Because I don’t feel well and am really grumpy, I wanted to share with you an article from a judgmental and ignorant acupuncturist, because I think it will make you all grumpy too. You know the saying, “misery loves company,” well I am inviting you all over to my place today. Let me know if this article makes you seethe as much as it did me. For every excellent practitioner out there – open-minded and truly interested in helping us heal – there is a bozo like this.
From Acupuncture Today. This quote picks up in the middle of an article written by Kaleb Montgomery, DTCM. He is expressing his frustrations over patients he has treated who stop coming, even though they are experiencing benefits. There might be a good message in there if he wasn’t so short sited. I am leaving my own comments and opinions bolded and in parenthesis throughout the article because it is fun and makes me feel good. Feel free to join me!
In another case, a woman with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue was referred to me because she was not progressing. This woman had so much pain in her jaw and teeth that she was unable to eat solid food. For the last six years, she had only eaten steamed vegetables and tofu pureed in a blender and slurped through a straw. I am not sure why she limited herself to just steamed veggies and tofu, I know that if pain limited my diet to liquid, those two foods would not be my first choice of sustenance (First judgmental comment here. He has charmed me already). As we will see, more likely her outrageously limited food choice was probably a reflection of the mental/emotional root of her illness (Of course she has mental and emotional problems, she has Fibromyalgia after all. What other explaination could there be for her food choice? She is crazy!).
Like the first example, we got great results in just a few treatments. After one treatment, her teeth felt so much better that she was able to eat fresh crispy lettuce for the first time in six years. In our next treatment, she told me that she asked her dentist if acupuncture could help tooth pain and he said no, so she was going to stop treatment even though she had continued to improve this week as well (Okay so the patient is a little short sited as well. Probably what made her an easy target for Mr. Montgomery). Needless to say, I was frustrated and tried to convince my patient that the dentist was wrong because she actually had improved. However she would not change her mind and I did not see her again.
Again, the story would have ended there except that I spoke to the health care provider that referred her to me in the first place. This time the health care provider called me because he was mystified by our patient’s behavior. This patient had come back to them for continued treatment. When he asked why she had stopped seeing me even though it was the only thing that worked, she insisted that she did not want to talk about it. Every treatment she came in and asked, “What can I do to get better,” and he would say “Why don’t you go back to see Kaleb?” She would refuse to talk about it and of course did not call me for more treatment (She sounds more scared and confused to me than mentally and/or emotionally unstable. Maybe they could have gotten further with her with compassion rather than frustration and labels).
For me the most interesting part of this story is not that she stopped coming for a treatment that was working. I eventually came to the conclusion that she was not ready to heal yet (This is a very really possibility and problem. Sometimes an illness becomes so much a part of who we are, it is hard to imagine our life without it. What if she was receiving disability and could not survive without it? Frightening to think of having to start over and redefine your life when you have been conditioned to live with and expect pain. If I was told tomorrow I was cured of FM, I am not sure I would trust it. It would take time to make the mental adjustment – time and compassion from my health practitioners. That does not make me mentally and emotionally unstable, that makes me human.). We all have gotten advice from friends, maybe about a bad relationship, that we dismiss to the eye-rolling dismay of our friends or family. Later on, when the situation plays out exactly as predicted by our friends, we say “Why didn’t you tell me!”
This patient could not yet let go of her disease. The fascinating bit for me is that she continued to spend her time and money to get a treatment that was not working and that she knew would probably not work. If she had just discontinued treatment and not gone back for more, then I would have still been frustrated but could have chalked it up to tight finances or her not being ready to heal thus far. However, the baffling part was that she still spent good money on ineffectual treatment. Why?
My guess is that like many fibromyalgia/chronic-fatigue patients, she used her illness to get attention, love and support from friends and family(OMG! What an idiot! Seriously! What can I say here? He is so clearly detached from the reality. Please, someone, say something intelligent for me here, because I got nothing but OMG!). She had forgotten how to get attention in a normal healthy way. I hypothesized that her support network would quickly get fed up with her if she stopped seeking treatment all together, so to keep up appearances and be able to play the “I am doing everything I can” card, she had to keep “trying” to get better (Really! Again, excellent hypothesis by a clearly compassionate and in-tuned healthcare provider – she says with extreme sarcasm. When can I get an appointment?) .
Nothing is quite as irritating as someone who is sick but is unwilling to try to help themselves (Unwilling? Confused maybe. Scared maybe. But unwilling? Never!). People stuck in that rut quickly find themselves alone and friendless. Being alone and friendless is not what my patient wanted. She wanted the attention, but needed to get/stay sick because it provider her an excuse for something (Without mentioning the obvious typo in this sentence, I am again just going to reply – Idiot!). I did not find out what this something was for her, but I have found it out in other patients. I find this pattern very common in fibromyalgia/chronic-fatigue patients. So common in fact that I will cut this off now and continue this train of thought in my next article by exploring fibromyalgia/chronic-fatigue more. (Ohhh! Can’t wait for the next article, in which you perpetuate every negative and inaccurate assumption about Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. Do you have a newsletter? Sign me up!)
Initially I did not plan to share this article with you, but I hope that by shining a light on what is so grossly wrong about Mr. Montgomery’s way of thinking, less people will think like him. People with Fibromyalgia need compassion, support and understanding, not judgments and labels.
TheBigSis says
WOW!!! I am shocked………………. what an idiot. I would love to get him my two cents. Unbelievable to think someone would actually use their illness to get attention. Some people!! He clearly is an idiot and has no heart. UGH!!
perpetualspiral says
OMFG. i can’t believe any of this. well i can but its sickening! Did he ever stop and consider that maybe she didn’t want to see him anymore because he was an asshole? I wonder if he did something abusive or sexual in nature and that’s why she doesn’t want to talk about it. This man is a narcissist. He doesn’t show any sign of stopping to contemplate what his role might be in his patients’ non-compliance. It’s all about their mental problems. What a (I want to swear but I wont). the same thing is going on but even worse in the ME/CFS community – ppl are being locked up and told they’re lazy and forced to exercise…I just don’t understand why anyone would refuse to believe that the millions of people who suffer from fibro and cfs are not causing their own illnesses. NONE of us wants to be in this much pain, no matter how much ‘love’ we want. Does this man seriously think that I chose to remain single and alone rather than be healthy and live a normal life? We don’t get nearly as much love and sympathy from our illness as he seems to think – we get stigmatized and ignored and it is because of people like him who keep spreading these assinine ideas.
OK that was a rant, but I’m sure you understand! I hope you print his follow-up and tear it apart even more LOL.
*hugs* 😀