by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
In this post, which will also be an
article on FreedomFems, the newsletter
for Women’s
Institute for Individual and Political Justice, we delve into the issue
of Health Care, how to pay for it, how to get what you want, and how to
guarantee you will continue to have access to what you have determined works
for you.
Today, health care includes anxious
waits to find out if your 'insurance' will cover what you need or want. The
'Health Care' provided through government OR mandated by government regulations,
keeps those who are early adopters of new technologies and practices from
proving what does or does not work. The protocols the medical industry, and
that is a huge industry, restricts our choices to those for which they are
trained even if they know these are painful, costly, and have a high failure
rate. Doctors are people, and people do not change.
Always alive to their own profits,
the pharmaceutical industry seeks to justify the creation of ‘drugs’ which, all
too often, are based on natural herbs and other resources which work well as
they are.
At the end of this narrative I’ll
tell you how I came to the conclusion the Medical and Pharmaceutical Industries
are about power and profits and not about healing, even though many working in
it are good people, frustrated with what they see but helpless to change it.
The first issue is the inability of
most people in professions to accept changes in their mental and emotional
paradigm and the fact we are looking at huge industries which are enriching
those involved as investors and practitioners.
First -
A flawed theory which impacted us
for two thousand years.
The Myths of Science and Their
Agenda
Aristotle was a respected intellectual in a world
based on supposition and theories which were not subjected to the illuminating
impact of fact. I call this ‘arrested paradigm’ and it persists today in most
hierarchies.
The next story is from my own life and research. This began before the birth of my first child
at age 18. By the birth of the second
child I was looking for a way to give birth at home, and then teaching natural
childbirth, Bradley Method.
During my first pregnancy the usual medical practice
was to knock out the mother and take the baby with forceps. I learned this to my shock and horror by
talking to my obstetrician and by reading everything available on the subject. It immediately occurred to me any medication
administered to me would impact the baby.
I discussed this with my OB and he agreed not to knock me out and allow
me to give birth without forceps and with no medication. He lied without even blinking. The baby was actually crowning, leaving my
body when he insisted I be given a spinal.
I was outraged but helpless since neither he or the nurses would pay any
attention to my objections.
I also encountered books on preparing formula as an
alternative to breast feeding. After due
consideration and a detailed study of the reasons formula had come into
ordinary usage, I decided I wanted to breast feed. When I asked my baby be brought to me in the
hospital, St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, the nurse made me clean my
nipples, very thoroughly with alcohol.
Since I was nursing several times a day, every time the baby wanted, my
nipples swelled and bled. The nurses
said I should quit and use formula. I
persisted, nursing through the pain.
Later, I began reading more about the process of
birth and all related subjects. I had
realized doctors routinely lie to their patients who are paying them to perform
a service, much like any other professional service. This violated every tenet I then held, age
18, when this first experience took place.
The next OB again lied to me and forced me to have a
spinal. I vowed never to go to the
hospital for birthing again. Number
three and four were born at home, unassisted.
My prenatal care was provided by an OB who was also on call if problems
arose.
Politically, I was shocked when I realized
Libertarians thought a woman’s right to give birth where and how she chooses, and
if she breastfed her child, was Not a freedom issue. This raised my first questions about the
philosophy of ‘Libertarianism’.
At this time, fathers were chaining themselves to
their wives to prevent their being ejected from the delivery room even when
they were trained as their wife’s support.
Another direct experience with the medical community
took place when I fell during my third pregnancy and hurt my back. The specialist I was directed to see insisted
I needed back surgery. I refused,
hearing the probably impact on my ability to function normally.
After 18 months of extreme discomfort and struggle, a
solution presented itself. At the time I
was working on placing volunteer signature collectors for a Libertarian
campaign, I think it was Ed Clark’s gubernatorial campaign around 1977 – 1978. The group of us working on this for Los
Angeles were meeting at my home. One of
our collector hosts walked in, took one look at me and took out what looked
like a small gun. Others already
gathered stopped talking to watch. Gary
said, “lay down on your stomach, arms to the side.” I did.
Using the activator gun Gary, a chiropractic student spent about one
minute impacting several points on my back.
When I got up there was no pain and it never returned.
My older sister, Carol Sylvia Pillsbury had died of
a heart attack suddenly in 1974. We went
through shock and grief. Carol was 36
years old, but assumed this had taken place because she smoked and drank
alcohol.
In the years intervening between 1978 and 1994 I
lost two siblings more siblings to heart attacks; Anne Pillsbury Gripp died
suddenly standing on the sidewalk in Tokyo where she was putting on the exhibit
for her business, the Santa Barbara Orchid Estate, at an International Orchid
Show. Anne was the oldest of my parents five
children.
In 2004 my older brother, the third of my parent’s
children, had a heart attack and stroke from which he would never recover.
My younger brother, Stephen Martin Pillsbury had mitralvalve
repair on his heart. Five out of five
children is a depressing statistic.
I had two heart attacks by 1999. At the same time, I had storm migraines due
to other circumstances in my life. My
cardiologist could find nothing to stabilize my heart which did not conflict
with the Vicodin I had to take to function and care for my disabled son.
Sitting across the desk from him he was obviously at
a failure for words. Instead, he opened
his drawer and handed me a business card, saying not to tell anyone where I had
gotten it. The card was for an acupuncturist
practicing in the area. I made an
appointment that day. After six months
my heart irregularity was gone.
My life and experiences made me skeptical of both
big pharma and big medicine and so motivated me to look for a solution. Part 2 coming
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