Try not to go “Doctor shopping” when you feel great, but just want to feel better.
MY PRACTICE is centered around making people healthier, not curing disease like other doctors, however I live up to my resident nickname, “Radar”, which I earned by always running out from the call suite to the L&D right before someone had fetal distress. Now I specialize in radar that detects disease in my patients before it happens, and when both the patient and I have time to avert the future disease.
When we are successful our patients feel unbelievably good, and healthy. This is a common occurrence and is exactly what I am aiming for. The future aversion of disease is a secondary success. We revise diet, exercise programs, employ hormone replacement and medications and supplements when necessary, but eventually our patients are happily well! Sounds like an amazing outcome right?
Well often when 60 year olds feel 40 after years of feeling bad they go a step further and can’t seem to turn down all kinds of fads to feel even better! The reality is that feeling NORMAL and HEALTHY is as good as it gets!
“Don’t make this mistake….if it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it!”
What is behind this urge to improve? I think there are a few personality types that fall into this rut. Those over-achievers (and my practice is full of them) who are perfectionists commonly fall into trying fad diets, weird supplements that make no sense, over exercising and other effort to feel “perfect”. In the end they feel worse, and they may or may not tell us…so we order tests and look for viruses, autoimmune diseases and then find out that they have been fasting for days on end or only eating cookies! It always seems to us that we are being pointed in the wrong direction by the absence of information, until this patient finally decides to confess that they have tried to feel perfect, but we’ve been on a wild goose chase to see why they don’t feel well any more…..
Another type of person who falls into this circumstance are the “control-maniacs” or more nicely said, those people who feel out of control in their life but who try to control everything in their environment to feel better. The symptoms of this type of “fixer” are obvious to us….they call all the time wanting to change dosage or treatment plan because they read something in a magazine or a non-medical friend told them of a new treatment, OR even worse, they just change their dose and treatment plan without telling us until later, but would call and complain over symptoms that could not occur secondary to our therapy, but COULD happen when a patient stopped or changed our treatment plan.
Eg. Changing dosage for reasons that are wrong—they think a med does something it doesn’t.
Doctor shoppers are my least favorite of the “I feel great, but I want to feel better than that!” people. These patients go to other doctors and give them half the information and the doctor gives them an opinion, contradicting what we have done, and the patient changes one piece of our treatment plan…say stops one of the hormones she takes, then another doctor and takes something they prescribe that interacts with our medications or diet, and finally after she has pitted doctors against each other, she loses because now she has screwed up her perfect therapy, and no longer feels well, but in return feels powerful! These are the patients who are a lose-lose, because a doctor cannot afford to care for them. They are too costly in energy, and damage doctor doctor relationships in addition to exhausting my staff. These patients will just have to find someone else to manipulate.
The last kind of patient is one who is introspective and over-concerned about her body….even after we have successfully treated her we continue getting phone calls about symptoms that are not from hormones, but she is sure they are…For example I have had a patient who was sure her rash 2 months after pellets were placed, was really from roseola a virus. One patient had pain on a hip that occurred a month after her pellets were placed and she was sure it was the pellets….but it was on the wrong hip! She had bumped it on a table edge. We have heard it all in 16 years, mostly because patients are anxious about having a treatment that is placed under the skin and not removable.
The most important thing is to know what kind of problem is real and what is part of a bigger picture. If you see yourself in these stories then be happy when your treatment goes well and remind yourself that if your treatment is going well and you feel good…don’t try to fix it!
This Health cast was written and presented by Dr. Kathy Maupin, M.D., Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Expert and Author, with Brett Newcomb, MA., LPC., Family Counselor, Presenter and Author. www.BioBalanceHealth.com.
