Dr Emmett Brown and Integrated Medicine

Introducing my Integrated Medicine (IM) Doctor, who I'll call Dr IM...

I walk into Dr IM's rooms in a trendy but not pretentious suburb. She wears a pale blue suit - tailored, slightly shiny. It's cleverly non-committal. The cut ensures professionalism, the colour is calming. She doesn't look like a doctor but she doesn't look like a taro card reader either. Mind you, if you take away the scrubs, what does a doctor look like?! She is short, shorter than me - OK, makybe I like her ;) She wears glasses that slide down her pointy nose when needed.

And then I see the hair. Anyone remember Dr Emmett Brown from Back To The Future? Imagine him, without the receding hairline, trying to brush down that mane. Just as I finished my visual assessment Dr IM asks "Why are you here?" A little taken aback I tell her about my diagnosis of Breast Cancer and my desire to find a solution that tackles it from all angels. There's an awkward silence as she scribbles some notes. I look at my husband and we both raise our eyebrows inquisitively.

Randomly back on board Dr IM starts the interrogation:
* What do you eat?
* Do you know cancer loves sugar?
* How much water do you drink?
* How much exercise do you do?
* Do you get out in the sun?
* What time do you go to bed?
* Do you sleep through?
* Do you know what meditation is?
* Are you a stressed person?
* Do you know what a saliva test is?

As I try to answer each question she interrupts me - in fact she interrupts herself regularly as well. Her staccato style conversation has both my husband and I hiding our smiles. At some points she gets so excited she runs over to an 8ft book shelf. On the shelves are hundreds of handouts and photocopies. She snaps up certain papers, clicks her tongue in disapproval, keeps burrowing then triumphantly throws some handouts in my lap.

At the end of our hour together I'm exhausted and Dr IM is chatting away happily about how she eats fish and a cup of seasonal vegetables for dinner EVERY night. "Don't you get bored?!" I ask. "It's just food" she says and there in lies one (of a few) fundamental differences I sense we have.

I leave her office with a new diet, a new meditation schedule, a new supplements program (8 in total [though I never actually bought them but that's a discussion for another post...]) and a new headache! I'll post these new regimes next.

Surprisingly I also leave with a new resolve to realistically challenge each aspect of my life - to make sure I'm filling the right buckets! I'm more and more convinced that busy is not happy, in fact busy is just the new black and it's helping no-one, particularly not me.