A Necessary Evil, Part Two

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Time passes slowly
in a hospital room,
waiting for the next dose
and wishing for the moon.

Everything is toxic!
The drips, the air, the food.
Take your care into your own hands,
and they take you for a goon.

Discharge day is a mixed blessing,
there's so much to do - no fun!
But first up on the list to do
is undoing the damage done.

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I took my adult disabled son to the hospital on doctor's orders after I called to report that he had a fever and markedly different bowel movements. The doctor said what they always say: "Take him to the ER."
"NO! No! No I do not want to do that. Is it really necessary?"
"He might have sepsis, or be dehydrated. Is he drinking Ensure?"

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The dashing young hospitalist stood next to the even younger gastroenterologist, smiled his dazzling smile and explained:
"Crohn's Disease has flare ups where the disease gets worse for a while and eventually, with proper treatment ----"
"----My son has had Crohn's disease for 16 years. I have two daughters with Crohn's disease. My husband had Crohn's disease, his brother and his father. I know what a Crohn's flare looks like. This is not a Crohn's flare. Something else is wrong with him."
"Have you been feeding him spicy food? He should drink Ensure."

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"His diet must be bad."
"His diet is excellent."
"Look at him. It can't be."
"He has Crohn's disease."
"He just needs to drink Ensure for the nutrition."
"He can't drink Ensure. It makes him throw up."
"Oh. So this is behavioral."

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"There is no medical reason to keep him here. He should go home and drink Ensure."
"Doctor, he can't drink that stuff. It makes him nauseous and he just throws it up."
"He needs the calories. What have you been feeding him?"

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"What have you been eating?"
"I like the chicken wings from the cafeteria and I ate some of those."
"You see?! That's what you should NOT be eating! Have some Ensure instead."
"I had an apple. I was able to eat that."
"No! No fiber! No vegetables! You can have jello, apple juice or ice cream."

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"You don't like Ensure? I made my daughter drink it when she broke her arm. There are a lot of flavors. She tried them all and found one she liked. Try them all! You have to drink it. It has lots of vitamins."
"Was your daughter feeling nauseous?"

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These are snippets of conversations my son and I had with the doctors and the nurses while he was in the hospital for the past seven days. He got no care other than the following prescriptions, which all could have been prescribed without the trauma of a week in the hospital, and all have done no good whatsoever: Zofran (for nausea), Protonix (an antacid), Entocort (a steroid), and Imodium (a synthetic opioid for diarrhea). The only other thing he got was constant admonitions that the food he chooses to eat - meat, eggs, fish, fruits, vegetables, rice, pasta and homemade bread (all organic, pastured, good stuff) - are not good, and he should instead force down a toxic cocktail called Ensure that makes him throw up. He is now home and in far worse condition than he was when I took him there.

They treated me, The Mother, like a criminal because I believe eating a little real food is better than throwing up a lot of Ensure.

The moral of the story: If you want the doctors to treat you with respect, pretend to drink Ensure. Dump it right down the sink and lie about it. Then eat what your body tells you to.

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The poem is one I wrote and posted on Steem after my son's last trip to the hospital in December. https://steemit.com/naturalmedicine/@owasco/a-necessary-evil
He went in that time for c-diff. He was treated with IV vancomycin, one of the designer drugs intended to treat antibiotic resistant c-diff, and with IV flagyl. The first three weeks of vanco and flagyl had no effect on the c-diff infection. For the next three weeks of at-home vanco (at a cost to me of nearly $400), I added colloidal silver and s. boulardii. The c-diff cleared right up that time, so was it the vanco or the silver or the probiotic or all three? In any case, my son has not fully recovered from that trauma, despite a lot of help from Steemians and a massive natural medicine effort on my part.

My precious, wise and very compassionate son is disabled primarily because of too much prescribed prednisone as a child, among many many other prescribed pharmaceuticals over the years. I felt I had to rely less on the natural medicine routes we tried when he was first diagnosed at the age of eight, and go the western medical route instead, because the public school threatened to call Child Protective Services on me if I did not.

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