the somatics of diagnostics part 2 (holistic patient care)

I wasn’t planning on making this more than a few random thoughts jotted down and transferred from the notes section of my phone, but since I started chasing after the threads of this idea, it hasn’t left me.

Shortly after I posted the initial post I saw a post from a trauma therapist I follow talking about the idea of searching for an answer. Her post had little to do with medical diagnostics, but the similar threads between our ideas left me with more food for thought as she spoke of this idea of looking for a root cause, and how it is this search that can be a roadblock to actually healing.

And it brought me to something I’ve been thinking about, and have voiced in regard to my own situation, in how we can search for a title for something or a category for it to fit in or a why or a fix, and seemingly overlook the things we can do right now.

Yesterday I went to a group on sacred rage, and while not all of us there were there because we were so woven into the medical community, we all began to share our stories of struggling with the system of healthcare in our province and the lack of holistic patient care.

Navigating the medical system is inherently stressful and chaotic. It’s a sensory overload, there’s a lot happening that’s hard to understand, and because of its relationship to the body more often than not it triggers that survival tendency. This can look like that tunnel vision survival instinct, that fight or flight response, those responses we wouldn’t have if we were thinking rationally. I don’t envy nurses, who are often on the receiving end of these nervous system responses, and in the practitioners I’ve talked to and the ones I’ve encountered during my own time in the system, I see either a shaming of trauma responses, actions that aren’t justified in response to the nervous system response, everybody getting disregulated and acting from a stress response or cutting people off entirely and treating a patient as a set of symptoms and not an entire person. As someone who has a tendency to slip into a fawn response, I’ve been praised for my trauma responses, and when I have reacted from a different nervous system state, I’ve been labeled as non-compliant, angry or in need of sedation.

There are so many reasons one would be distrustful or hesitant to engage with the medical system, and yet we tend to label people, draw lines and make decisions like people can fit into tiny boxes and aren’t full, complex, whole people.

I follow a doctor on TikTok who routinely mentions that while there are similarities, of course, in every person who has this specific diagnosis, every person who presents with this condition will not be identical in their symptomology. There is benefit in gaining knowledge and information, absolutely. And just because there is a label, a diagnosis, it doesn’t mean there is now a clear path to feeling better.

Putting it simply, you still have to do the work.

When I was seeing my surgeon who ultimately did my abdominal wall reconstruction in the middle of trying to find out what the hell was going on with me, I walked into his office wanting a pill, wanting a quick fix. I wanted him to tell me this is what’s wrong and here’s how you fix it. People talk all the time about how doctors love to push pharmaceuticals and I wanted that to work in my favour. It didn’t. Much to my dismay at the time, my doctor told me there was no pill, no quick fix, and in fact recommended I begin with changing my diet and managing my stress. I love him for it now, but at the time of sitting in that office I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was supposed to fix it, give me a pill and make me better. Instead he was sitting here and telling me I had to do the work. I couldn’t hand him my power and have him do it for me.

you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you’ve got to go through it.

There’s this idea I’ve heard that not pursuing strictly western medicine treatment therapies means you’re giving up. I don’t find that true at all. I said that to someone who questioned me on “what now” after one of my latest procedures, like we were waiting on the next play in a game. Keep going, pursue all options, try everything. I’d argue that, at least in my case, going back to the environment of the medical industry repeatedly wasn’t doing me any favours. It did little to support my mindset of whole person healing and instead handed me a mindset of try this pharmaceutical, do this intervention, get this diagnosis, check these boxes.

Whole patient care means we’re not a set of symptoms. Everything is connected. I can talk more about how I’m choosing to heal outside of the medical industrial complex while also being heavily reliant on modern medicine in a separate post if anyone is interested in how I’m personally navigating that space, but the main thing I want to emphasize in this post is that division in care. It’s the being treated like a body, not a person. Yes, it’s improved over even my 20+ years in the system, and it’s not good enough. And, particularly in my province right now, I’m watching it get worse as more and more people fall through the cracks.

I’d be willing to go so far as to say you can’t heal anything without first doing nervous system work, connecting to the body, moving from that embodied place versus the mental hustle. Our minds are constantly thinking, analyzing, trying to figure things out, like we’re a mystery to be solved. Our bodies, when we are deeply embodied and connected and listening, say more than anything else ever will. That’s not something anyone else can do for you.

you’ve got to do the work for yourself.