What is Wrong With Everyone

In my experience - and I am just one little case study - American medicine has it all wrong, much like American Zen.  In both cases, they're really good at some things but miss the big picture.  In the case of Western medicine, it's been preoccupied with fixing people and only now starting to think about how to be healthy.

For big-picture medicine, turn to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) or Ayurveda or, I suspect, many other native healing systems.  It is the gift of what we call primitive people that they don't think in terms of the laboratory or the gold-standard study* as Western science does.

*The gold-standard study in medicine can be defined as a study that follows specific protocol,  indicates correlations and possibilities, and concludes by saying more study is needed.

What is that big picture? Context. We are not isolated individuals. We live in environments.

You sometimes saw contextual medicine in action in the TV series House.  Dr. House was a radical misfit who valued his intuition and often sent his team out to search someone's house for toxins and secrets.  He watched family interactions and quizzed family for information. All that stuff was more interesting to him, and the viewing audience, than lab results.

Our context right here now is Weather. It is actually everyone's context, no matter how much time you spend indoors.  Here in mid-America it is high summer - mid-August - and this brings about different problems than mid-winter, which is happening right now in Australia where my sister lives.  (In mid-winter in Australia you actually have to use your space heater!) And there sure is a lot of weather, drought here, flooding there, as if some climate change is happening.

Weather affects people differently depending on their constitutions.  Both TCM and Ayurveda see human beings as made of elements. And so the elements affect them.

In Ayurveda I clock in as a Vata-Pitta, or air-fire person.  The fire in my temperament is easily disturbed.  And oh, August, season of too much ripeness, as you know if you grow tomatoes or zucchini.  August is Too Much. It's not just the heat or humidity, it's the light.  Lately here we've been getting a little relief with small batches of autumn days down from the North Pole or Canada.

Canadian air is nice.  It is fresh and coolish and breezy. But uh-oh, wind is really not good for Vatas, who are made mostly of air. In Chinese medicine there is actually a disorder called "wind devil."  I relate to that.  To prevent it, we are advised to cover the head and neck, that is, wear what my mother called a babushka. This makes you look like an old lady even if you're only 12, not that I care, as I am 71 11/12 years old.  If I did care I could get a special hat.  They even come in Desert Sunrise. It's a thought.

I notice a lot of fire people looking haggard these days, running around in the heat and the noonday sun. So this post is a sort of public service announcement.  If you don't know whether you're air, fire, or earth, Banyan Botanicals has a little test you can take that may indicate more study is needed. They will also sell you various oils and things, which are helpful to me me (I am not paid for this).

They will also advise you on your diet, since you are composed, in part, of what you eat and drink.  Bear in mind that alcohol is sometimes called firewater.  Yes, it is a heating food.  My own diet at the moment includes nothing hot and spicy, no raw onion or garlic, more cucumber and peppermint tea. I have tested this empirically. It is interesting to me that these ancient folk traditions see mood disorders as an imbalance of fire.  Worth investigating, since Western medicine is notoriously poor at managing them.

The Only Good Doctor is a Compassionate Doctor

It seems my last post made it clear how I've been suffering with my bipolar disorder, compounded by the death of a friend and a funeral that did me - and another friend - more harm than good.  I heard from several compassionate readers.  (I want to include here a painting I did Sunday night that vividly illustrates the high and low, but technology is defeating me.  Maybe tomorrow.)

The background:  the last time I saw my trusted psychiatrist he told me he couldn't do squat for me.  (You can read the post I wrote then here.)  Nothing.  He suggested meditation, which showed me that he hasn't heard a thing I said, or if he did, didn't write it down, or if he did, didn't take time to look at my file.  I told him I've been meditating since I had cancer in 1997.  That's not the kind of thing they think matters.  I was wrong to like him as much as I did.  I'm sure you should never trust a doctor who always runs on time.  We don't need clockwork doctors.

The whole problem with a teaching/research hospital is that the doctors who survive there are the kind who want to do research and pontificate in classrooms.  These jobs use areas in the brain (and ego) that have little to do, I am sorry to say, with humanity or compassion.  OSU is infamous around here for its unfriendliness, but we experienced similar contempt when we visited the Cleveland Clinic a couple of years ago.  I suspect teaching hospitals are like this unless a considerable effort has been made to be friendly.

The whole idea of doctors doing research and teaching hospitals nests in the whole idea of Western Medicine, which I am beginning to call a Parliament of Clowns (or choose your obscenity).  Here is a neat illustration that I pulled off the internet comparing Western Mechanical-Man medicine to traditional Chinese medicine, which views the body as a garden:

(It's fun to blow this up, print it, and color it.)  It is very Western to think with the left-brain, to respect advances in technology, to believe that enough money and knowledge will cure you - and that's how all the big hospitals advertise, too.  They are cutting-edge, they save kids with weird cancers.

The brand of Western Medicine I have been unfortunate enough to live through, which misdiagnosed me for three years (I almost died of suicide), then ruined my kidneys with lithium, then charged me $200,000 for a transplant, and then didn't  give a damn what happened to me after that - is actually American medicine.  I hear things are better in European countries.  American medicine is profoundly influenced by the American Dream, the get-rich get-status gunplay frontier attitude on which this country was founded by a bunch of  fortune-hunters and misfits (and a few good men).

At present we have a medical profession run by rich old white guys and the occasional Queen Bee, too many of whom went into it for money and status.  Too few went into it out of compassion, out of a desire to relieve suffering and heal the world.  (And I do know those doctors exist.)  People who want to help others often go toward the helping professions, ministry, nursing, teaching, massage, alternative healing modes.  Who can afford med school, anyway, but the sons (and, recently, daughters of the rich?  And who can endure the brutal frat-boy hazing system of internship and residency, which is not nearly as much fun as Grey's Anatomy makes it look.

What do you do when a system is broken at its very foundation?  Anyone can tell you it's going to be a long long uphill climb of the Sisyphus kind.  Nevertheless, we should try.  Here are my suggestions:

1.  Medical schools should begin screening with psychological tests all applicants who look smart and diligent enough to be admitted.  Test for this:  compassion.  Test for what we call people skills.  That shouldn't be too hard.  Further, interview selected candidates.
2.  We patients should begin interviewing and evaluating our doctors.  What is their spiritual practice?  Why did they go into medicine, why this field?  What do they do when they don't know what to do for a patient?  (Throw her out in the snow?)
3.  We should all begin asking ourselves what each of us can do to bring attention to this awful mess, how we could suggest corrective measures.  (Don't overlook the ability now to rate doctors on internet sites.)
4.  You should print out this post and send it to your doctor.  Or former doctor.

I myself intend to write that doctor a letter, striving for compassionate communication, explaining to him how this has affected me.  Try to show him that it was appalling to dump me - a known suicide risk - out here without any help in coping with this dangerous mental illness.  I want to suggest he consider going into administration full-time.  He's already rising in that department and told me he likes it.  He likes being busy. 

I may also write to Les Wexner, a local rich man who has given OSU so much money that his name is now part of the name of the OSU Medical Center.  I don't need to mention the bad doctor's name; the point is not to punish an individual who thinks he means well.  The point is to examine the very premise of the place.  If anyone is in a position to set a few balls rolling and shake things up, it's Les.  As I think about it, such a letter sounds to me like skillful means, one of those Buddhist concepts.

I won't have time to do this today.  I highly doubt I will be able to do it tomorrow.  It's been day UP/day down since I went off Seroquel, and that would make tomorrow a down day.  Those days it's a real struggle to get dressed, to drink my water take my pills on time and eat halfway right.  To somehow distract and amuse myself during the endless blank painful hours of a day like that.  To fall asleep.  But maybe the day after that.  After all, I have taken the Bodhissatva vow, to save all beings.  You have to keep working at it from wherever you are.

Pissed-off Buddha

Well, this was weird - I don't know what key I might have hit, but it erased the paragraph I had written.  I'm not even more pissed off about it - just kind of interested how awful the hours of fire are in the month of Thunder Moon (which just passed full).

I had started to more or less apologize for the vulgarism, but explain that "pissed off" identifies exactly the mood I am in.  I am mentioning this in an educational way.  I like to alert people to how much we are affected by this weather.  I'll just bypass the unease we all have about the many weather disasters happening, the big drought in the southwest US, the fires, the heat waves. We have the feeling we don't know what's about to happen, which is exactly right.

August is a horrid month for many sensitive people, worse than February, and this year July is acting like August, except for the harvests, which are being killed off by the heat and drought.  Of course I'm talking US here, and I know some readers are not in our latitude, is it? Not in our climate. Hello Great Britain - you have your own problems now, but a marvelous scandal to take your mind off them (Goodbye, Rupert Murdoch).  August is high summer, which means the yang that brings summer in is decaying.  This is awful. Add to that the truth of the ancient medical theories that the hours of the day are ruled by different organs and elements in succession. What that means here is that roughly 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. are The Hours of Fire. (I wish I had a really wild font for that.)

Fire is an apt description for the high energy, the anger and restlessness and pain this can bring to us. Maybe not you. If you're an earth or water person, you may feel more energized, brighter, maybe you benefit from some fire.  But I am a Vata-Pitta (Ayurvedic system), air-fire.  Mostly Vata, the thin-boned artistic type, which is easily unbalanced and inflamed by getting too "hot."  Yow.

The truth of this came home to me half an hour ago as I sat in the cool dim (which I cultivate) at  my dining room table doing my weekly pills.  This is about a one-hour job demanding concentration.  It always generates tasks like seeing a doctor or getting a refill or updating the med list.  I did not have a bad attitude about it when I began.  But then I noticed I was mad at someone who was not in the room.  You know what I mean.  Then at something that might happen. What had happened to my quiet, pleasant mood?  What time is it? I asked.  Ten-thirty, Tom said.  I knew it!  Fire rising.

I just feel that part of my task in life is to elevate Westerner's awareness of the energies all around us.  We are deeply conditioned to believe we are individuals who determine our own destiny and attitude.  Well, what nonsense. We are connected profoundly to other energies of many kinds. You know this.  You've been places that felt all wrong.  If you were the scapegoat in an alcoholic family, you may have noticed that you felt depressed around the group, as if subtly you were being beaten - and you were, by their mental energies.  (Why would the electric storm of the brain stop at your skin?) If you've done spiritual practice, and maybe if you haven't, you've been around people you feel good around, people you might say have a nice presence. And then there's more interesting psychic experiences, which almost everyone has had at some time.

So, beware of high summer and especially the hours of fire.  They appear again at 10 pm to peak at midnight. Alcohol intensifies fire, no matter if it's in a frozen drink or not. Bright lights, loud music, a bunch of fired-up people - these things make it more and more.  I know some people seek that out.  Pay money to be in exciting fiery places.  I know.  I just hope they're not my grandson.

Meanwhile, if you want to stay cooler, avoid spicy foods and midday sun.  Keep your blinds drawn. Wear your blue sunglasses.  Be cool.
[The photo is me wearing mine. It was taken several years ago. I have a better haircut now.]
~~~~~
 
p.s.  Hello, Emma and Lola. Every person that joins this site encourages me to keep on being crazy honest.

How the Chinese doctor sees it

"It" being the sort of chaos I'm experiencing - especially the frustrated anger that had me wide awake at 3 a.m.

It is absolutely not hard to find things to be frustrated about in my life. Kidney function significantly worse, despite a lot of efforts and expense - and suddenly, the imminent threat of dialysis. Still limping with pain in the left foot, yet still suffering moodswings caused by the corticosteroid shots that were supposed to fix that flareup. (Still getting used to having significant arthritis.) Still anemic, and without what I need to monitor my own hemaglobin and give myself EPO shots. Can't see kidney doctor for over two more weeks. Forgot to do my PT exercises last night until I was in bed.

And all this chronic illness, and Tom's, is mostly invisible, not dramatic; when I go to church, someone usually tells me "You're looking good." I don't argue with them. So the recycle piles up in the garage while I rest the foot, and my car hasn't been cleaned in a year. I used to be able to do these trivial things myself, but with a low red blood count and a uremic burden, running the Roomba is too much effort. I know people who are dying, and courageously, so I usually try not to whine.

It was the stubborn pain in the foot, coupled with my decision to refuse more corticosteroids, that got me to make an emergency appointment with my acupuncturist yesterday. Dr. Wang fit me in at 8:30 this morning, and I had it all aced, dressed, checkbook in purse, out to car at 8:00 a.m. - and my car wouldn't even turn over. The battery is only a month old, but the lights had been left on. My little Civic chimes to remind me to turn them off but, I told myself, it isn't idiot-proof. By then, I was focused on my goal, and didn't even bother to get mad, just got in the van and backed it out, chewing up the lawn the way I do. The driveway is narrow, the van is large, I do my best.

I had started my morning writing in my journal about how I don't like to be told to look on the bright side. I can stand it if people want to falsify their own feelings, but I hate it when they try to get me to do it. So I didn't try to generate any positive thoughts about running my car battery down, just focused on the task and drove to the doctor's office, not getting in a wreck.

He listened to my recital, asked a few questions, gently palpated the foot. Then he said, "Which problem is bothering you most?"

I surprised myself by saying, "The anger." It had trumped the foot as I lay awake in the night contemplating the meanness of the dialysis nurse in charge of my care last time. I should have called her up before the licensing board, but I didn't have the energy.

He nodded. "Then we will concentrate on that."

As he applied the alcohol and then the needles, I said, "But it's all one, isn't it?" The idea of a holistic self is foundational in Chinese medicine, which makes it so different from the Western medicine with its specialists in pieces and parts and chemicals that haven't been adequately studied.

"Yes," he said, speaking clearly, because I had, of course, forgotten my hearing aids. He went on. "Spring is the time of wood, and wood opens the Liver, where anger is stored. So it is very easy to get angry right now."

This clicked in place for me as an interested student of medical systems. I knew that Wood is the creative energy. And I had already written two poems that morning, literally woke up with one going in my head.

"Too much wood," I said. "Is the antidote metal?" Yes.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is based on an elaborate theory of energies, and includes a theory of constitutions: we are made of combinations of five elements. Years ago I determined that I was a person who benefitted from the element metal when I felt scattered - which translates in daily life as structure, schedule, calm activities.

So here I am, much improved by the treatment and determined to make lists, meditate, and read unexciting things. It is working. I do not feel in nearly so much danger of sending out furious e-mails and initiating lawsuits. Though I like to think I might when I get organized.