“Natural” Taking Over

When my older sister was a first-time mom, she experienced a lot of difficulties which sent her crawling back to our mother for help. When my niece was three months old, she tripped on the leg of a portable swing and sprained her ankle. And my sister couldn’t carry the baby standing up, give it a bath, play with it, or take it outside to get some vitamin D, which were all responsibilities she actually enjoyed.

The following year was much worse. She caught my niece’s chicken pox and at the same time suffered a herniated disc. She was picking something up from the floor and then pain just shot through her spine. She had to stay down and crawl her way to the bedroom so she can call her husband to come home and take her and the toddler to our parents’ house, since she certainly cannot manage the baby.

When she and my niece arrived at our house, I thought if she were a story character, she would have fit right in with Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” because she was so miserable-looking; she had ugly water bubbles on her skin, was hunched forward, had fever, a headache that will not go away, plus she was a big ball of back pain. Rendered invalid and labelled super contagious, our house literally was off-limits to guests and all folks who hadn’t gotten the chicken pox yet for over a week because of her (my niece was all better in three days).

My sister’s chicken pox lasted a little over a week but her herniated disc was a different matter; it lingered much longer. She couldn’t take medication for that because aside from the fact that she was opposed to synthetic medicine (she was “over-medicated” as a kid because of asthma and blames all the antibiotics and strong medication for her weak body), she was also breastfeeding a little girl who was following an all natural diet. To relieve her pain, she needed a natural treatment.

Fortunately, soft tissue manipulation was able to treat the problem and regularly getting it for a specific period of time eased the pain she was feeling and restored comfortable mobility. All of us were worried that an osteopathic treatment would not work and she would have to undergo a surgical procedure which would further lengthen her recovery process, as well as prevent her from performing her “mommy duties” to her little girl. So thank God, it wasn’t that serious.

Seeing how effective natural treatment could be, we’ve all started opting for it. We’re not just trendy folks; we actually find that there are fewer side effects with it (if there are any at all) and complications, even if at times you need to be quite patient for the results you want to be completely evident. For us, it’s always better to do away with scars, additional pains, and other effects of toxicity; so now, whenever someone gets sick or injured, we explore natural, non-invasive methods first, see if they would work before checking out other treatment options. Others find this counter-intuitive, considering the discomfort and other dangers created by an illness or injury, but we embrace our “different” values; for us, it’s better to physically suffer the same pain longer than to quickly take strong medicine or subject the body to a rather unnatural procedure for relief which can actually spawn more complications. Natural works for us, and only when it doesn’t would we explore other available options.

This post is sponsored by Sydney Osteopathic Medicine.