“I had the great pleasure to spend a night with the Seattle Endo Group at one of their meetings last month. About 15 women, all with different stories and different variations of the same disease, came together to support each other, and to learn about the disease that was affecting them and making their lives less productive, less pleasurable, and all in all less tolerable than they should be. I was proud to be able to be a part of this, a yearning to understand and conquer endo, not continue to be victimized by it. I was also proud of them, because they were doing something, both for themselves (educating ) and for others (supporting, caring, loving). Medicine is not a one-way dictum anymore, where the patient is a supplicant at the feet of the great physician, humbly requesting healing, and the physician gives the patient his treatment plan. No questions, no options, just do this and come back in a month. No, medicine today requires a commitment by both parties. A commitment by the physician to educate the patient about their disease, give them options, and help them understand why it's important to treat the disease in one way or another. The commitment from the patient is different but just as necessary. Patients must be an active participant in their healing - they must ask questions, keep track of how they feel and what things make them better or worse, they should be willing to try certain things that have been recommended to them, and most of all they need to be motivated to get better”
Dr. Cindy Mosbrucker October 9, 2007 www.endometriosissurgeon.com |