It has been more than four years since I left the conventional health care system and set out to find my own road to health, to control my body and what goes into it, and begin the long and sensitive process of controlling the end of my life. I am on no medications, and take few tests regularly.  When I think of all the medications I was on that doctors told me to take, I shiver. My medicine cabinet used to be crammed with pills, my body crammed with side effects. My cabinet is orderly now, it has some vitamins and band-aids now, and a jar of Almond oil.

This process has been and sometimes remains frightening, as I am assured daily and continuously through a variety of media  – e-mail, social media, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals and medical instiitutions, doctors, friends – that my road to heath will lead to a heart attack, stroke or other debilitating illness. Their warnings have often rung in my ears, embedded themselves in my consciousness, disrupted my sleep. In America, the medical community can’t wait to talk to you when you enter the sixties. I am hunted down with medical information. It even comes through the phone, which rarely rings any more in the cell phone era. Everywhere I go, I find that I am the only person anywhere near my age who is not on a lot of prescription drugs. You can look at this two ways, a friend told me. You are a prophet or you are mad. I have never thought of myself as a prophet.

But still, my health care has evolved and deepened. I see a chiropractor, an MD naturopath, meditation, daily walks and many chores, a massage therapist. I’d include a shaman in that and add that having love in my life is perhaps the healthiest thing I have ever done. I understand there will almost surely be medical issues that required sophisticated diagnoses and technology, and when the time comes, I will go there, of course. Not yet. I have stayed healthy, active and strong. I am proud of myself and I work hard to take care of myself in a variety of ways. I cherish learning about my own body, understanding that food can be one of the most powerful medicines of all.

I want to say I have no arguments with doctors – there are many wonderful ones – or the medicine they practice,which helps many people. People ought to do whatever they want and need to do for themselves. I am not urging anyone else to do a thing, only sharing my own choices. Whenever I wrote about this, there are dozen messages reminding everyone that the conventional health care system does a lot of good things and that people should see doctors. It’s like being reminded that some animals are mistreated. We know it. We need to be reminded that some animals are not, just as we need to be reminded some of us can keep ourselves healthy. I don’t think anybody needs to be reminded of the existence of conventional medicine and medications and procedures. I am reminded of it all day.

An issue cropped up recently. Our new home is smaller than the first Bedlam Farm, and we are heating it most of the day with a wood stove or fireplace. The weather has been very cold and very dry. I love the wood stove but I also find it generates very dry heat. This had led to some dryness. I woke up at night with  dryness which was new and  uncomfortable for me and affected my sleep and breathing. When I wake up at night, it is usually not to good and rosy thoughts and this sinus issue alarmed me, as I had not experienced it before. As often happens in the night, I decided I better get to a doctor. The old way, the old habit, the old fear.

This is it, I thought in my head, the reckoning that will inevitably strike me down for daring to break loose from what is to me a nightmarish system of fear, greed and disconnection. And money.  Mary Shelley would recognize this system, technology and corporate greed run amok, human values and feelings repeatedly brushed aside for efficiency, the mindless use of science and profit.

I called my local health care provider, the doctors I last saw, the ones who assured me of the terrible fate that would befall me if I didn’t take all kinds of pills for all kinds of things I now treat differently.  I could get an appointment in several weeks and it was likely I would need some tests and perhaps a referral. I called my naturopath, who is also an M.D. He returned my call in minutes. There were a number of natural antiobiotic remedies I would try. This was no big deal, he said, it was quite commonplace around wood stoves. I told him I already had a humidifier and a warm air nose inhaler. Great, he said. I went to a local health food store and got holistic treatments he recommended. Oh yes, said the health care store owner. We sell those all day this time of year. Wood stove?

My relief was almost instant. There are still some issues with dryness, but I see that this is very common around wood stoves and I can handle it myself without entering the other system.

I am always struck by the fact that whenever I sent to see a regular physician, I felt sick and unhealthy, my head filled with alarms and thoughts of things I was told might be. Whenever I see a holistic practitioner, I feel healthy. Of course, it is never about money with them, but the joy of health and the wonder of true healing and health. I am never afraid to talk to them, to be honest with them. I am so surprised that I have been managing my health so well. And I have worked hard at it. It feels better to me, but it is not simple or easy, not just a matter of taking some herbs and meditating.  It takes a lot of work and thought.

Even after some years,  and scores of similiar experiences, this all still surprises me. The echoes of the other way still bounce around in my head. It is so difficult to maintain belief when the universe is lined up to tell you that you are wrong and short-sighted. I am not yet always strong in my truth, not yet owning my decisions. I tend to assume I was wrong rather than  that I was right. I am working on that. For me, there is another path to health and it has worked, and I am coming to see it will work for me for a very long time, hopefully all the way. This is about health, for sure but also self-determination. I do have a choice. There are different paths to health. I can control the way I live.  I am so grateful for mine.