Doctors of Osteopathy are the Shiznit!

So today was the day I went to see a nearby Doctor of Osteopathy (not an M.D., a D.O. is a Doctor who tries to look at your body as a whole instead of parts and symptoms). The Physician's Assistant I had been seeing can't practice anymore, so I needed someone else in addition to the Cool Acupuncture Guy to help me piece things together.

In any case, I hadn't meant to bawl in front of her, but I totally did. The Medical Assistant had just weighed me (at my lowest weight since middle school) and I am generally emotionally fragile. When the real doc came in, she just looked at me, gestured to my ream of medical records, and said, "I've glanced at your records, but why don't you tell me what's been going on?" So instead of answering her, I just burst into tears.

Worse than Dawson. :)


I call this sydrome "So-Damn-Thankful-For-Help" Syndrome. In high school when a deer ran into my car, I didn't cry until an old man offered to remove the partial carcass from my bumper.

I actually enjoyed my appointment with her because her philosophy matches up with ours quite a bit. She understands why I don't want to be on drugs for the rest of my life and she is willing to help me figure out what's wrong. I let her know that I'm seeing a Cool Acupuncture Guy, taking a not-presciption med for my thryoid, and that I'm not convinced any of the doctors I've seen so far have had any clue what's wrong.

The high points:

*She is checking my thryoid, liver, and for my old friends the parasites. :)

*She understands that taking a med for my thyroid doesn't really explain the chronic inflammation I have EVERYWHERE: joints, gut, thryoid, antibodies....

*She called attention to the fact that normally people with 'true' autoimmune disorders don't have 'flare-ups' during pregnancy. Usually people with autoimmune problems have little to no symptoms during pregnancy because the body knows to calm things down so as not to hurt the body. In my last pregnancy, however, that didn't happen. Infections, hemorrhages, blah-de-blah.

*She asked why I never got re-rested for the parasite and noted that it would have been a good idea to re-test, even though she understood the other doc's reasoning for not ordering a repeat test.

*She is on board with either treating or ruling out parasites and then moving on from there. If there are bugsies, then we can deal with that and if there aren't...then I fear there are yet more specialists in my future. 

*She got me my own box of Kleenex so that I could cry at length. :)

Hopefully in three-ish days I will know what THESE tests say. I'm also interested to hear what CAG says about how Chinese medicine can treat parasites. Ish.

I feel like God answered a prayer for me in that he blessed me with a doctor who is 'on the same page' as I am and who comes to similar conclusions without any arguing. She inspires trust and peace in me and she has more knowledge than I do to add to the whole picture. CAG once said that a good primary care physician is someone who could take all the information from all the specialists I've seen and look at the whole picture. This woman is more than capable of that! Praise God for guiding me to her.