God vs. Doctors

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/18/god.vs.doctors.ap/index.html

"When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans."

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"Sensitivity to this belief will promote development of a trusting relationship" with patients and their families, according to researchers.

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"Claudia McCormick, a nurse and trauma program director at Duke University Hospital, said she also has never seen that kind of miracle. But her niece's recovery after being hit by a boat while inner_tubing earlier this year came close. Doctors at the hospital where she was airlifted said "it really doesn't look good." And while it never reached the point where withdrawing lifesaving equipment was discussed, McCormick recalled one of her doctors saying later: 'God has plans for this child. I never thought she'd be here.’"

 

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Many CFS patients consider themselves to be alive despite their doctors. I’m one of them: looking at a prescription I’d received from another medical group, a doctor I trust asked "are they trying to kill you?" and ordered me not to take those pills. His assessment of the situation was that they knew I had a good malpractice case against them, and because I’m single with no dependents, if they killed me the lawsuit would die with me.

On the other hand, I had prayer groups all over the world asking God to do what the doctors weren’t. Denomination wasn’t an issue – I had Catholic nuns in a midwest convent chapel, the priest at a local Buddhist temple, and when I found myself boxed into a corner at a craft fair by a gathering of clergy of the various Eastern Rite churches participating, I spoke up and got myself blessed by the Greek Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox, the Coptics... half a dozen priests at once.

Things turned around for me when my best friend in the universe passed away suddenly. I sincerely believe that when Kat got to heaven, she screwed up her courage, tugged on the Lord’s sleeve and said "my best friend needs a miracle, please." One week later, I found an open-minded doctor who acknowledged that CFS is a physical ailment, and reassured me that he wasn’t going to try to sell me any snake oil. A couple weeks after that, I found a clinical trial that would get me the sleeping pills I’d been begging for for years. As opposed to the ones my new doctor had prescribed, which worked only 1 night in 3, the experimental ones put me to sleep all but one night. In the year of the clinical trial, my immune system regenerated, it launched a full-scale assault on the virus (6 months of 101 fever), and when the clinical trial ended, I felt better than I had in years. And not only were these miracle pills given to me at no charge, I was actually paid to take them! There was a monthly stipend for my time and travel.

The next year, I was given the opportunity to talk to a local pain management specialist and a nationally-known CFS expert at no charge to get their advice on what my doctor should be doing to help, and what I could do to help myself. www.DrRodger.com  Then I was told I could try a Sleep Number bed "free" for 30 nights, which was also a big help in moving me toward better health.

Like Nurse McCormick’s niece, it’s obvious that I’m still here for a reason. Half a dozen times in my life, there were opportunities for me to be dead, or at least in a wheelchair, and I’m still standing. I may walk slowly, but it is on my own two feet, no wheelchair, not even a cane. (Again, despite the doctors who say it should be impossible for me to walk at all.)

At the point that I began to suspect the reason I’m still here and walking was to speak out on behalf of CFS patients, things fell into place too neatly for it to be anything but the hand of God. At the very first Awareness Day event I attended, I met someone who has been a great resource for both providing research materials and contacts with experts, and who introduced me to even more great resource people. At the first purely political event, I met several elected officials who knew first-hand about the effects of CFS and agreed to address their respective legislative bodies about our concerns.

Doctors may think they’re God, but I know where my healing actually came from. Despite the doctors’ best efforts to kill me, I’m still here, and making sure that other CFS patients don’t suffer the same mistreatment/maltreatment/nontreatment that I did. There’s a contingent that would like me to shut up and go away, but I’m doing God’s work now, and I answer to a higher authority than doctors. God wants me here for a reason, and I’m not going to disappoint Him by backing down.