Without complementary medicine, I don’t know where we would be.
This is the story of a child who wants nothing more than to play professional sport when he grows up and, as his parents, we want nothing more than to help him achieve his goal.
Born with the cord around his neck, Jack’s little life might never have happened if it wasn’t for the quick and capable actions of our obstetrician and midwives.
We are ever grateful for the support offered by the hospital system for his safe delivery.
Over the next 3-4 years, Jack experienced many health issues that we handled through the medical system. Only problem was, Jack’s health was not improving. In fact, things were intensifying.
By age 2, his health picture looked something like this:
One year we spent Christmas Eve in the hospital because of severe respiratory distress.
At this point, we were advised to stock up on cortisone cream for his eczema, asthma medications, spacers etc, because he was going to need them for his whole life.
We began to ask ourselves: Is there no other way? Who can help us stop this slide into chronic disease that’s happening before our eyes? This child is 2!
Answers from the medical system: Medication that will causes side-effects, but there’s no alternative.
Answers from complementary health practitioners:
Result: His eczema is almost gone (he only flares up when he has too much sugar). His rhinitis is contained to severe hay fever seasons (and handled with homeopathic remedies), and his croup is gone.
He is now a very capable, fully engaged 11-year-old, and well on the way to his dream of being a sporting professional.
Do we still use the medical system? Absolutely.
Jack was a severe toe-walker and at age 9 had 4 procedures to correct it.
Did we use complementary medicine alongside this treatment? Yes, with great success.
We gave him Arnica post-operation, used homeopathic remedies to assist him in healing from the surgery, and now we use them when his feet are feeling tight and stiff (he says they’re amazing).
This, in addition to Pilates and stretching exercises, is helping to avoid further operations.
Without complementary medicine, I don’t know where we would be.
My gut feeling says we would be costing the medical system a lot of money in PBS funded medications and public hospital treatments.
With access to complementary medicine our family doesn’t burden the public health system and we intend to keep it that way.
Jack, VIC (told by his mother Catherine).