We answer a viewer’s question about how her doctor should treat her anxiety and hormonal imbalance
This week we are continuing to present questions and comments submitted by our listeners. If you have comments to make or questions to ask you can also participate in our conversations.
It is our intention and goal to make these podcasts informative and helpful. In order to do that, we feel that sometimes it is best to take the actual questions or concerns of our listeners and reflect on their stories because these stories are representative of the concerns of thousands of women.
This week our focus in on the level of anxiety and discontent women experience when they are not fully informed when medical decisions need to be made. It is so important that we all become activists and deliberately involved in obtaining information and data that will help us to become active partners in making our health care decisions. It is a challenge for many of us because we are not medically trained, we don’t know where to go to get information or to challenge the messages we are receiving from our doctors, our insurance companies and our government agencies.
There are strategies and practices that are out there for the finding which will offer many of us opportunities to take control of our own health care decision making. We can obtain information and provide it to our physicians or insurance companies to help focus our treatment on efforts to produce positive outcomes, even if those are not traditional responses of the medical establishment.
It is important to recognize that so much of medical decision making is individualized. We do not all fit neatly into data categories and we should not be “treated” by the law of averages. That is why doctors are professionals who are extensively trained and who need to have individual relationships with their patients so that they know them as people and not as case numbers on an insurance form. We want to encourage you to fight for just such a relationship with your provider. Do not let the system categorize you and respond to you as a unit of consumption. Become a real person to your doctor and demand that they “see” you and attend to you. Ask questions that you have, come to the meeting with your doctor prepared. Think about what you want to know and what you are concerned about. Pay attention to your symptoms and the response you have to their treatments. Be compliant to the treatment you are offered, so that you can help them eliminate alternative considerations and variables.
Be informed consumers, be activists, be responsible for your own lifestyle choices and know how those choices will impact your health. Watch your diet, exercise, and lead a healthy lifestyle. You too are responsible for the state of your health.
