Pushing Back

    

                                                                                                 -by Seth 

    Checking the mail is always fun and exciting. I grew up within walking distance of the local post office which meant no rural delivery for us, so this whole "having my very own mailbox right at the end of the road" thing is still kind of new. And before the fiasco that is healthcare it was enjoyable. Now it generally means some new and banal waste of tree pulp and money to either tell me something I already know or reverse some decision made the week prior. The latest was a nursery card from hell for Ilya:

      A creepy, but I guess within in realm of "baby appropriate" outside opened to reveal an aggressive immunization schedule along with a message from the powers that be to "get those shots!".  Not a suggestion, not a piece of objective information I could take or leave, but an ultimatum. A demand. And I was done. There's no more ignoring this attitude of complete superiority and dismissal of parental control (not to mention intelligence). If it's ever to stop we have to be the ones to stop it. 

     So instead of burning the card, which is generally my first impulse with junk mail (it's not vindictive, it's just the easiest way of dealing with the loads and loads of paper), I decided to send it back with the following letter:

     Dear Mr. Albert,

     I recently received this card - I am returning it to you as it is not only inapplicable to my life, it is offensive. I am not one to take umbrage at every little slight, so please understand my full meaning in saying this. While I appreciate you concern for my child, it is in no way your responsibility to dictate my healthcare decisions.

     There is a disturbing trend of professionals, such as yourself, feeling the need to act in loco parentis both to parents and simultaneously, through them, to their children. I will not tolerate that. Whether your guidance is good or bad is irrelevant, the problem lies in considering yourself more capable of making medical decisions for people you've never met than the parents who are raising them. This is grossly misguided.

     I am perfectly capable of discerning, among other things, which vaccines to get when, and if I need your advice I will ask for it. Until then please refrain from further patronizing attempts to "educate" me. 

                                                                                       sincerely-

                                                                                    Seth P. Goepel

   Most likely it will enter the trash unread (probably unopened) but that's not important. Because there's the chance it will be seen and maybe even provoke a reaction. And if we don't start pushing back at the little things - the attitudes, the casual implications - then we can't expect life to start improving. And now it's your turn.

  

Changing Doctors...

We've been blessed with an ideal pediatrician, a family doctor who truly cares about our family and tends to Yarrow with gentleness and good sense. We adore him, and Yarrow looks forward to her annual check up. 

"My doctor is a nice doctor!" she says, "My doctor doesn't try to shoot me."

She's horrified by the idea of 'doctors who shoot kids', and by dentists, though the thought of acupuncture doesn't bother her at all.

We tend to avoid vaccinations and with all the arguments over vaccines on the internet, she's gotten nervous from the many photos of kids 'being shot'. I've tried to clarify, "these doctors are trying to help, honey, they aren't being mean.." but Yarrow will have none of it. Thanks to my recent issue with platelets, Yarrow's decided that it's easier to assume all these children have low platelets and are getting their blood checked. I let her hold onto the idea, as it's not as scary for her.

Her doctor is supportive of our decision to keep away from immunizations, he'd made the same decision for his own child, and prefers to encourage building a natural immunity, eating well, and keeping medications to a minimum. We feel safe and well cared for with him. I couldn't wait to introduce him to Ilya.

But perhaps this winter was too harsh for him, as it was for many people. Our doctor is leaving us for southern weather this spring. Ilya won't get to meet him, and we're in search of a new doctor. It's a rough search, and harder now that I have such high expectations of my pediatrician.

I've heard horror stories from friends of pushy doctors arguing over immunizations in front of the children, and I can only imagine Yarrow's response. My tender girl hates arguments, fears shots, and is deeply protective of her 'precious and honored Baby Ilya' (I've no idea where she came up with 'precious and honored', really I don't!). 

Ideally, I'd have picked a naturopath to replace our dear, naturally-minded doctor, but our insurance (which we have to have under the ACA) refuses to cover naturopaths. I'm tempted to find an acceptable primary care doctor and a naturopath and treat the latter as the kids' true primary doctor, but it seems excessive. Do I really need two doctors anyway? As of today I've gotten a few recommendations, and had a lovely conversation with a naturopathic doctor in the area. There's a lot to think about though, and right now, I'm just going to open a beer and think about how much I wish we could just stay with our current doctor. We're really going to miss him!

How do you go about choosing doctors for yourself and/or your children?

What do you value in a doctor?

Ilya's last check-up with the midwives is just a week away, so I suppose I should find someone sooner rather than later, especially as our doctor was very popular, and his move is going to 'flood the market' with people looking for that rare, nurturing doctor, one who will actually encourage them to take charge of their and their children's health, with his full support and understanding.

Wish me luck!

A House Divided

A guest post by Seth:

I’m all for strong statements. They make a great impression, they’re eye-catching, they’re a great way to start college admissions essays. With the gumption to back them up, bold declarative statements are a political speech writer’s dream. Well handled, a strong position is akin to a rallying battle-cry, calling the masses to make a decision and choose a side. Only once the lines are drawn can the onslaught begin, because a rallying cry is not a charge, not a command to advance. It is not unheard of for a rousing speech to sway ones antagonists as well as riling the spirits of those already in agreement. Of course, this refers to good rhetoric, liberally applied and valiantly delivered. Such is not the case with Butters.

Butters is a well-known Catholic apologist whose name is completely something else. But since he is merely a case-study in an epidemic, charity would demand he be granted some anonymity, even if it is only as effective as those black rectangles placed over patients eyes in pictures of disease and anatomical abnormalities.

Butters recently saw fit to publicly share an article whose topic was vaccinations but whose subject seemed to be anger at those more affluent than the author. The article itself is negligible; poorly reasoned and even more poorly written it is simply another example of how far internet emotionalism has destroyed not only logic but basic sentence-structure. I assume it will have no lasting effect. More to the point is Butters’ statement preceding the link: “Anti-vaxxers are dangerous people who kill children. As a grandfather of two little girls, I give their quackery no quarter. None.”As far as strong statements go, that one gets full marks for aggression. Follow-through and charity are another story altogether…

Maybe Butters was having a bad day. Maybe every little thing made his blood boil and rational thoughts were hard to come by at the time. We’ve all been there and know what it’s like. But the immediacy of the internet is a pitfall not easily avoided in such circumstances; back when thoughts were written down, edited, reviewed and only then broadcast for public consumption, there was at least some hope that the slimy mud of vitriol would wear off, revealing the hard stone of keen insight (or the even denser muddy clump of idiocy) beneath. In our “need to know” “it’s my right” “just push the button” society, we bypass all that and get this. An ill-advised, angry spiel from someone who should know better. And by that I only partially mean “a Catholic apologist.” I mostly mean “an adult.”

Instant feedback gives a look at the ensuing fallout from such a statement; the comment box is full to the brim with a hackneyed debate consisting of some well-thought out and some emotionally fragile statements from various viewpoints. Unfortunately, not enough time passed for Butters to collect his own thoughts and calculate what a Christ-like approach might be. Instead he flits to and fro, pruning his rapidly withering fig tree with increasingly duller shears. Some of his comments include: (in response to another commenter) “You are a dangerous person and you have the blood of every unvaccinated child killed by preventable disease on your hands. I don't let dangerous accomplices to murder on my wall”, “…I do run into ignorant dangerous people who have the blood of thousands of unvaccinated children on their hands” and “Anti-vaxxer [sic] are helping to kill children… I don't take kindly to people who threaten the lives of my grand-daughters. Call that "selfserving" if you like. And call it "vitriol" if you like when I tell you that those who threaten the lives of my grand-children have no place on my wall”. After this has gone on for awhile he comes up with this statement: “I said nothing about non-vaccinating parents being killers. Parents may have all sort of legit reason for not vaccinating their child. What I say is that people who spread anti-vax propaganda have blood on their hands because they teach people who *should* be vaccinating their children to leave them exposed to diseases that kill them”. A nicety that in a more refined setting might not come across as splitting hairs so much as making fine distinctions. But the article he shared that began the whole debate bears the singular title Rich, Educated and Stupid Parents are Driving the Vaccination Crisis (for the record I altered it slightly; words and punctuation remain unaltered but I did capitalize some more words so it actually looked like, you know, a title).

How can we expect to evangelize when this is how we treat each other? I had a history professor who began her class informing us that while she would try to present her material as plainly as possible everyone has biases, both the historians who recorded the information and herself, the best we could do is recognize that and work around it. By assuming anyone disagreeing with our biases is either blindly (and idiotically) ignorant or criminally dangerous we do a disservice to ourselves, those we hope to educate, and logic itself. 

Quotidian Notes

My thoughts have been all over the place this week. Easter is a wonderful season, and we've been celebrating right along with God. The weather changed decisively this week, I have crocuses blossoming in the garden, tulips popping up, and the snow-piles are almost gone!

Today the wind is powerful. It's blowing our little Easter flags and threatening to steal my laundry from the line. Yarrow is sleeping heavy on the big bed, and has been since Bushia and Dziadzia left this afternoon. She's exhausted. Sometimes the wind is too loud for her, and her tired little eyes flutter, but they fall back down as soon as it's passed.

* * * *  * * * * 

Social media is always interesting. Last week a friend of mine 'liked' a blogger's status and facebook showed me the post. It was a venomous-sort of post against those of us who've decided not to vaccinate our kids. I when I read it, I felt a deep, lasting sort of frustration: "stay away from my family, stay away from my kids" the poster wrote in her comments, and I wondered if, meeting Yarrow, she would say the same to my healthy, glowing little elf. 

I wanted to share something in response. Another friend had shown me an article that expressed so much of my feelings in response to the first post, but I don't like starting facebook wars, and I didn't want to give to my vaccinating friends the feelings I'd gotten. I love my friends. I want them to feel loved when they read what I share, I never want them to hear me say "stay away from my family" - even when we disagree..I respect your intelligence, I respect your love and devotion to your children's best interests, but if you join in on some of those "let's hate on all the 'hippies' with their un-vaccinated kids and their midwives!" rants, I won't respect your sense of Charity much, because those threads are just mean-spirited.

* * * *  * * * *

Yarrow's grandparents were up visiting this Easter. I think they had lots of fun...

 don't you?

They really did have fun..just not right then. Visiting during mud-season after the winter-from-hell..well, we're just lucky the car was as easy to get out as it was. Seth and I had just spent the morning digging out our own car, and two in one morning makes me want to close the yurt to visitors for the months of March and April. Just a little bit..Yarrow though, loved the whole 'getting free' process. Start to finish. She's rugged like that.

* * * *  * * * *

While they were up we left Yarrow with both sets of grands and went out to the Gastropub. We've been looking forward to it forever, but Lent sort of got in the way.. Our Easter date was Honey Siracha wings, beers, and yummy fries with garlic aoli!  Oh my goodness it was amazing. 

Afterwards we went to the Tap House - pretty much our favorite bar ever..and got into a fascinating conversation with a woman there..the introvert in me wanted to just hole up in a corner chair with Seth, but the other (smaller, weaker) part of me enjoyed our conversation. A happy pagan, she didn't get my love of the Church, the inescapable link in my life between magic and Christ..we invited her up to the house some time - to meet our birches and our Icons, and to continue the conversation..It might go better without so many Monsoons in me, or maybe the drinks helped me be less internal, more able to share?

Blessed Easter Week all!