Sarah is leaving today (Sunday) for San Antonio to participate in a drumming workshop. She started a drum circle with 4th and 5th graders this past year. This is her second workshop so she will be in the “advanced” group. I too think she is very “advanced”.
This is the longest that either of us have been away from asher (5 days). So, it’s pretty rough. Asher has really been working on his eating habits the last couple weeks (translation: Sarah has been working really hard on Asher’s eating habits the last couple weeks). He has never been a very good eater. He insists on feeding himself with his hands. He’s picky about what he eats. He’s breastfed as well. So, he should have one of those bumper stickers that says, “I’d rather be nursing!” Anyway… I will be trying to continue improving his eating while flying solo this week.
We found out this week that his hemoglobin level is low which means he’s not getting enough iron. It could be from his diet or from a condition like anemia. Either way it’s nothing to freak out about (even though I did). I hear it is common for breastfed babies to experience a drop in weight and low iron around one year. According to What To Expect the First Year, babies who have low iron can get into a cycle of less iron/less food and it fuels bad eating habits.
Our pediatrician is putting him on supplemental iron drops, but wait… the back of my wife’s daily multivitamins says, “WARNING: Accidental overdose of Iron-containing products is a leading cause of fatal poisoning in children under 6.” In our information age being a parent is like learning a new language or getting a second degree. It also helps to watch a lot of House so you think you’re an expert diagnostician.
Our family has a love/hate relationship with modern medicine. We depend on it for so much and we definitely want it to be there in case of some emergency (cancer, broken bones, rare diseases, births, etc.). But the medical community has its own weird worldview it wants us to buy into. For many many reasons I’m convinced that the medical community’s answer to many of our problems is not the best one. For example, a new study showed that the antibiotics used to fight ear infections in infants don’t work. These are the antibiotics our son was prescribed earlier this year for an ear infection.
So, you can see the dilemma. We have to trust modern medicine to an extent if we want it to be there for us when we want it, but we also have to be very skeptical of the advice we get about a lot of everyday routine things. I could complicate things further by talking about how the pharmaceutical companies influence diagnoses and prescriptions with their deep pockets, but let’s not go there.
I watched a program about how marketing companies create different diseases, like Restless Leg Syndrome, to sell their drugs. The advertising companies actually make up the acronym’s (RLS, ED, IBS)… and they defended their position by saying they help the community by making it easier to talk to your doctor about certain problems you may have.
I think I lost some of my trust in the medical community that day. I’m so naive.
I heard that program about big pharma. I would be careful to extrapolate it out to the rest of the medical community, though (not that there aren’t dirty doctors, but one shouldn’t generalize).
I don’t think being dependent on the medical community is as bad as we think. It sucks, because we lose a sort of independence and freedom, but there isn’t anything else. It might be better to be aware of our dependence, and then work towards oversite. After all, unless we become doctors, we will never lose that dependence (same with cars, computers, taxes, agriculture, engineering, architecture, etc.).
I don’t have kids yet so I can’t relate to the uncertainty. I have another friend whose kid was diagnosed with a disease, put on a restricted diet, all to find out a year later that it was a misdiagnoses. There was something wrong, just not that thing.
I am not so suspicious of our medical community. It has its problems and its strengths. Understanding the dynamics within the community is important.
I like my sister’s approach (and yours too Lucas)….. be cautious. If it doesn’t sound right or you have questions, be sure you ask them or find out. My sister often finds that doctors overdo things (to avoid lawsuits). They test too much, prescribe too much, etc. I guess I don’t blame them when you get sued all the time. Doctors seem to want to treat the symptoms and not the cause of the problem. I think a doctor that has a holistic approach to health is preferred.
In this age, we can do lots of research online to find out answers. We are not so naive as we were 20 years ago.