Mind And Body

One of the flaws in our healthcare system here in the US is that the mind and the body are treated separately. It has taken a couple decades for me to find a primary physician, and OB/GYN, and a psychiatrist who will actually talk to each other about what is best for me.

Communication between health care providers really is vital. For instance, my hormones were so out of wack thanks to polycystic ovary syndrome that I would dive into a suicidal depression every month. I took depo shots every month, but I was still having major problems. I also had pain from fibroids and cysts. My three main providers. had a conference call to determine if it would benefit me to have a hysterectomy. They decided the surgery was necessary and the three still keep in touch to make sure I have the right hormone replacements to keep my moods even.

My primary physician and my psychiatrist also keep in touch because of my chronic pain, which always affects my mental state. I have widespread osteoarthritis as well as chronic nerve pain in my neck and shoulders. If the pain is bad, my mental state deteriorates. For instance, right now we are having a typical February in the Desert Southwest. During the day, it gets up into the low 60s, which is wonderful. But then it drops down to the high 20s at night. The fluctuations make my arthritis flare up and then I tense up, which worsens the nerve pain. The pain right now is triggering my depression and my OCD, which is a bad combination. I want to pick at my skin and pull out my eyelashes. I also want to scrub everything because I can "see" germs on every surface. But the pain and depression sap all my energy so I can't do much. Not being able to satisfy my OCD worsens the depression and if I don't keep on top of the pain and depression it can trigger a psychotic episode. This happened a couple of years ago and I ended up in the hospital for two weeks until we got it under control.

Thanks to my doctors talking to each other, I now have medications and other methods to keep the pain under control. If they were working separately like most do, I would face hospitalization every winter. Also, my primary physician now has me going to a pain clinic to deal with the nerve pain. And he is staying on top of what the new doctors are doing so that the new treatments and medications don't clash with what I am already taking.

This sort of communication between health care providers really needs to be the norm, not a rarity. We need to start thinking of the mind and the body as one thing, not separate.