Advocate For You.

I have had A LOT going on. Some of you know, that I am waist deep in cranking out a book on Eating Disorders, that I am hoping to finish and get out into this world.

I am a working Mom, so I have all of the things that accompany being all things to all people, I am also married and do my best to show up in that relationship and keep that connection what it needs to be to make everything else in my life work. So that is busy.

But I have another curveball that I am finally reckoning with that I have relief, hope and excitement about. And also fear.

About 7 years ago I had a snowboarding accident. I fell and broke my wrist. I believe at the time it was pretty straightforward, and I went to an orthopedist who was not really a “wrist specialist” but I was just wanting it dealt with.

I had a splint, and I was religious about going to PT, because I am a rule follower about some things and I was aware that taking PT seriously was important. But in all honesty, it just never really felt right.

I remember as the orthopedist was discharging me, I said to him, it still doesn’t really feel quite right? And he looked at me (after telling me that he was going to yoga that night) and said, “Well you broke it- it’s never going to feel the same again”. He did not re-X-ray it to see if something had potentially gone wrong in the healing- he just gave me an unempathic look, and a vague dismissal.

I remember feeling like I wanted to ask the question- “are you sure it’s normal?” And I bit my tongue. I remember feeling an acceptance of his words, a sad recognition that there was something in my body that was not going to repair itself. 

I have lived with those words, and the reality of maneuvering around a wrist that just hurts all the time. I still do the things I love, but it is accompanied by pain that I have just learned to tolerate and work around.

I tape it, I “modify” in the words of yoga, and some activities I have just let go of completely.

Until now.

This past year, injury wise, has been rough on my little family. Both of my sons have had sports-related injuries, that off and on spanned about 8 months. But I found a doctor for them, who was so methodical and attentive in every single appointment, that I felt myself watching and learning.

I realized that this was a kind of doctor who cared about a return to health. Not a flippant response that does not address what it means to have a part of your body not work the way it was intended, or the way you were used to. 

After months of watching my children get this attentive, incredible care I had this true lightbulb moment that made me think- wait I matter too!

Would I ever let my children walk around with unaddressed pain and have them just “manage”? No way. I would meet with every doctor in the Northeast until I was sure that possibilities were exhausted to remedy their pain.

So during an appointment with my older son, I looked at this doctor and asked him if he would look at my wrist. So this doctor looked at me and just said- “of course”. The next week, I was in the x-ray machine, and he showed me on the x-ray all the ways in which my wrist looked abnormal. He sent me to a wrist surgeon that he trusts, and he thought I would like.

This surgeon imaged my wrist, and then imaged it some more- and then looked at me and said plainly- “I bet this hurts. Your wrist is very twisted- it is 40 degrees off of where it is supposed to be. This is not an acceptable angle”.

He said surgery would be a hard few weeks, but he had 85% confidence that it would make it better. Obviously he could not guarantee this, my body has now spent 7 years accommodating and working around an injury, and exactly how it heals is not straightforward; but to continue to live with this injury was not advised, and even more so I was guaranteed to develop arthritis if I didn’t fix it.

Tears came to my eyes. I felt and feel this intense experience of anger, relief, excitement and fear. This sense that, wait a minute, I had been prepared to live this way because of a doctors words, and go against my instincts of what was happening inside my own body.

I reflected on all the stories we hear about patient advocacy. I think about the patients who are afraid to push, and take their doctors' words as law. They are afraid to ask questions or get a second opinion, or override their instincts because of being intimidated by authority, or accepting the status quo.

I thought of all of the patients who have come to me over the years, having had inadequate care. Clinicians who were not pushing for them to succeed and heal completely, but who fostered an element of dependence, a push for more and more treatment when perhaps what they needed was some freedom. I have an expression for some people who are referred to me “ this person just needs some nourishing, sunlight and water and off they will go”.

The goal for doctors should be a return to health. That is the gift of healing. 

The moral of this story is to advocate. You are the expert on yourself.

You know when something feels wrong, even if the world is telling you that it is normal. You know more about your body than anyone else on earth because it is the spaceship you have been inhabiting for your entire life.

The keys are yours- don’t ever give them away.