You Like Me, You Really Like Me

By Bill Benda, MD, FACEP, FAAEM
2011 Naturopathic Champion Award Winner

Dr. Benda accepts the Naturopathic Champion Award at the 2011 AANP Convention Gala.

I received an award at August’s AANP annual convention at the Biltmore, a brand new one entitled the Champion Award, which from this time onward will be given to a non-naturopathic individual recognized for his or her contributions to the field. It was a bit of a bittersweet moment, for a number of reasons, which, in my semi-shocked and semi-intoxicated state, I revealed to the gathered audience of several hundred.

You see, since the end of my second term on the AANP Board this past January, I have been contemplating my interprofessional affair with naturopathic medicine. I’ve come to realize that this relationship has followed the course of most of the intimate personal romances I’ve wandered through during my adult life: the shy, hesitant initial contact; the heady discovery of mutual interests; flirtations via email; commitment to a two-year trial, followed by another. The inevitable red flags, mixed messages, minor jealousies, extraorganizational dalliances, threats of abandonment. And finally, that inevitable choice to be made as we separate: Can we still be friends? If only for the children?

But more on this in a minute.

Back to the award presentation. After Sally LaMont came to my table and explained that I really had to step up on the stage and say a few words, I made my way to the microphone and, given that I had no clue and therefore no opportunity to prepare, had no other option than to blurt out what I had been thinking just minutes before.

I revealed that I had spent that particular day in my hotel room on the bed watching bad television and figuring out how to extricate myself from the evening gala without too much notice. How to weather the emotions that arrive whenever a relationship changes. I actually revealed to the audience that whenever I’ve thought of naturopathic physicians over the past decade I’ve felt a combination of a “deep love and a desire to kill you.” Really, I said that. It came from years of appreciation of brilliance and commitment, as well as exasperation with avoidance of dealing with internal issues. The irony of helping a profession with such beautiful and pure principals while constantly hearing about the evils of my own chosen vocation. The puzzled looks when I brought up my frustrations to my fellow Board members, as in “What are you talking about?”

Ah, well. The good news is that we will still be friends, especially for the children, as I get to continue working with Naturopathic Medical Student Association leadership knowing that they will be college deans and presidents and AANP officers and Board members in just a few years. And that I can still maintain some sort of contribution to our health-care system outside of the daily grind.

And there is something else I said on that stage that I know to be true, and will always believe to be true. Something I’ve preached and written and lectured about and sort of made my own personal integrative crusade. And that is that, when we get down to it, there are no MDs, or NDs, or RNs, or DOs in this world. No titles, no social standing, no one-upmanship. There are simply people who have chosen a particular path in their desire to help their fellow human. It is, I believe, how some of us choose to manifest love—not something we feel, or express through song, or poetry, or touch. Love is simply what we are, and it is made manifest in all of its beauty by what we do when another needs us to act on their behalf. It is this—not the money, or prestige, or social conscience—that makes the insanity of working in such a dysfunctional system tolerable. And makes living such a complex and, at times, such a painful life end up being worthwhile.

So thank you, everybody. I like you, too.

The End of the Innocence

By Bill Benda, MD, FACEP, FAAEM

Photo by tibchris via Flickr, used under the Creative Commons License.

Yes, the time has come. After four captivating (and at times interminable) years, the “let’s let an MD on the Board” experiment has come to its predetermined end and the data has been analyzed. The following is my technical report:

It was very interesting.

It was interesting to learn that our commonality was actually based more upon similarities in personality and style then clinical expertise or professional ideology. Idealistic, aggressive, principled, paranoid, outspoken, insecure, clear on others’ shortcomings but in denial of our own, tilting at windmills to save the world – naturopathic medicine has been more a mirror of my own life than anything allopathic medicine has had to offer in 35 years of practice.

It was interesting to discover that our future lies in fact upon the shoulders of our students, and not in the posturing and proclamations of those who claim to really, really know what is best for us.

It was interesting to feel the buffeting between the forces of science and intuition, observing the quick footwork as “evidence-based medicine” shuffles to keep up with the fact that evidence constantly changes with the analytical tides, while intuition remains an immovable constant that no academic text or research submission can ever hope to emulate.

It was interesting to experience the unceasing anger and derision directed at my own professional heritage, allopathic medicine, partly deserved in your struggle for equity, and partly an old story somehow needing to be retold within every conference hall or blog conversation.

It was interesting to feel like a father at a birth, not really allowed to get my hands into the actual delivery, but still knowing I had something to do with the blessed event, even now as I cut the cord.

It was actually far more than simply interesting – it was exhilarating, and painful, and fulfilling, and empty, and all the things we feel when we really do commit to a relationship knowing full well that it will someday come to an end. But of course I cannot hope to write of these things and expect they will be allowed in print, so I will leave this at goodbye.

So goodbye, dear naturopaths – I leave you in mostly good hands, grateful for the time that I have had with you, and how my life is the better for it. Goodbye to my fellow board members past and present – hopefully you have grown as I have, but with a fraction of the irascibility and frustration. Goodbye to Karen and David and Jan and all who have dedicated your emotional lives to this profession – you can still call on me to be your hit man from time to time if you find you just can’t pull the trigger yourselves.

Goodbye. Another adventure awaits . . .

The One True Way

By Bill Benda, MD, FACEP, FAAEM

Image by Nick Bygon via Flickr, used under the Creative Commons License.

Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya - what a wild month February has brought to the area we call the Middle East. What began as a singular objection to dictatorial rule has been spreading like a desert wildfire, and as with such conflagrations, holds both the potential of destruction and the promise of new growth from clearing out old deadwood. What is notable to those of us living half way around the planet is the undercurrent of excitement we feel with each passing news report of populist demonstration, triumph, and, possibly, democracy. Our uniquely American system of government may soon take root in a land of perpetual unrest and war, freeing the populace to seek the freedoms and capitalistic success we have come to enjoy.

Or likely not.

One of the idiosyncrasies of a privileged society is tunnel vision – if it works for us, it must be the best for everyone. Our old ally Sir Winston Churchill remarked, “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” John Adams? “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” And of course, George Bernard Shaw: “Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.” So why am I talking about this on the AANP blog?

Because I’ve noticed over the past few years that we in the “integrative” field tend to believe that ours is the “one true medicine,” depending of course upon what our chosen field happens to be. Naturopaths believe naturopathy is. Holistic MDs believe holistic medicine is. Homeopaths believe homeopathy is. As with religion – Christians believe Christianity is the one true faith. Muslims believe Islam is. Hindus believe Hinduism is. Buddhists believe nothing is. Isn’t what we personally believe the One True Way?

Likely not.

Our way, whether political, or religious, or medical, is not at all best for everyone else. But you would not know this from attending political campaigns, or church services, or annual conferences of any of the aforementioned guild organizations. And the primary problem with our devotion to our own profession is the irresistible urge to convert others, patients and practitioners alike, to our perspective, an urge that results in uncountable energies devoted to rehabilitating the unbelievers (always a failed strategy) rather than in creating continuity and tranquility within our own chosen, flawed system. And eventually we waste, exhaust, and murder ourselves.

Egypt and her extended family of repressed countries may not become democracies, but they will become what they choose or are forced to become, whether socialist, parliamentary, or remaining monarchies or dictatorships. American health care will likely not become holistic, or naturopathic, or integrative, but it will not remain allopathic either. It will become what it will become via known and unknown forces. The key for us is to not worry so much about how we can fix everyone else’s blindness to our perfection, but about how we can fix our own little professional realms. Are our students happy? Are our members heard? Are our leaders leading? These are the questions we need to pursue, beyond “are we evidence-based?” or “can we get CPT codes?” The latter questions hold definite merit, but need be servants to the former. Because the One True Way is always inward.