Concerns - just a little over 2 weeks to surgery

So here I am not really that long to go to the surgery. As to my last post, I've been working on my stomach problems with a natropath which have improved a great deal but aren't 100%. I've been told by my surgeon that I must cease all herbal/natural remedies 10 days before the surgery (I understand why) which of course doesn't leave that long. I guess my fear at this stage is that all the hard work I've done will be down the tubes because of what the anesthetic will do to my gut. What a lot of conventional medicos don't want to admit is that there are many problems they can't explain that stem from having gut and bowel problems.

An example of my concern is that I have been trying to get rid of candida but the surgeon tells me that I will have to have a dose of oral antibiotics the day before the surgery which of course is the worse **** thing for candida and consistent yearly use of antibiotics (for tonsilitis since I was 21) are one of the reasons I have probably ended up with a problem gut. I tried to talk to my surgeon and GP about the candida and they could only see the problem as being thrush - I couldn't make them understand that thrush is just one of the symptoms of candida. I've run the gamut of conventional treatments for it and really have only made headway with the natural treatments. My surgeon took a vaginal swab at the time and said he could only see some "irritation" and seemed to insinuate that there wasn't any sign of it. I felt humiliated and angry - I've had candida quite a number of times so of course I know what the **** symptoms are! I felt like yelling at him "Want to take a look at my undies and fuzzy tongue and tell me I don't have it?"

What I'm trying to say is that I have been taking control of my health in the last 4 months and making progress and I feel very worried that everything will be taken out of my hands when I go to hospital and that my stomach problems may cause some complications.

I know its natural to fear a situation where you don't have control and give that to complete strangers but I also fear that they won't listen to me. My natropath says get out of hospital as fast as you possibly can after the surgery but of course they won't let you go (if everything else is okay) unless your bowel/gut is working which I'm afraid it won't. Maybe I'm just worrying about nothing but I guess this is the place to vent your fears. I'm quite an educated and rational (albeit emotional) person but every time I talk to the surgeon I feel like an emotional idiot!

I know how you feel. A lot of practitioners of western medicine seem to have real problems listening to and respecting their patients' experiences. I much prefer practitioners who are willing to acknowledge that I'm an equal participant in the healing process, but when it comes to surgery, that isn't always possible. Fortunately, I had a respectful surgeon, and my hospital was pretty open to alternative healing modalities. I wish more were as good about it.

In my case, I'd been seeing an acupuncturist, and wanted to see her as soon as possible after my surgery, to get my system back in balance and speed the healing process. Ideally, you'll only be in the hospital for a couple of days, which hopefully won't be enough time to undo all of the hard work you've been doing.

I think some of the problem may be not that the doctors don't care or see you as an equal in your healthcare (although some don't) but that they are not educated in herbs and such as natural healers. The are only trained in synthetic medicines and don't really know anything about natual remedies.

This is actually something I have been wanting to learn more about as I have gas and bloating and the runs almost constantly but there is nothing my dr can see that is wrong. So that is a problem and I am going to learn how to work on this myself.

Once you have gotten through the surgery, you can get back on track with the things that are working for you, but for now, you really have to follow their instructions. If you don't feel you can do that, you should probably keep looking for a surgeon who is willing to work with you on the bowel issues. Best of luck to you!