If you’re a patient who has incorporated complementary and alternative medicine into your health care regimen, you may have bumped up against some resistance on both sides of the healing fence. Your doctor may think your homeopath is a total quack selling snake oil, and your homeopath may think your doctor is a big thug, thwacking his pharmaceutical hammer at anything that moves.

Lissa's Note: I sobbed when I read this post because I was once one of those non-listening doctors, and I too have been one of those patients who felt dismissed by her physicians. Dr. Nicola Holmes tells her story below about being the patient, feeling dismissed, and being left to chart her own course. I couldn't help remembering being eight hours post-op from my C-section, after nonstop vomiting and severe dehydration that was leaving me without any urine in my catheter. I finally called my doctor at home - we're friends - so she could rescue me. It was midnight. I knew she was tired. And I know she thought she was helping when she told the nurses I had her permission to write my own orders. So I spent my first post-op/postpartum night (while my father was dying, incidentally), writing the orders for my IV fluids, my nausea and pain meds, and how often my vital signs needed to be checked, all while trying to breast feed for the first time. I felt totally alone, completely abandoned to chart my own course, and I left the hospital the next day, figuring I might as well take care of myself at home. I'm getting choked up just thinking about it, and I know I'm not alone. 

It's up to us to change this. Seeing the doctor should ease suffering, not incite it. 

You can be your own doctor, love.

Yes, you heard me right.