones too - specifically to dairy and eggs. After adapting my diet to remove these allergens, I lost a significant amount of weight without changing anything else. If I had accepted the first opinion given to me, I never would have gone on to discover my harmful allergies, nor would my siblings have necessarily discovered theirs.
4. Ask and review all test results
Living in British Columbia, we are able to access all our test results through my ehealth. If you do not have this where you are from, request copies of all your tests from your doctor or health care practitioner. You can use these results, if you want to get a second opinion. BC guidelines have a wide range when it comes to “normal guidelines.” What you will discover is that every person is different and what is “normal” for one person, may not be normal for another. For example, the average healthy blood pressure for an adult is considered to be 120 systolic over 80 diastolic. For me, that would be considered high blood pressure and only gets that high when I am stressed. I typically sit at 105 systolic over 60 diastolic. I learned the hard way how important it is to get your test results. My thyroid function has been tested many times over the years, and having genetic history combined with inconsistent hormone function, as well as signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism, has had many practitioners look in that direction. I was told repeatedly that my test results came back in “the normal range” and that no further testing was needed. Yet even being told this, I felt something wasn’t right so decided to be proactive by eating thyroid positive healthy foods for someone with hypothyroidism for most of my adult life.
After getting my gut biome tested, I was happy to see that my body agreed with the particular foods I should avoid. In 2016, when pregnant with my first child, I was diagnosed with a large mass in my thyroid. While not cancerous, it has been monitored and watched and my thyroid function still comes back as testing normal. Very recently, I have been told that the mass has reached a size that I will need to have at least half of my thyroid removed in 2021 and once doing so I will be going on medication for hypothyroidism. Even with this occurring my most recent test was still deemed “ in the normal range.” After reviewing my test results this go around, I discovered that I tested barely above hypothyroid and am just within the cusp of normal. According to the specialist, this has been the case for most of my tests. Considering I check most of the boxes for someone with hypothyroidism, I greatly suspect that my normal is not the same as BC guidelines normal and my current healthcare team agrees.
5. Do some research
No two healthcare practitioners practice the same way, or have the same beliefs. It is very important to find a doctor (or a manual therapist, nutritionist, or energy medicine practitioner) who aligns with your approach to medicine. Someone who recognizes and acknowledges your personal and cultural beliefs, and ultimately you trust and are able to build a rapport with. Check reviews and ask for recommendations. Do some research on the doctor (or practitioner) after you find a potential candidate. You deserve the best care you can get.
6. Look for comprehensive care
6. Look for comprehensive care
Health does not happen in a vacuum. Issues tend to interrelate and in order to correct those issues you often need more than one form of treatment at a time. Britte, Krista and Becca are my personal dream team for alternative comprehensive care. A few years back, I had a breast reduction - one of the best decisions I have ever made - but there were some side effects. Britte, as a manual therapist, helped to realign my spine after the adjusted loss of weight. This diminished my need for pain medication. She also helped break up residual scar tissue that was blocking nerve regeneration in areas and I now have full sensation again.
Becca discovered during an energy medicine session that I had a lot of blocked energies around my bra line. Post session I remember needing to aggressively throw up after she spent a lot of time releasing this area on me. This is not a usual response to such gentle work but she believes my body could have been holding onto some of the emotional disturbances I’d been feeling from this big life changing surgery. She also felt that because of all the energetic congestion I was harbouring that it may have caused me to store some of the leftover anesthesia and medications in my tissues. It was great to purge and get rid of it and I now have no discomfort in this area anymore, less headaches and less stress from being so uncomfortably burdened. Krista also continues to show me how to keep my body nutritionally healthy, so I can physically handle the more aggressive physical and emotional changes in my life.
7. Be in charge of your follow ups
This is especially important during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many appointments have been pushed, delayed, or dismissed as things have been deemed “essential” or “non-essential.” As I mentioned before, my thyroid has been monitored regularly. I was first monitored by a specialist, who after the first year moved his practice to Ontartio. My monitoring was then referred back to my GP. For the past three years, I have been going in for annual thyroid ultrasounds to determine if the mass has grown or not and if so whether it needed further evaluation. Based on the regular timeline, I was supposed to have my follow-up in April. Being deemed “non-essential,” it was delayed. I bugged my doctor constantly about getting my yearly check up. Finally, my pestering was acknowledged and I had my followup in September. I am glad I did. This past year the growth had noticeably grown compared to the previous years. With the subsequent biopsy on the growth, results were deemed inconclusive. This got the ball rolling, and I am once again working with a specialist and am in the preparation stages for eventual surgery. My take charge action got me my needed appointments.
8. Trust yourself
If you think something doesn't feel right, then something is not right. No one knows your body better than you. It is easy to accept that things are due to age, weight, or side effects of previous diseases or injuries, but our bodies are designed to last a long time with proper care and are not meant to be in long term discomfort. Being overweight, I have battled a lot of bias towards my health with many things being dismissed due to my size and I have had to push against that. I should also note that I have also had many wonderful healthcare practitioners as well, with experience and knowledge to recognize my weight is often a symptom and not a cause. Trust your intuition, or the more common phrase of trusting your gut, you know what is right for your body.
9. Check your own bias
This may seem counterintuitive to the previous tip but bear with me. Have you been so stuck on the idea that something is wrong, that you can’t see when it is getting better, or you have been sick for so long you don’t know what getting better looks like? Alternatively, do you have any biases you have been raised to believe that prevent you from looking at alternative methods? Or, and this one is common, you refuse to believe something because you are not ready or willing to give up something else? A prime example of this last one is my spouse, who suffers from ulcerative colitis. He has been told by multiple different practitioners (both western and alternative), that coffee, milk and sugar exasperate his condition. There have been many moments of shaking my head when he has had a flare up, after noticing he has been triggered by these types of inflammatory foods. He stubbornly denied the cause, unwilling to give up something that he has relied on to get him through his day for so long. We have been together eight years and it is only in the last couple of years that he has started to believe what he was told and he has cut down significantly on his coffee and milk intake. He admitted to me today the difference it made. His doctors had originally diagnosed him with an extreme case and had recommended a partial bowel resection. Now it is a moderate case that can be managed by diet and medication.
10. Most importantly - Know your health goals
What does being healthy mean to you? Going through a health journey is a futile effort if you don't know what being healthy means to you. Are your goals related to your mental health? Are you trying to escape from pain? Do you want to be able to sleep better? Is feeling good important to you? Answering these questions help support you in finding the right mode of treatment for your body. My goals are simple: feel good in my body, mind and soul. What that means varies a bit depending on what is going on in my life.
Right now that looks like: finding time for me to keep my mental health strong, maintaining my daily fitness routine, nourishing my body with food that makes me feel good and healthy, supporting my immune system, preparing for surgery, and bringing my body to a healthier weight. I know for me I am still on my journey because I have not reached my end goal, but I have reached a few milestones that I shared in my previous blog. It is not an unattainable goal. Every step I take in this journey is a step in the right direction. I will continue to share my journey with you. I would love to hear about your healing journeys and experiences advocating and taking responsibility for your health! Please share in the comments.