The One’s that got away.

I would like to tell you that all of my Patients get better… 100% of them! But that would definitely not be true… I would say that about 85-90% do though, It may take some time or it may happen really quickly … Ultimately though there are still that small proportion who I just cannot help. So what do I do?

 For the last 30 or so years I have worked as a health care professional, firstly as a nurse in many different fields from ITU to Nurse Practitioner in the community to a Nurse consultant…. and lots of other posts in between, and indeed in between I took many different courses in many different fields of western medicine. Medicine in all its forms facinates me… or should I say the ability that our body’s have to heal still amazes me to this day. I studied acupuncture from 1990 -1994 and later on trained in massage and counseling.

 I am very lucky to have had wide and varied experience in healthcare and i greatly value everything i have learned.

 One of the problems I encounter as a practitioner of alternative medicine is the fact that i work alone… there is no team of competent people around that i can easily refer to. Sometimes Acupuncture just does not work for everyone. This doesn’t mean that there is no help out there… it just means that i maybe need to combine my treatment with another form of therapy or i need to let go and refer them on to another practitioner, be that western or alternative medicine. (So if there are any practitioners out there reading this please, please get in touch… working together we can help so many more people on so many different levels)

 As an example, this actually happened to me in my clinic this week…

 Case number one is an 89 year old lady… lets call her Margie

 Margie came to me as a referral from another lovely older patient of mine who was suffering with back pain (whom I had helped) So Margie was expecting amazing things.

Margie suffers with extensive Osteo Arthritis, and is in a great deal of pain. Margie is a wonderfully intelligent and articulate woman whose musculoskeletal system just refuses to work.. she has constant pain in her hips, shoulders, neck, knees and lower back, she feels constantly dizzy (symptom of the OA in her neck), she is frustrated, depressed, sad and lonely (she lost her beloved husband a few short years ago) I really, really wanted to help Make Margie’s quality of life better, I wanted to see her smile. I tried everything and i mean everything even down to using another practitioner i know of’s patches that you are supposed to use on acupuncture points… but every week i went to see Margie nothing was working after 7 sessions I was feeling disheartened and suggested that maybe this isn’t the best form of treatment for her. We sat down and talked about what other options may be available… Even to the point of looking at the drug regime her doctor had prescribed…. She had stopped taking all of her prescribed painkillers as she was afraid they would harm her…. So she was living with an incredible amount of pain. I suggested she rethink her prescription, I explained how chronic pain works and how she can use a combination of anti inflammatories, combined with a slightly different acting pain killer combined with some other natural herbal painkillers to try and get her pain level under control. She had also been prescribed some antidepressants that she was also not keen on trying for fear of the side effects, so we spent some time chatting about this and offering her at least enough information to make a more informed descion. I suggested that she may try St.Johns wort(Hypericum) if she is still not happy with prescription drugs. We spend some time talking about visulisation and how she could learn some techniques to help lessen her pain. We talked about how to help her enjoy her life as it had become (she used to love to read for example, and now cannot because of her poor eyesight) solution – Talking books.. she had no idea they exsisted. We have arranged for her daughter to take her to an easily accesible beach twice a week so she can float in the sea wondeful for easing the joints.
Finally I said goodbye to Margie…. but in the knowledge that I had left her with a few solutions.

Case number two: A younger person suffering with very severe depression, Acupuncture works wonderfully for depression I use it often and very successfully.  This case was different, after I had taken my history I knew that he needed far more than i could offer.. I suggested to him that maybe a psychiatrist and psychologist was more appropriate… as there were some serious suicidal thoughts. I did treat him a couple of times as i thought some professional support was better than nothing .. In the meantime i made a referral to a psychologist and encouraged them to enquire about psychiatric services. The outcome… The patient now has a new psychiatrist and an appointment set up with a psychologist… I have stopped acupuncture for the time being.

This has been an interesting post for me to write, It can be uncomfortable to talk about the “one’s that got away” But they exist and as a caring professional I like to think that before I say goodbye I ensure that i have left a grounding for positive help behind me.