Nurses-How Did You Find Alternative Medicine?
It appears there are a few nurses in this community who have realized allopathic medicine is not what we were taught it to be in nursing school-a healing art. My own journey toward that realization began with my first employment after graduation. Full of zeal and desire to help people heal, I began my career in Oncologly. Before the first year had ended, I had determined death would be better than available cancer treatments. Still it took many years for my belief to be totally destroyed. The night shift was preferred as I found it the only shift when true patient care could be administered due to ridiculous patient load and paperwork. Fifteen years in, the night I had orders to prep a semi-comatose patient from a nursing home for a battery of obviously unneeded tests, the realization that "medicine" was a money making scam became a truth for me. That was the end of my nursing career. And how wonderful it has been learning a true healing art that "does no harm" So, nurses, how did your journey begin?
Comments
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@merlin44 I am not now and have never been a licensed nurse but I did gravitate towards alternative practice while I was in the US military as a medical corpsman. Most of what we had to use was just a "patch job" and then send them away. We always were led to believe that extended and deeper care was a top priority once the individual reached the actual base station.
Now I'm not going to say we were all so dumb we didn't know they weren't getting fantastic care. After all, a base station is not an actual hospital ward. But we saw so much blood and gore we just wanted to believe more than anything else.
But eventually I was shipped to some of the major facilities here stateside and that in itself was a major eye-opening experience. Very little patient care seemed to be done to realize the ultimate goal of curing a disease or injury. All we saw was more patch jobs.
Then when I became ill from a "bug" which a patient had lost her life over, I spent almost twenty years of my life relying on conventional medicine's protocols. No one knew what it was or how to treat it but they had no problems throwing anything and everything at me to try. After a couple of decades of declining health I finally gave up on them and decided I had to be able to care for myself better than what I was getting from them.
I have always believed the only reason I am still here is because I decided that day my health was going to be in my hands from that day forward.
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@merlin44 I really can’t recall when I knew herbal medicine was right; probably very young. The problem was being able to live it! When my children were small I got to spend some quality time with my uncle Ernie. He grew a garden, introduced me to fasting and natural hygiene principles. He read works from folks like T.C. Frey and told me stories about the governments going into natural health clinics and burning their records and busting up the offices. Now that I am aware of the Flexner report and the “timing” of the incidents my uncle was referring to.
When I was 4 years old I was very sick from a tick bite and was hospitalized. I can still remember some of what was done to me. I think it has just always made sense to me that putting chemicals in our bodies could be helpful.
I became a nurse more to work with the developmentally disabled population I worked with. One of the part time employees tried to talk me into coming f/t at the hospital she worked in on the oncology floor. I knew that I’d never be able to, in good conscience, administer those meds; especially watching my mom suffer with their treatments. It really is a sad thing that we don’t have choices here in America...
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My journey began just after a difficult pregnancy and botched spinal for a C-section. I developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and that was before the medical community acknowledged it. I saw many doctors who put out a lot of b.s. I became a nurse during this time when I realized I wasn't dying lol. I thought maybe I could find a treatment. More doctors, more b.s. I had started using some herbs because there was nothing the medical community could offer. Anyway to make a long story short I moved more and more to alternative therapies, especially herbs.
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I was a nurse's aid for many years, and was often encouraged by the nurses to go get licensed. I never wanted to, since even back in the early 1980s it was apparent that you couldn't "nurse" a patient back to health. We didn't have time to sit by the bedside and hold a hand. There was no care for the patient's emotional or spiritual health.
Mind you, I was happy to have access to blood transfusions and emergency surgery when I needed it. But my current nurse practitioner is pretty annoyed with my refusal to follow orders -not suggestions - to get this test and that test. Testing without symptoms drives me crazy! No thanks. I'll decide what makes sense to me.
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@merlin44 this is a great thread!
I was blessed to work in ICU and ER for many years. I am a true believer that allopathic (Western) medicine is at it's best in emergency/trauma situations. And I have also been the beneficiary of excellent emergency surgical care.
Where it all falls aparts is the 'sickness' model. For this, I blame 'big pharma' and their deep pockets. A big mistake was allowing the advertisement of pharmacueticals. In today's "I want it and I want it now' society, pharmaceutical ads have everyone wanting the 'latest greatest' quick fix.
What disillusioned me was having to fight for my patients. Nurses (used to) know more about the meds and treatments than the doctors prescribing them. I also spent a few years in the insurance industry, and that pissed me off even more.
It's more long and involved than that, but that's the cliff note version. Looking forward to reading more responses.
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@Grammyprepper Good point, trauma and emergency treatment is probably the best. The "cliff note version" covers so much.
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I started educating myself in alternative medicine when western medicine failed to be able to explain my own journey with a genetic disorder called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I lost a decade of my life and only came back from being bed bound/wheelchair bound and lost in a brain fog/apathetic/pain overwhelmed place that robbed me of a decade of memories after western medicine ended me up sick, bleeding and put on a bland diet. I changed my diet, lost 50 pounds and regained adequate brain function with zero help from my doctors but a tremendous amount of help from the homeopathic world! My doctors still blow it all off as not having any correlation with my diet and have no interest in learning! Oh well!
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This is a fascinating thread. Thanks for asking the question. I am not a nurse, but began studying natural medicine when I had one medical failure after another from allopathic medicine. Now, watching my grandson, who has a very rare autoimmune disorder that is life-threatening suffer under the same mistakes, I want to learn all I can to help him. I feel that every helpful suggestion I give to someone else through my learning/understanding, echoes far and wide. All of the folks who are searching for remedies will eventually find one of us who has some knowledge to help them.
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Great thread. I'm following!
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