Monday, 22 November 2010

Finding The Correct Treatment

As life goes on you start to get some ideas on what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to healing your body. Self-diagnosis can be easy and correct, or difficult and very dangerous. Diagnosis by medical professional, while not always required, is sometimes essential to getting to the root of a problem. Sadly, professionals are not always thorough enough. What gets someone through another day or week, is not really a remedy after all.
 
Some treatments are very simple; just take this for so many days and forget you ever had a problem. Other remedies are intuitively obvious, while some are counter-intuitive. Conditions requiring counter-intuitive remedies are pretty difficult ones, usually requiring an expert of some sort to identify and treat. Often, expensive tests are required and trips to specialists to interpret the results then prescribe the corrective.

Back problems are often that type, especially if the condition has progressed to the point where nerves have been pinched. The symptoms in this case are often not associated with the back, but some other body part; pains down the leg from sciatica are a good example. The treatment has nothing to do with the leg at all, often giving no initial relief, but if applied over time manages the condition well. It involves drugs, physiotherapy, exercise and diet control, among other things.

In the seemingly intuitively obvious category of conditions, about twenty-five years ago, I had a lesion on the back of my hand for months that wouldn’t heal. Finally I got myself to a dermatologist, who after inquiring of the history of the injury, and taking a small sample, recommended that I should try leaving it alone for a couple of months, instead of picking at it, as in fact I had been doing. The lesion healed up just fine, but the root condition did not. Other less obvious lesions did not heal, nor were they seen at that time. The doctor probably did noticed that the rest of my hands, especially around the cuticles were in very rough shape, but never suggested that I somehow stop picking at them as well, nor did the doctor suggest I take all my clothes off for a full skin examination either; after all, I had come in to have my hand treated. In retrospect he might have sent me to another professional who dealt in obsessive and self-destructive behaviors. It might have been at that point that some critical self-examination under the guidance of a firm, but kindly professional might have revealed root causes, and thus a treatment for a 'global condition'.

When healing the body involves healing the mind, things get complicated.

Is it possible that ultimately GRS is a treatment for a condition whose outer symptoms are a skin disorder? That does come under the heading of counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?

3 comments:

  1. Halle, this is a dreadfully sad post, and I wonder if low self esteem is at the heart. Whatever the cure, I recommend a bit of self appreciation and love as a beneficial tonic.

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  2. Maybe not so counter-intuitive. Maybe we need healers sometimes instead of fixers. The stories are different but taking a step back so similar.

    The ultimate transformation - can I sit beside you and look down that path and fathom it's reality; then walk the path

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  3. If there is a constant release of stress hormones, all kinds of things in (and on) the body can go wrong. So pinpointing the stressor(s) would be the first step in alleviating the condition. Then would come either cognitive-behavioural therapy (if that works) or perhaps a treatment that at first seems counter-intuitive.

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