The Doctor's Advice

Are you going to see The Doctor? Are you anxious to receive his/her advice?

Many times we are in such awe of medicine and medical experts that we don't challenge the advice that we're given.

I remember when my oldest child at the age of one year was experiencing diarrhea and I took her to The Doctor (her pediatrician) to check it out. It was serious enough that she was unhappy, weak and her development had slowed down.

I contributed information that suggested some food sensitivities in the family. The Doctor examined her, proclaimed it was a virus and sent us home.

Her problems continued. I called him for advice. He told me to wait and see.

A friend suggested the possibility of a food allergy and to try taking away wheat and milk for a week to see if her digestion improved. Within several days there was significant improvement; by the end of 10 days she was back to normal.

"Wait and see" doesn't always work.

We need to feel free to question any expert to whom we turn for advice. As the physician and writer Jerome Groopman remarked,

We doctors need you to help us to think better. We need you to question us and engage us from a position of knowledge about how and when we think well and how and when we go astray... It's really hard to be a doctor. But it's much harder to be a patient.*

An expert gives advice based on his or her knowledge. We are the best source of that knowledge about ourselves and our children.

Don't be afraid to use it.

*Quoted in Ellen J. Langer's Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility (NY: Ballantine Books, 2009), p. 21.