Posted on 04/28/2005 8:05:00 AM PDT by NeedAdvice
I'll be the desenting voice in this discussion.
Doctors have almost killed me twice. Once through misdiagnosis and again in a relatively uneventful childbirth (after 24 years, I still have not completely recovered)
My father was diagnosed with prostate cancer and lived for 7 years, through the efforts of his doctors (so they say). But those 7 years were quite torturous, expensive and difficult to observe. He told us he did it for us, but I wish I would have let him die sooner...
I had my last two children at home with a mid-wife. Everything went wonderfully - it was really beautiful. Doctors advised me that I was being stupid and foolish, but they are trained that way. When was the last time a doctor has seen a natural birth? Just because the majority puts their faith in medical doctors, it does not REQUIRE that your wife do so.
Pray and let God work his will...and have faith. You do not have control in this situation. You can give her advice, but if I were you, I would honor her decision.
All that said, please tell your wife that even natural health gurus say PAP smears and follow-ups are important.
Your wife may be familiar with the name Maureen Kennedy Salaman, author of several books. I happen to have one called, "All Your Health Questions Answered". In it, she recommends nutrients and supplements for preventing disease. But, here's what else Maureen says:
"The pap smear is used to detect abnormal cells on the cervix.... Just because they find dysplasia doesn't mean you have cancer, or will get cancer. All it means is that for some reason or another your cells have mutated, so to speak. What they think is dysplasia leads to cancer. This is because when they find cervical cancer cells, the outlying cells are in this dysplasia stage. That's why your doctor will recommend you have the abnormal cells removed. It's a precautionary measure, and shouldn't be thought of as cancer surgery. Preventing and treating dysplasia is believed to be key to preventing cervical cancer....
"....The average time for progression from cervical dysplasia to cancer cells in untreated women ranges from 86 months for patients with very mild dysplasia, to 12 months for patients with severe dysplasia. This makes that annual pap smear important."
I'm just reading the above myself for the first time and realizing how important it is. I commend you for being concerned about your wife. Now you need to be insistent with her. She's probably scared. It could be that nothing is wrong, but she has to go there and find out.
How do you know she would have lived if she HAD gone to a doctor. Doctor's patients still die.
Then she's scared about something. MAKE HER GO. BE A MAN. So what if she's mad at you? Yikes.
While nutritional supplements can be very efficacious in terms of maintaining good health, if your wife's cervical epithelium is becoming metaplastic, no nutritional supplement will reverse that. And since those irregular Pap test results were from some time ago, she very much needs to get an exam, for herself and for her children.
That being said, I can tell you that your wife will not see a physician unless she realizes that medicine is in conformity with God's desiring for our bodies to be healed. One thing I've learned in medical school is that one has to be respectful of her patient's customs and beliefs regarding health and disease. Violating those traditions gets you nothing except a difficult patient who does not follow through with medical advice.
Since your wife is so faithful, I would suggest encouraging her to see taking care of her own body through medicine as a way of fulfilling God's will. Try to find a Christian physician. Not all doctors are complete secularists. Having a physician that she knows respects her beliefs will make her feel more comfortable, because she knows that she is being respected.
While prayer is very powerful, I've always seen medicine as God's gift to us so that we can fulfill our prayer to Him for good health.
As far as your wife's naturalistic practices, those will be a bit harder to deal with. The makers of such supplements have just as much of an agenda as the makers of drugs used by practitioners of "western" medicine, and their literature is often filled with misleading statements and claims that have never been evaluated. However, simply making a doctor's appointment for her will not help her, because it does not work within her frame of mind. She needs to know that the physician she sees will respect her naturalistic practices. While the vast majority of doctors are highly skeptical of such supplements, they are mostly aware that many patients use them and are used to dealing with that situation with finesse.
Many folks use prayer or natural supplements as a way of treating illness because those methods are presented as fail-proof. There is an inherent element of uncertainty in any medical treatment, because every patient is different. Some patients have bad reactions to treatments that are generally well-tolerated. Some procedures cure some patients and leave others as ill as they were before. The makers of herbalistic remedies or the proponents of faith healing do not admit that their ways do not always work. They present the methods as working 100% of the time, and the lack of uncertainty makes a patient who is worried about uncertainty feel more at ease.
I would suggest talking to your minister. Perhaps he knows a physician who shares your beliefs and would be respectful of your wife. That's the first step. Make sure that physician is aware of your wife's use of natural remedies, and is able to accept that they are a fact of your wife's life. And help your wife become aware that medicine is a gift from God, and that her accepting that gift is a way of allowing her to keep doing God's work for her family.
Sorry for this post being so rambling. It's hard for me to describe these sorts of things. Good luck.
You have freepmail.
For the past two years he had been experiencing chest pains. Horrible chest pains. He didn't want to go to the Dr. because he didn't trust them. He thought he would die on the table. He did go the Dr. once, the Dr. said they had to schedule an immediate angioplasty, but he said he didn't trust them, and he walked out.
His wife found him dead in their bed four months ago.
I was over their house last weekend. She was still crying saying, "I begged him to go the the Dr. But he wouldn't. She looked at me through her tears and said, "WHY DIDN'T I MAKE HIM GO? WHY?
I would never say this to her face, but the truth is it was easier not to. If she had given him an ultimatum like, have respect for ME and go to the Dr. or done whatever necessary, he would still be alive.
Think about that.
btw, those 2 cases are in my circle of friends.
I have to wonder what's your point. Of course we can't know but, there's no denying that these days, most forms of breast cancer can be detected early enough to be extremely survivable (e.g. Laura Ingraham). Such was not the case 40 years ago.
On the other hand, God is sovereign. When your time is up, nothing's going to keep you here. However, I have to think we have some responsibilities.
Its a damn test... not a treatment. Treatment is for her to decide but western diagnostic testing for this type of thing is cutting edge.... If she love you and her kids she will get checked out. If she doesn't she is being selfish and uncaring of your feelings and the future of her children... it is better to know than to live in doubt. If the testing indicates the worst then you can decide on how to handle it. Eastern medicines and alternative medicine are MOST EFFECTIVE WHEN A MALADY IS DIAGNOSED EARLY!!!!!!
I guess I should have eloaborated. He could try to have her delcared incompetent and be appointed her legal guardian or otherwise try to get her committed. Then he could force the medical exam.
There is no way to "force" someone to seek medical treatment otherwise. Maybe he could try guilt, but that doesn't always work.
Of course you're right...home birth or any self medication CAN have disastrous results...but, as I said in previous posts, so can going to the doctor.
That's what I was really going for sweetie. :-)
There are ways.
I want to thank everybody for their advice and opinions on this. I will email the link to this thread to my wife, and hopefully she will read it. Please keep us in your prayers!
My point was that if he took the legal route, he would destroy the relationship; that's all I meant.
My point was that if he took the legal route, he would destroy the relationship; that's all I meant.
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