Besame’s kosability post last month on finding effective help outside of the purview of standard western medicine hit a whole tangle of nerves for me. as she points out, if standard western med works well for you, you may well look askance at those weird and perhaps untested and risky alternatives that some of us plunge into with what seems like an uncritical naïveté.
i now think that this skeptical stance towards alternatives is an unexamined luxury, sort of like my increasing awareness of my white privilege; we may not stop to scrutinize or recognize this sort of thing until we’re forced into reexamining it by new circumstances.
many of us are driven to alternatives when western med fails us so completely that it becomes a matter of (not to be overly dramatic or anything) life or death—or, at the very least, a life worth living versus descent into despairing disability. yet from the outside, it can look like cultivation of a baseless lunatic hope and i’ve been harangued for foolhardiness.
so, fwiw, here is an account of how i’ve explored alternative treatments and found far more effective treatment for my seizure disorder than prescription medication…
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KosAbility is a volunteer diarist community meeting the last Sunday of each month at 4pm PT/7pm ET. We embrace people living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues. Our use of "disability" includes temporary as well as permanent health/medical conditions, and small, gnawing problems as well as major, life-threatening ones. Our use of "love someone" extends to cherished members of other species. Our discussions are open threads in the context of this community. Feel free to comment on the diary topic, ask questions of the diarist or generally to everyone, share something you've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about your situation. If you are interested in contributing a diary, contact Besame, wilderness voice, Steven Park, or CathyM.
