Be The Change You Wish To See By Accepting Responsibility For Your Life xo

 I have had the privilege to interact with many health care professionals among many different designations and as a whole through my considerable experience as a patient I have this message:

Doctors, you have the ability to improve our health care system. Through education, communication and the desire to understand all contributing factors you can improve our lives. In fact, as a profession, through collaboration you can improve standards and through this can improve our society and diminish unnecessary suffering. Every day you have a choice, you can either be someone who gets by and earns a desirable income or you can start questioning standards and progressively making modest changes in an attempt to drive a movement of improved health care. Again through my experience, I believe the majority of you do not enter this field to achieve status quo but I suspect you feel your hands are tied by limited budgets and legislation. I understand this and appreciate change is gradual. I ask that you speak up and do what you can. Question the use of drugs over nutrition. Seek education in health not medication. I am blessed to have such a tenacious and resilient soul but I fear that if this is what I am going through how many hundreds of thousands are suffering through a life with no hope. Be their hope!

Please note I do not believe the responsibility for change is limited to our health care professionals/ our government, it is our responsibility to come prepared with all required information. We must document symptoms, look for patterns and possible triggers for our ailments. Challenge ourselves:

Are we eating the right foods?
Are we exercising?
Are we abusing our bodies in any fashion that would contribute to our illness?
What is our environment like? Is it clean? stressful?
Have you recently made any changes?

Awareness is key. Gather this information and present it to your doctor, have candid conversations, ask questions.

We must be realistic in our expectations of others, doctors do not know everything, they are human. If something they prescribed is not the answer speak up immediately, there are an infinite amount of variables and we cannot expect one person in a limited conversation to be able to heal something as complex as your body with certainty. Just as we can be a subject matter expert in our field we understand that information changes daily, that advances are always being made and although we do our best to interpret the knowledge based on education and experience we too can make mistakes.

Invest in your health, it is your responsibility to invest the time and effort it takes to heal. Research alternative treatments, ask for second opinions, do not put anything in your body before researching it. Not all drugs are bad and not all drugs are necessary. Make this decision for yourself. You have to deal with the consequences either way and the consequences can be costly so I repeat, invest in your health.

Be kind, do not take your frustrations of your illness out on anyone trying to help. You are going to suffer, embrace this, fighting it will only cause more pain. Accept help, we were not created to self sustain. Even the most successful people will agree they got to the top with a lot of hard work and a lot of support.

It shows strength to be vulnerable and in sickness vulnerability is inevitable. Accept that their are those who do not understand and their words and actions will hurt you. Forgive them, they may be battling something we cannot see and if they are not, if they are truly malicious, forgive them anyways. Holding on to anger only increases the difficulty of this journey and I can tell you from experience it's not worth it.