by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
My last post recounted an experience with an MS patient who seemed to prefer her disease to being cured because of the greater attentiveness and intimacy she felt it stirred in her husband. Not all patients will be so clear about their unconscious driving forces, but...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Early in my practice, I saw a patient, a psychologist, who had developed MS six months prior. She arrived in a wheelchair, guided in by her husband, who was also a patient of mine. I conducted a 2-hour interview and felt fairly certain of the treatment. A mere six...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post I introduced two patients with sequelae of polio. A male patient was looking to improve his condition so as to care for his wife who developed Alzheimer’s and a female patient want to improve her conditions so that she would not be compelled to settle...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
For a second illustration of how important is a patient’s subjective meaning of their symptoms, I want to compare two different patients affected with the sequelae of polio. Both received the same treatment. I treated them both with a technique called BowenFirst™, a...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last two posts I introduced the case study of a 67-year-old whose subjective experience of her diagnosis was continually ignored by the objective assessment and plan of a health care regime that was oblivious to her story of her injury. (Reviewing the past two...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In my last post I introduced the case study of a 67-year-old whose subjective experience of her diagnosis left her so unsatisfied that her story of the incident actually changed. (Rereading the prior post might offer a helpful refresher.) This was just the beginning...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health, Addressing Your Pain
I promised over the next several posts to explore some examples of the innate knowledge in the meaning that patients’ read into their illness. The first is a 67-year-old female who fractured her patella bracing herself from a fall. When first interviewed, the patient...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post we looked at how the subjective description of a patient’s condition actually embodied much more knowledge about a patient’s condition than is commonly recognized. This could be a valuable resource for a doctor. How does such knowledge actually fare...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
I concluded my last post emphasizing that the patient’s subjective presentation of symptoms does not exist in a vacuum. I pointed out that patients often describe what their condition based on what they “feel” is happening, or with fear of what they “think” is...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In an earlier set of posts, I’ve addressed the SOAP formula (Subjective, objective assessment and plan) which is supposed to inform doctor note-taking with new patients. In the next set of posts, I want to explore the subjective-objective aspect of the SOAP formula...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
My last post concluded by raising the importance of meaning in treatment. Having patients share their interpretation of what their symptoms mean is the most effective way of helping them regain their health. Implicit the self-diagnosis is the solution. My experience...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
By this point, anyone who has been following this series of blog posts will realize that an integrative approach to health is necessary, encompassing the patient’s full understanding and commitment to therapy. Treating a “disease” without treating the person who...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
What is the doctor’s role in the disillusion of patients suffering in pain? Does our failure to fully disclose the subtleties of dealing with pain, opting for the easy short term “solution,” play a destructive role? Research in psychoneuroimmunology shows the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In my last post, I discussed how understanding the mind-body connection enables doctor’s to better LISTEN to symptoms. Toward the end, I cited the case of pain as an illustration. Today I want to explore that topic a little more deeply. Consider the experience of...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The term “prescription” requires exploring the patient-doctor relationship. It should reaffirm the doctor’s purpose, opening up the healing dialogue. My conviction is that the body’s symptoms call upon us to LISTEN: they’re trying to say something. This is true of...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
My last post warned of the dangers in treating the patient’s symptoms as an inventory of body parts to be discretely assessed. An antidote to this misguided thinking is in recognizing the mind-body connection. Understanding the factors which may have contributed to a...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Having considered the subjective and objective aspect of the SOAP process, today I want to discuss the last two parts of that acronym: the assessment and plan steps. I’ll lean on current research in psychoneuroimmunology and pain to illustrate that the categories used...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post, as part of an examination of the SOAP concept, informing doctor note taking for initial patient interviews, I explored the meaning of the idea of “subjective.” Today I’ll look at the next term in that acronym, “objective.” I actually call into...
