natural and allopathic healing

My mom is an LPN. The reason why she doesn't have her RN degree is because she quit the program, two weeks before completing it, because my little sister wasn't handling childcare very well. My mom is my hero for doing this. But that's another post.

Anyway, she is a very knowledgeable person when it comes to healing and medicine and various other nursing matters. I have always called her for advice whenever I have a baby sick.

Skywalker's mom is really into natural health. So is my mom. The difference between them (from what I can tell/know) is that Skywalker's Mom did all that she could to avoid having to take a little one to the Dr. My mom would wait until we seemed seriously in need of intervention, but if we were miserable enough to stay home from school, that warranted a Dr.'s visit. She combined things like essential oils and Echinacea with Allopathic stuff such as antibiotics.

Both moms have had some difficulty with vaccinations. Skywalker's Mom decided, after Skywalker went through his rounds of childhood shots, to not vaccinate any of the rest of her kids. I haven't asked her if she was inspired by a bad reaction in one of her babies, or not.

My little sister (the second of us) reacted badly to one of her 3-month shots. She screamed with a pained, high-pitched scream for hours and was feverish for a long time. This experience lead my mom to decide against vaccination for all the rest of her children, until they became teenagers. Or at least, older children.

At any rate, I'm trying to figure out what I believe as far as healing naturally vs allopathically is concerned.

My family just got over a bout of flu. Poor little Loli, who doesn't have much of a margin as far as weight loss is concerned, could not keep fluid down for several hours that first night. I realized that, with Loli especially, this is not something to be messing with. I headed straight over to the health food store. upon recommendation from the herbal consultant there, got Emergen-C, some Vitamin a capsules, and some chewable acidopholus vitamins.

Loli couldn't keep any of it down. Even at a teaspoon an hour, she was still throwing it up.

Time to see the Dr, in my opinion. Our doctor is a Naturopath and an MD, and so she's friendly to the idea of no vaccinations. (in fact, the first thing she said to me in the hospital when she came to examine Jaws was, "you refused the hep B, right?")

This is not intended to inspire a debate about vaccines. What I want to discuss is natural remedies for illness. By the time Loli made it into the Dr.'s office, she was so dehydrated that the Dr was borderline thinking about admitting her to the hospital for IV fluids. Finally, he decided to give us until 7 that night to see if she could keep a significant amount down.

I took Loli home and bought Pedialyte (not natural medicine, but by far better than Emergen-C for electrolyte re-balance), and she was able to take a little bit every fifteen minutes. By seven she was looking nice and pink again.

So in my opinion, there is a time and a season for everything, and a purpose under heaven. The time for Natural Medicine is mostly in preventing horrible illnesses, I think. If you keep your diet balanced and exercise regularly, you can usually ward off most viruses. I know this from experience-- since reforming my own eating habits, I have hardly ever been sick. Before, I was sick with every season change.

But sometimes you still get sick, no matter what sort of preventative measures you take. Especially, children get sick.

I think that it's important to be willing to go either route-- natural or allopathic, if it might mean the better health of a child (or adult.)

So here I am, as usual, willingly straddling the fence. I like fence-straddling. It's a nice, comfortable spot to sit and watch everyone on either side of the fence duke things out with one another.