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Natural Health And A Place For High-Tech Medicine

September 14, 2011 By Frugal Babe

In response to my recent post asking what you’d like me to write about, Navya posed this topic:

I have a question for you. I am an ardent fan of your blog and you have inspired me to stay healthy and I always thought that one day when I would have kids ( my husband and I have been married for 2 years now), I would go the mid-wife route like you. Unfortunately, I recently figured out that I have some cysts in my ovaries that need to be removed etc… basically stuff leading to infertility and that I need to be closely monitored and operated on soon… I was wondering what you would have done had you been in my position because today I am filled with self-doubt as to whether or not go to a big hospital in a big city that is well-equipped or a smaller one which is not so technically advanced but i share great vibes with my gynecologist…

Could you write more on how you would tackle such a situation if you were me and what made you trust the mid-wife over big hospitals?

This isn’t the sort of topic that I normally write about, but health, wellness, nutrition and fitness interest me just as much as frugality and simple living.  Our choice to use a midwife and have our babies at home was a pretty simple one.  I knew that was what I wanted and there were no contraindications at all.  I’ve always been healthy, both of our pregnancies were very healthy and complication-free, neither baby was breech, I didn’t have twins, etc.  My first labor lasted 45 hours and my midwives later told me that they had started talking about transferring me to the hospital by morning if the baby hadn’t arrived yet (he was born at 11pm).  But other than being long and slow, my labor was uncomplicated.  I definitely had “failure to progress” as far as medical textbooks would define it, but that was just the way my body went about it.  Every time our midwives checked the baby’s heart rate, it was fine.  He wasn’t in distress, and I was still hanging in there (barely!).  It’s impossible to know exactly how it would have worked out if I had been in a hospital.  Would they have given me Pitocin?  Maybe.  Would that have resulted in heavier contractions and wonky fetal heart tones?  Maybe.  Would there have been a cascade of interventions?  Maybe.  Would I have ended up with a c-section?  Maybe.  I don’t know what the outcome would have been, but I’m definitely glad I chose the path I did.  I’m aware of the fact that things can go wrong during birth, even with a healthy, uncomplicated pregnancy.  But things can go wrong in just about every scenario in life – we can’t wrap ourselves in a bubble and avoid all risks.  My strategy is to keep myself (and my family) as healthy as possible, and do as much research as I can before I make decisions regarding our health.

I did ask myself a few times during my pregnancies what I would do if it turned out that there was some sort of complication.  Some complications would have meant that my midwife wouldn’t have been legally allowed to work with me, although I put a huge amount of effort into doing everything I could to prevent complications as much as possible.  I followed the Foresight Preconception plan for nearly a year before we tried to conceive.  I watched my diet like a hawk – almost no sugar at all, no junk food at all, no refined carbs, etc.  A pet peeve of mine is when I hear pregnant women talking about giving in to cravings for daily ice cream, cookies, etc.  and saying that pregnancy is the one time when you can eat whatever you want and not feel guilty about it.  My own opinion is that pregnancy – more so than any other time in our lives – is when we have an obligation to eat the most nutritious diet we’ve ever eaten.  We’re growing another person from scratch!  Everything we put in our bodies has an impact on how that little person turns out, and junk food shouldn’t enter the picture at all.  Ok, stepping off my soapbox now.  (And to clarify, that has nothing to do with my reader’s question about ovarian cysts.  I’ll address her specific question further down the page, but I wanted to give a bit of background on my own approach to health and wellness, so I’m including some of my thoughts on avoiding the need for medical interventions during pregnancy.  And during life in general.  Don’t eat crap).

I strongly believe that a healthy diet, plenty of sleep, exercise, sunshine, and fresh air, stress management strategies, and strong relationships with loved one are the primary keys to health and wellness.  But I understand that even if we manage all of those things perfectly, things can still go awry.  What would I have done if my baby had been breech?  If I had been pregnant with twins?  I honestly can’t say.  I’m not a “militant homebirther”.  I wouldn’t have knowingly risked my health or the health of my babies just to maintain an intervention-free birth.  Both of the midwives we used were very competent in terms of the natural birth process, but they were also not opposed to the idea of a hospital birth when they deemed it necessary.  If they had told me that I needed to be transferred to a hospital, I’d have agreed to the transfer (I would have been sad, for sure.  But I wouldn’t have gone against their advice).

For about three years before we got pregnant with our first child, I read everything I could find about pregnancy, birth, and health in general.  I made it my mission to understand as much as possible about my body, the development of a fetus, and how the birth process naturally works without any interventions.  I accepted the fact that birth was probably going to hurt like hell (it did), but that millions of women had gone through it and I could too.  I felt that being armed with as much information and research as possible would benefit me, and it absolutely did.  This is the approach I take with pretty much any health-related situation.  And as much as possible, I try to avoid biased sources that have an obvious conflict of interest (for example, an article about the benefits of epidurals written by the drug company that makes the epidurals would be highly suspect in my opinion).

So with that background as far as my own decision-making process and strategies for health and wellness, I’ll try to address the original question.  If I were in that situation, I’d start by doing as much research as I could.  (I know very little about ovarian cysts, so I’m in no position to give specific advice).  I’d discuss the situation with the gynecologist with whom you have a good relationship.  I’d also probably set up a time to meet with the doctors at the high-tech hospital for a consultation to see how closely their thoughts align with yours and what their exact treatment strategy would be.  Although I’m a strong believer in the body’s ability to fix or prevent most problems (as long as we eat right, exercise, manage stress, get enough sleep, etc.), I believe that high-tech medicine absolutely has its place.  When my husband needed knee surgery a few years ago, we went to the best knee surgeon in the state even though it meant driving three hours each way to get to his clinic.  So if it turns out that the high-tech hospital can actually offer better results, I would probably choose that option over the smaller hospital.  A good relationship with a doctor is essential for routine check-ups and questions, but I think that if I were in need of a doctor to treat an acute problem (especially one that needed surgery and extensive follow-ups), I would seek out the best doctor I could find in terms of clinical outcomes.  I would look for a doctor/hospital that did the procedure frequently and with good results.  Bedside manner and interpersonal skills would definitely be less important to me in that situation.  On the other hand, when I went looking for a doctor for our sons (to do well checks and have on call in case of a problem) I searched all over town until I found a doctor with whom I felt a great vibe and connection in terms of our basic philosophies about health.  I don’t need her to handle emergencies, surgeries, or acute issues (which hopefully will be few and far between!), I just need her to check our boys at routine intervals and make sure that they’re growing and developing as they should.

EDIT:  I know that this question was asked of me because I’ve written about our choice to have homebirths with our boys.  But that decision stemmed from our belief that an uncomplicated pregnancy in a healthy mother is not a medical condition and doesn’t (for the most part) require medical treatment.  So I chose highly experienced midwives instead.  But if I were faced with a medical condition that didn’t respond to natural healing methods, I’d likely seek out the best, most experienced doctor/hospital I could find.

I hope that you have great results, regardless of which hospital you choose.  And since you mentioned wanting to have kids someday, I hope that the cysts can be removed without impacting future fertility.  Best of luck to you, whatever you decide!

 

 

Filed Under: health 6 Comments

Comments

  1. Melissa says

    September 14, 2011 at 1:27 pm

    Hi reader, I’ve also been a long time fan of the FB blog and I just wanted to share my experiences with you. I had my first baby in 2010 and my husband and I took a natural childbirth class. In our class was 1 person planning a homebirth, who ended up being transferred to the hospital prior to the birth (I can’t remember why, but she and the baby were fine).

    After taking the class, I thought about whether I wanted to do a homebirth, but ultimately decided that I would feel more comfortable in a large hospital (I lived in one of the major US cities). I had thought about giving birth at a hospital that had midwives on staff, but ultimately decided to go with my original choice. In hindsight, I’m really happy that I decided on a hospital birth. For me, the overall labor was 42 hours. I spent over 24 hours of that at home. When we finally went to the hospital and hooked up to the monitors, the kind nurses realized that the contractions were causing the baby’s heart to decelerate. It turns out we had a short umbilical cord. In the end, we had 2 pediatricians in the room when the baby was delivered “just in case” and my baby was born with the cord wrapped tightly around the neck. She wasn’t breathing, but the doctors and nurses got her breathing pretty soon after birth. I now have a healthy wonderful toddler.

    I also had surgery to remove some ovarian cysts earlier this year. I had a total of 5 removed. One was 12 cm (yes, about 4 inches), the other was 6 or 7 cm, and the others were maybe 1-2 cm. I ended up having the surgery at the same hospital in a large city. It was good since the hospital had the equipment to do the surgery with a laparoscope, which meant I got 3 small incisions, rather than 1 large incision. Laparoscopic surgery meant that the recovery went much faster. I’ve included a link to wikipedia below.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laparoscopic_surgery

    Before I had the surgery, I tried to determine if there were things that I could do to reduce the size of the cysts on my own, but I didn’t find a lot of information. I do recall some suggesting that taking 1 tb of molasses/day might help, or eating beets. Ultimately I decided not to pursue any of these options since my cysts were so large. Also, I had dermoid cysts, which are rumored to not react to these home remedies.

    Good luck with the cysts. The other concern I would have about going with your gynecologist is how many similar surgeries she/he has done. Most ob/gyn’s probably deal with relatively healthy folks, so it would be great to have someone who’s done a lot of surgeries.

    Reply
  2. Navya says

    September 15, 2011 at 1:11 am

    hi…

    Thanks FB for addressing my concerns and also Melissa for giving me hope that some one else had the same issue as me and ended up with kids meaning infertility was treated… I ended up having the surgery last weekend… Weekend was my preferred choice because I could have my family over to the hospital for support. I have had a relatively healthy life for the last 26 years hence this ended up being my first hospitalization…I had great vibes with a gynaecologist who seemed more experienced at surgeries, but she practised in a smaller hospital. And I really did not like the doctors I met in bigger hospitals – I thought the huge hospitals were more commercialized exploiting patients who have medical insurance (my work provides me with medical cover). So my dilemma was to chose a smaller nursing home with a better doctor or a bigger hospital with better equipments and less experienced doctors. I decided to stick to the doctor I was comfortable with.

    Just like Melissa mentioned, the doctor operating on me having been experienced in this field for close to 30 years, ended up doing a laparoscopy and I also have the same 3 small incisions on me like you mentioned and yeah, recovery time is faster… I will henceforth be on medication to cure my harmonal imbalances thus ensuring such cysts do not reappear..

    Which I had your reply sooner FB, then I would have had the bright idea of asking my doctor to come to the bigger hospital to operate there with better equipment… Where I live, such adjustments can be done and it never occured to my mind of asking the doctor to come over to the best hospital in the city to perform the procedure there… But thanks for the advice, the next time hospitalization is essential for me I will try to do that.

    As of now, I am recuperating and hopefully next week I will get back to work. So far, the docs say that because they have because they have removed the cysts, I need to get pregnant within 3 months , else there is every chance of the cysts reappearing… I am hoping things work as per plan!

    With FB, I totally loved your link for Foresight Preconception, this is something that I would have loved to follow – I totally agree with your advice on having to be healthier for the baby’s sake. But while my initial plan was to start trying to conceive next year same time – these health issues have pre-poned everything to this year… Well, that’s life. Wish me luck!

    Reply
  3. Anna says

    September 16, 2011 at 3:37 pm

    I’m an ob-gyn and I just wanted to comment that most ovarian cysts (with the exception of dermoid cysts, like above) do NOT need to be surgically removed. Definitely get a second opinion! consider getting one from a younger doctor, more recently out of training, or an older one at a hospital that trains new doctors. They are more likely to be up-to-date. And I’ve found that us younger docs are less interventional, in both GYN and OB. For instance, I’ve never done an episiotomy and have no plan to start. Many of the concerns people have about hospital birth can be avoided by choosing the right doc, one who isn’t so old school about birth and pregnancy.

    Reply
  4. bogart says

    September 16, 2011 at 7:31 pm

    Navya, I hope you’ll be able quickly and easily to conceive and have however many pregnancies and children you want and that all will be uneventful and healthy. I thought I’d mention that there is a large and generally very informative and supportive infertility community online, though, in case you find you have concerns or problems or need support. It’s a bit difficult to know where to point you but the “central” blog to the extent one exists is run by Melissa Ford (now mothering kindergarten-aged twins) here: http://www.stirrup-queens.com/ and from it is linked a vast blogroll organized by topic, here: http://www.stirrup-queens.com/a-whole-lot-of-blogging-brought-to-you-sorted-and-filed/ and also a roughly weekly update on the infertility blogosphere, here: http://lostandfoundandconnectionsabound.blogspot.com/ .

    Best of luck to you. And FB, thanks for a great post, I thought you covered many of the issues raised really well.

    Reply
    • Navya says

      February 10, 2012 at 4:32 am

      Thanks for the support. I was on one cycle of fertility treatments in November of last year just to check if my body responded well to the fertility medications after recuperating from my surgery. I found the entire process stressful – you rarely conceive when you try to put pressure on your body to conceive that very month with all of the medication, injections and daily follicle scans monitoring the egg and its release from the ovary. Needless to say, it was stressful on our married life as well. I told the doctor after that cycle, that I needed a break from this and I would return to her for medically -assisted conception 6 months later.

      I took a trip with my husband for this new year (2012) with the sole aim of putting the surgery, cysts and the fertility issues behind me. I just wanted to have a good time. I returned home happy to have had a great trip only to get the good news two weeks later that I was pregnant. I conceived naturally, on a trip, with my mind not constantly hoping to conceive, in spite of my history of cysts and my doctor’s insistence that medical assistance was my only hope to speed things up regarding pregnancy. I just wanted to share this to you all.  

      Thank you again for your support. 2011 was an eventful year, I am due in September 2012 so it looks like 2012 would be eventful as well :) 

      Reply
      • Frugal Babe says

        February 10, 2012 at 9:44 am

        Congratulations!  So glad you came back to let us know!  That’s wonderful news, and I hope that the rest of your pregnancy goes great :)

        Reply

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