Doctor vs. Patient – Who Should You Trust? Molly’s Story
When you discover that you are one of the “1 in 5 women” who have to do battle with the world of infertility, it stings.
You might be thinking:
Why didn’t I know it was going to be this hard to get pregnant? Should I have done something different? Or sooner to ensure my fertility?
But is this really a fair question to ask yourself?
This is what I had to ask my client, Molly, when she came to work with me after an unsuccessful year of trying to get pregnant.
Yes, there were signs and symptoms and protective measures she could have taken to safeguard against infertility, but how would she know this? Did anyone help her to understand what very real risks she was taking with her medical and lifestyle choices (at their direction)?
If there is one thing modern medical professionals have really drilled into our heads, it’s this: “you shouldn’t trust yourself.”
(Psst. That is not a doctor that you want on your fertility team.)
Instead, they want you to trust them…and to do what they say without a whole lot of pushback.
Because of the medical industry’s utter failure to empower couples with the knowledge of options and choices, so many of you, like Molly, have missed some key opportunities to proactively plan for your fertility journey.
But it’s not over yet. You still have some skin in this fight.
And like Molly, it starts with learning your weapons.
Functional Medicine: Finding the Source of the Problem
Maybe over time doctors caused you to doubt your instincts.
Maybe you trusted an industry of professionals that betrayed you.
Or maybe you thought the science was settled…until it wasn’t.
Whatever your unique circumstances, somewhere along the way you forgot how to read the signals your body was giving off to let you know something was not okay.
It’s no wonder women today aren’t taking the time for self-care that they need. You’re taught to grin and bear it. There was just never any urgency or accommodation given to sit down and find out what was wrong.
When I started working with Molly, her body was setting off several alarms that she didn’t know how to read.
She had been experiencing unusually strong PMS symptoms, debilitating headaches, and extreme fatigue for years. This is a common story for many women who have been sold the narrative of a monthly curse. “It’s a part of life. You just have to pull your big girl panties up and carry on.”
(Big eye roll.) Did you know that if your hormones are balanced, they work in concert to support your body…not to torment you?
You do not have to live in pain for a quarter of every month.
During her initial screening, Molly also identified cold hands and feet, constipation, post-nasal drip, decreased libido, and anemia…all things that she thought seemed minor or unrelated to her fertility.
If Molly had known that these symptoms were alerting her to a deeper, underlying source, she would have been able to address it much sooner.
So why weren’t her doctors digging for an answer? And why hadn’t Molly realized that all of her symptoms were connected?
The Lost Art of Intuition
Listening to your body is a lost art. On any given day your body is sending you all kinds of stimuli to help you monitor your health and well-being. When you are in excruciating pain, it’s easy to tell something is wrong.
But what if it’s a mild symptom? Or a chronic annoyance which you have just resigned to accept? Perhaps your signs aren’t obvious or even noticeable anymore.
If that’s the case, it may be time to reset the scales, tune in to your body, and learn to trust your intuition again.
This is where a functional medical approach really has its time to shine.
For Molly, we began with a whole process of releasing the bad habits and the limiting beliefs. This included my protocol for a full fertility detox.
Cleansing the body of built up toxins allowed us to get a baseline assessment of Molly’s current health. From there, she was able to start taking notice of how her body felt and how that related to the hormonal levels in her body.
This is one of the most important ways I teach my clients to take back control over their healthcare. You cannot fix what you don’t know is broken. And you deserve to know every single thing about your body that your doctors do.
Trusting your gut begins with having all the information available to you; and functional medicine certainly helps!
Taking Back Control
The second phase working with my clients is when we thoroughly investigate their past and present symptoms to get a complete framework of the underlying issues. Molly had previously undergone surgery to remove uterine fibroids and an ovarian cyst. At that time, doctors discovered Molly had stage 3 endometriosis and she was informed that she had “poor egg quality.”
While Molly’s doctors were treating her endometriosis and helping her manage those symptoms, her desire to have a baby continued to grow. She didn’t want to accept that she would just have to learn to live with all of the havoc her disorder had wreaked on her body. What she really wanted was to continue exploring ways to overcome the challenges her condition presented.
And this is when Molly decided to trust her gut and take back the steering wheel for her own healthcare by veering into functional medicine.
So I was brought on to focus on her main fertility goal: to improve egg quality and increase her chances of a successful IVF transfer.
After digging through Molly’s medical history, I recommended she begin to follow my Functionally Fit Fertility Method to begin repairing some of the damage in her body. We addressed her unique challenges with hormonal imbalances and dysregulations, gut health, nutrient deficiencies, as well as chronic stress.
Before long we began to see significant pain reduction during her cycles. Her blood sugar levels improved as we focused on a balance of macros and closely monitoring her glucose levels. Together with the stress management techniques we used, her energy was effectively restored. We addressed her gut health with a parasite treatment and a healthy diet plan, resulting in the end of her constipation issues. Even her cold hands and feet resolved.
We had successfully started to chip away at the multiple problems that had kept her from maintaining a healthy pregnancy.
And the best news of all: Molly’s next IVF retrieval was a success! At the end of 7 months working together, Molly became pregnant with a baby girl. Something that was made possible with the use of functional medicine.
What About You?
I’ve talked to hundreds of women like Molly who have lost their voice and their confidence on this journey through infertility.
Including me. When doctors told me that I would never be able to have children after my first traumatic pregnancy, I felt so abandoned.
So please know that you’re not alone.
And more importantly, know that doctors don’t always have the will of a mama.
You can do hard things, friend. Impossible things. And I would love to come along side you and advocate for you every step of the way. Give functional medicine a try,
Learn more about working with Dr. Mandy and her approach here.
