Thanks to my mom’s vigilance, I managed to avoid nearly all medical doctors during my childhood. I remember only twice encountering those people in white coats. As a young child, I had an unhealthy fear of canines. Our next door neighbors had a miniature terrier variety dog. I was always on the lookout for that tiny terrorist when I played out doors. Perhaps it was actually friendly and wanting to frolic, but I never gave it the opportunity to show its true colors. One day I was in their yard when out of nowhere, the pup came running. Looking backwards at my nemesis, I sprinted as fast as I could toward the safety of our own property, and ran head long into a giant oak tree. I briefly lost consciousness and then threw up, prompting concerns about a concussion. It was the summer after my dad drowned. I remember Uncle Al carrying me to his car, me in my little night gown with the red hearts, and driving mom and I to the ER at Altman Hospital for x-rays.

The second time I was treated by a physician was one year later, when I was six years old. We lived on Geib Avenue, a country road in the small, rural, Ohio town of Hartville. Albert Yoders lived down the road; they were a friendly Amish family with lots of kids. They raised various farm animals and livestock on their property. The pigs were in a field with a small muddy pond. On hot summer days, when we neighborhood kids were desperate to swim, we would wear old shoes (because you couldn’t see in that mirky pig trough water) and cool off in the brown liquid.

On this particular day, I forgot to wear my shoes and went “swimming” anyway in the shallows of the pig pond. Suddenly I felt sharp pain on top of my left big toe. Something had happened that needed parental attention. Randy, a neighborhood boy, rode me home on his bike, with me sitting sideways on the middle bar of the bicycle, holding on to the handlebars and trying to keep my feet out of the wheel spokes. I remember turning around and watching the blood drops on the road behind us.

It was after hours, but Dr. Cotton, a family practice doc in our town, met us at his office for sutures and a tetanus shot. The White Coat never figured out what actually happened to my toe; the theories were either broken glass or a snapping turtle. The jagged wound edges leaned toward the turtle bite, but the lack of a wound on the bottom of the toe left us guessing. I was required to pee in a cup (routine check for UTI?) and could not produce liquid in that artificial setting. My mom knew what to do: she turned on the faucet in the sink and like magic, it worked!

I managed to avoid the nuisance of childhood vaccinations because my mom signed the “religious exemption” form for school records. My mom was such a pioneer; she would have fit perfectly into this generations’ mistrust of modern medicine. She was ahead of her time. Without the internet, it was much more difficult in her day to establish one’s self as an alternative authority. Prevention magazine was her bible and vitamins were her medicine. If you ask my older siblings, I think they had a different, more normative experience. Our mom traveled much further down this road when the last of our brood was young.

Instead of well child checkups with the pediatrician or family practitioner, we received regular chiropractor adjustments. Let me say that I have respect for chiropractors within their arena of expertise. I do not, however, think that they are a substitute for a systemic, medical doctor. I remember a strange one, Dr. Mellett, that my mom found during the several years that we lived in South Carolina. Along with back adjustments, he said that he saw auras around people, that he saw things about their future. He once told me that he saw lots of brightness around me, but that he would tell someone else about it, and not me. He creeped my ten year old self out and I was happy to be done with him when our family returned to Ohio.

Back in Hartville, mom found Dr. Archer, a well qualified chiropractor, who sort of worked as our family doc. Honestly, I have a hunch that the issue was more the unrealistic expectation my mom brought, rather than that the chiropractor billed his skill set as all encompassing. In middle school, I was playing battle ball in the school gym and as I bent to pick up a ball, a hard thrown basketball made contact with my head and pushed it onto the concrete floor. I was taken to Dr. Archer for examination of a concussion. Several years later, when low body weight and anorexia caused cessation of menses, I was taken to Dr. Archer. That was an awkward visit!

My innovative mom also found a Foot Reflexologist to treat us. I so wish I could have a conversation with her to see where she discovered these unusual practices! In case you are not familiar, Foot Reflexology is an eastern practice that is based upon pressure points on the foot being tied to different organs and body systems. The thought is that you can affect change and improve health by a trained professional manipulating one’s feet, applying pressure and different strokes.

And so we all got our feet manipulated on a regular basis. Dr. Wilson and his family became family friends. Aside from the fact that I have very ticklish feet, I didn’t mind the foot treatments. I did wonder though, why that was the treatment prescribed for my sore throat. My brother, Lowell, even practiced under Dr. Wilson’s tutelage and learned to be an amateur foot reflexologist. When our mom had a stroke one evening and turned blue, Lowell well may have saved her life by massaging the appropriate heart area on her feet. We did not know about CPR.

I wish that I could ask my mom why she had such a mistrust of the established medical community. She so wanted to improve her health and live her best life. I love that she focused on healthy eating and lifestyle. She walked miles every day. But is there not a middle ground and balance? I remember my utter frustration when I entered nursing school and had to produce a record of my immunizations. I contacted my school and was told that my mom had signed wavers and that I had none. At age twenty-two, I got them all.

I was deep into anatomy/physiology class when I fitted the puzzle pieces together regarding the massive stroke that changed our mom for her remaining twenty years of life. Here are the pieces: she had untreated rheumatic fever as a child which damaged her heart valves. During my childhood, she had a manufactured mechanical mitral heart valve implanted, in place of her damaged one. This type bought her the most longevity but required her to take a blood thinner indefinitely, since this valve was more prone to throw clots. Mom became convinced that the blood thinner was dangerous to her; her research led her to believe that Vitamin E was a natural blood thinner. She slowly weaned herself off the Coumadin and for two years, took massive amounts of Vitamin E. And then she threw a clot and had a permanent, debilitating stroke. Totally preventable. Somehow that got mixed in with acceptance of God’s will for your life, no matter how difficult. I am glad that she never realized how she affected the course of her life by the actions that she took.

I accept the fact that I am a nurse and married to a medical doc (a chemo doc at that!) and this immediately discredits me and my opinion to some folk. It’s a big world and there is room for many opinions and for much tolerance. However, anecdotal accounts are very different from critical, data-based research. Today everyone is truly an expert with internet at the fingertips, but perhaps without the broad fund of knowledge for perspective. Are there rotten apples among physicians, docs out for personal gain or frankly, just practicing bad medicine? As with anything, there are always those few.

I’ve lived with an oncologist for more than three decades. I wish that you could have the vantage point that I’ve had, to see into the life of a compassionate consummate physician. He studies and keeps abreast of current therapies and new discoveries: he gives sound, matter-of-fact medical advice. He quotes studies and statistics, giving patients the opportunity to make their own choices, and freely answers the question, “what would you do if this were your father?” He is honest, even when the percentages are unfavorable, but he never takes away hope. In a word, he is trustworthy.

I’ve often heard my doc opine, “we are all on the same road, but some of us are more aware of that than others.” Life is precious and sometimes, too brief. Thank you for listening to my thoughts. I have had a unique perspective, given my upbringing and then my own training: I’ve seen both sides. Frankly, I’m proud to mimic my mom in some ways. I believe that a healthy lifestyle is the best medicine. I think getting plenty of rest and hydration and nutritious food and regularly working out keeps one’s immune system strong. I rarely take any medication. I am careful though, when it comes to apples, healthy as they may seem. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” does not work well for me.