"Just a cage of rib bones and other various parts" - Ingrid Michaelson

*Dear blog skimmers: here is a quick synopsis.
I went to my mom's crazy doctor today.
The end.




Something you should know about my mom is that she has been sick my whole life. Thus, a lot of her eccentricities can be traced back to her health. Usually we'd ignore her odd food choices or excessive vitamin intake and go on stuffing our faces full of pasteurized milk, excessive amounts of meat, and all the processed food we found appetizing. Year after year she'd find a new book describing some new diet that was healthier than the last one, and she'd give it a go. It seemed that every diet was a failure and every new book was another contradiction.
And sure, we've all tried diets have we not? Eat this and not that, blah blah blah. But we'd all take our 15 min breaks with a slice of cake, or a soda, convincing ourselves that it wasn't so bad and we'd make up for it for eating more spinach tomorrow.
This pattern lasted until my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and my mom wasn't getting any better; rather, her symptoms were slowly worsening. My parent's dedication to search out the best of cancer hospitals began as well as the best of health advice, including diets. My mom at this point had realized the benefits of holistic medicine, and the search for medicinal "truth" as it were, only became more important as it wasn't just my mom anymore, it was my dad. It was my grandma who had been given "The Shaft" (aka: premature death, for the lack of space, time, and your attention span) in her Florida hospital, and it was our countless numbers of friends' horror stories we'd hear at least weekly about how so-and-so was given the wrong medication and now they're diabetic, or how what's-her-face was another victim of a surgical mistake and is now blind. To make a long story short, my contumacious mother has transformed into a practicing advocate of what some would call voodoo witch-doctory. Or maybe that's just me. Out of all the kids, I am definitely the most skeptical of all the shenanigans, calling normal doctors sorcerers, idiots, schemers, etc. I just have a hard time believing that the whole system is corrupt, and that holistic/homeopathic doctors are the only ones who really know what they're doing.

Now let's skip to the good part.

Today's first assignment was to visit my mom's n-th doctor, Dr. Nunier (pronounced Noon-ee-yay. Add a French accent and you're a pro) up in Indiana. Paul and I arrive and he goes in first. After 45 min of waiting for Paul, I'm slightly peeved because I had to wake up early to sit in a waiting room. At least they had a radio. He comes out with a big grin on his face, buddy-buddying it up with Dr. Nunier, and I'm wondering what "feel good medicine" they gave him. Doc looks normal enough; white, round, balding man in mid-40's. Nothing too fancy. The story would only be better if he were a stubby Chinese man, but that's not the point.
Now it's my turn with Dr. Nunier. I go in, and the receptionist hooks me up to this vitals monitor that is a strap which wraps around my body, right under my bra line. I have to lie down for 5 min and then stand for 5 min. The only thing I saw on the computer that made any sense were the words, "Patient...in normal range." Normal is good. I'm good. Then Dr. Nunier comes in and goes over my chart. We sit in silence for a minute or so.
"I can already tell your adrenal glands are messed up."
"Oh? Why is that?"
"It says here you like to sleep a lot. I bet you hate waking up, no matter what time you go to bed, too."
"Um, actually, yes, that's exactly how I feel. I hate it. And I have to have at least 10 hours or I feel worthless."
"Well, there is probably more going on. You have acne and a history of an ovarian cyst, so I'm guessing your hormones in general are out of wack. I'm going to do a series of tests on you, based on ancient Chinese acupuncture pressure points, and this will give me an accurate, very precise reading of what is going on inside your body."
And he has me lie down on the table on my back.
"Raise your right arm for me, Martha."
I raise it.
"I'm going to push your arm down slightly and I want you to resist it. Let's do a test. Good, just like that. Ok, I'm going to press on several spots on your body. Your arm will lock in place just like that unless there is a problem with one of your organs. If I push on a pressure point and your arm does not lock, it means there's a problem."
Is this guy for real? Come on. I can make my arm stay in place if I want it to. He's barely touching me. He starts with my head, and then to my shoulders, back and down to my waist. Everything is fine, my arm is locking like he showed me it would. He put his hand below my left rib cage and suddenly my arm went weak. What the freak? I pushed harder.
"I can tell you're exerting more effort because your arm is going up. You see how your arm isn't steady anymore?"
"I swear I feel like I can make it stay--" and in unison we both said, "but I can't."
"That spot means your pancreas is weak. Let's see where else needs help."
He pushes on my lower abdomen and my arm is weak again. I see him close his eyes and test my arm again and then hear a slight grunt. He pushes even lower and again, my arm goes weak.
"What does it mean, doc?"
"Those last 2 spots were your ovaries and uterus. What we need to do now is find out which one is priority. Stick your middle finger in your thumb joint like this. Good. We're going to test which one is weakest."
He tests all 3 spots.
"See how your arm got stronger on those 2 areas? Your ovaries are still weak, which mean they are priority."
"Sooooo what does that mean?"
"It means your hormones are messed up."
"Well, I am on birth control."
"That will be part of it, yes. I'm sure whoever prescribed that for you had the intention to make your system right, since birth control does help in clearing acne. So, it's possible you may be more balanced now, but we won't know until we do some hormone tests. You see, hormones are very powerful chemicals. We measure them in pikagrams, which is like a drop of water in 6 train cars of water. Birth control is measured is milligrams. Talk about throwing your whole system off even more than it already is."
"Hmm...so what do I do? I love birth control. It makes everything better."
"There are healthier ways to make everything better, and once we get an idea of where you're at, we'll talk about what to do to get better."
He moves over to a wall of numbered bottles. There are over 50 of them. He opens up a drawer full of videotape cases. He brings out a few and places them on my legs. He does the arm test for my ovaries again. My arm is still weak, and I still can't believe it. He does this a few times with the cases, and I finally look down to see they're all full of 30+ vials full of different clear fluids.
"Did you turn videotape cases into vial holders? What are you doing now?"
"Yes, I did. If your body comes in contact with a substance, it will immediately know if it's good for you. I'm trying to find out what minerals your body needs."
What the freak?! "Um, how does my body know what substances it needs? Those are all in glass jars and they're resting on my leg."
"Everything gives off energy, Martha, this chair, these minerals, your body, everything. Your body has what's called Meridians of energy, and the whole point of acupuncture is to re-balance those meridians. When you're sick, your body's energy is thrown off, and it can sense certain minerals that will restore its balance. My task right now is to find out which minerals will help you. All of these bottles are good and healthy, but only some will be healthy for you." As he is talking, he is continually placing one bottle at a time on my leg and doing the arm test. After a few bottles, suddenly my arm locks.
"Whoa, my arm is locking!"
"Yes, I can feel it too." He switches out a few more bottles. Another bottle causes my arm to lock. He takes it off and my arm is weak. He tests it again. And again. And at this point, I am a believer.
"You see when I add 3 bottles, your pancreas and uterus are stronger too?"
"Yeah...weird."
"Well, I want you to do a saliva test once you get back to Utah, which is how we test your hormones. You'll send them off to a lab in Seattle and they'll send me the results. For now, I want you to take this paper and write down everything you eat for the next 4 days, and we'll figure out what you need in your diet."
"Dr. Nunier...honestly, how did you get into this? Did you have a Chinese grandpa or something?"
He chuckles, "No, actually, I was at a continuing education seminar." He puts his papers down and looks me square in the eye and says, "I read 2-3 articles a day. I read about 5 books a year. I take pride in keeping up with new literature, new studies, you name it. When I signed up for this seminar, I had no idea what I should expect. I sit down and the guy on stage is doing this to people from the audience. No one in that audience was more skeptical than me. The first thing I thought was, 'This is why chiropractors have a bad name.' I raised my hand to go up just so I could show everyone how hokey this all was. And then the guy nails exactly everything that I knew was wrong with me, and he didn't know me from Adam. And I couldn't keep my arm locked either."

Maybe I'm not ready to throw out the whole Western philosophy of medicine, but I can tell you I'm a believer in Dr. Nunier.