Donna's health care team said 'no' to all complementary treatments
Transcript
Yes since then, and so I really sort of appreciated the time she spent with me. One of the other things I found was, I had told the doctors that I was doing some of these other therapies and they were very adamant that if I was going to do anything like that I needed to check with the department first. And so anything that I was doing, I would phone and say I want to do the vitamin C intravenous and it was “No you can’t do that blah, blah, blah for this reason, that reason and the other reason.” And then I would say well there was something else I was taking, I was taking dulse and seaweed, “No you can’t take that.” And so it didn’t matter what I consulted with them about they just said no.
Interviewer: Nurses and doctors?
Nurses and doctors. So I found they weren’t open to complementary therapy at all. I know there’s alternative and complementary and so I wanted to combine them as a complementary therapy and they were not open to it at all, even though all of the literature said and all of the statements said that they were open to complementary therapies, I found it wasn’t the case. And unfortunately, I stopped going to my naturopath during the chemotherapy because I trusted that they knew what they were talking about. I found out later that it would have been very helpful for me to continue with the naturopath that it would have supported the journey a lot, made it a lot easier.
The radiation oncologist and the medical oncologist, but it seemed that every time I phoned about something they would say “Oh no that’s not this, it’s got to be something else.” So I was experiencing a lot of pain in my collarbone here, and phoned about it and was told that radiation doesn’t cause bone pain, I must have arthritis. And when I met with the osteopath last week, they explained it, no it doesn’t cause bone pain but it causes inflammation in the fascia, which pulls on the bones, which hurts. So I don’t know why I didn’t get that information from the oncology department it would have been helpful. Part of it was feeling that when I would call with something it just felt very dismissive.
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