Chapter 8
Don't Trust Doctors
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and
whose trust IS the LORD.”
—Jeremiah 17:10
Why Don’t I Trust Doctors?
Less than a 5-minute read
The truth is I was born not trusting doctors. Even though this statement may seem fabricated or exaggerated, it is, however, true. I am the sixth of seven children who survived. My mother’s first child, a son, was stillborn, which completely devastated my mother, who had always wanted and dreamed of a large family after becoming an only child—her younger, Richard, was just six years old when he passed from this life to the next in a drowning accident (that you can read about in my children’s book, Blessed Are the Meek “Rejected for Good”).
Immediately after my mother woke up from the horrors of her “twilight sleep,” that was all the rage until the women became enraged after they discovered the truth about this barbaric way for women to give birth—she had to face an even greater nightmare—she was told her son was stillborn. Realizing that her baby, the child she had carried for a full nine months, which was active and kicking even while she was in labor, had not lived—it’s no wonder she delayed going to the hospital when she went into labor with my oldest brother.
Fear gripped my mother the moment she went into labor, so rather than going into the hospital once they arrived, she told my father to turn around and drive back home, “It isn’t time.” Once they arrived home and pulled into our driveway, she told him to turn around; she needed to go to the hospital. Each time my father would arrive at either destination, my mother asked him to turn around. My father is no saint, and I’m sure I’d have heard if he ever became impatient with my mother, but he never did. My father loved my mother so much and was wise enough not to do whatever she asked him.
As the labor got closer and closer to delivery, my father continued driving until I was told she began to push. Ultimately, my brother was born in the emergency room after laboring while driving back and forth between the hospital and home. Almost all of us were born the same way, in the emergency room. My mother was clearly a pioneer during the period of time when twilight sleep was in vogue.
It finally changed after her eighth pregnancy, "new beginnings." After losing two daughters during my mother’s mid-trimester, not to mention that these baby girls followed the birth of my brother, who weighed 13-pound (5.9 kilograms), and to this day still holds the record at that hospital—because, of course, doctors don’t let anybody carry babies past their due dates (now they are induced) it's understandable why doctors were concerned, I was born. But let me back up...
When my mother was four or five months pregnant with me and was told while at her doctor’s appointment to “go next door to the hospital for a therapeutic abortion” they had scheduled, she thankfully made her way to the nearest phone booth and phoned my father weeping, explaining what had just happened. My father said he immediately knew something had to be horribly wrong to get a phone call while on set at the studio and also because my mother was crying to the point she could hardly speak.
My mother explained that her doctor told her that the baby wouldn’t live, me, and because of her health, if she chose to carry the baby, she, too, would die—hence, she needed an abortion to “save the life of the mother” was normally (even back then) unchallenged. And the moment my mother tried to explain that she couldn’t do something like that (after suffering the loss of 3 babies), her doctor shamed her into complying. He told her that her husband, my father, would not be able to take care of the five children she would leave behind, and once again, he told her emphatically she would not live.
Nevertheless, once my father listened to everything, he calmly said, “Grace, go home. I am going to call Dr. Ward” (an amazing man with 13 children of his own). So that is how I came into this world, knowing how wrong doctors can be and thankful that not only were her doctors wrong about my mother dying—my mother lived to see 21 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.
So, by now, I’m sure you are beginning to understand how I truly could have been born not trusting doctors, right?
Yet, the truth is I wasn’t just born not trusting doctors. I was actually raised not to trust doctors. The doctors who assured my mother she would not live, nor would I, were wrong. Instead, I was a very healthy 10 lbs. 11 oz., 4.84 kg. and to prove this further, my mother went on to half my younger when she was 41 years old, a sister, and once again, she didn’t die. My mother lived until she was 82.
Another interesting fact I didn’t know happened while I was on the phone with my father’s insurance company after his passing. My father worked in television and movie studios, and their insurance is called the Motion Picture Health and Welfare (that has more money than it knows what to do with since every star, director, and producer pays into it).
So after my father passed away in 1995, I wanted to make sure all the doctors, hospice nurses, and the hospital had been paid when suddenly they asked, "When did your mother pass away?" I was a bit taken aback and told them she was still living. They replied, “That’s impossible! Our last record of her going to the doctor was in 1958.” I immediately answered by saying, “Would that be on January 7, 1958, because that is my younger sister's birthday?" Due to her lack of trust in doctors, she never saw another doctor. My mother passed away at home when her Physician said it was time to come home.
Nevertheless, my mother did take us to the doctor occasionally, but we were rarely ever sick. Most often, it was due to an accident, a broken bone, or bleeding, or when someone needed stitches, she wouldn’t hesitate. As far as her seeking the help of a physician, she never ever sought their help again.
All the same, this isn't the only reason I formed my strong conviction not to trust doctors.
Cursed is the Man Who Trusts in Mankind
God says, “Thus says the LORD, 'Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust IS the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes, but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.’” Jeremiah 17:5-10
My conviction became stronger after years and dozens upon dozens of errors, missed diagnoses, and also the fact that they readily admit they are “practicing” medicine. All the while, they make you believe they provide a cure— when instead, they are simply “treating“ our ailments because only God can cure us and heal us!
“He said, ‘You must obey [or listen to the voice of] the Lord your God and do what he says is right [L is right in his eyes/sight]. If you obey all his commands [statutes, ordinances, requirements] and keep his rules, I will not bring on you any of the sicknesses [diseases] I brought on the Egyptians. I am the Lord who heals you [your physician].’” Exodus 15:26
Why Don’t I Personally Trust Doctors?
Less than a 4-minute read
Here’s another story.
Even though I’d had plenty of situations for me not to trust doctors, the final thread was cut the year before I married. I was having significant abdominal pain, so on my lunch break, I ran upstairs to the office of a friend, an elderly doctor who was a general practitioner. Pretty quickly, he told me without a doubt that I had appendicitis and I needed my appendix removed. Because he no longer did surgeries, he referred me to a surgeon who ultimately did more expensive tests that came back conclusively that I didn’t have appendicitis; my white blood count was too low. Instead, I had Crohn’s disease (a debilitating disease that was treated in 1977 by using the dreaded steroids).
Here’s the thing: I told the surgeon when I was first admitted to the hospital that my older brother had almost died from a ruptured appendix due to also having a low white blood count, which is why they’d ruled out appendicitis. Ignoring me, the doctor replied with a smirk and said, “Um, I think we know best,” as they handed me a prescription and sent me home with a round of steroids.
After they deemed that the steroids were too dangerous to continue, I began being “weened” off of them with the warning that if I did begin to have anything close to the same pain I’d had, I needed to go to the emergency room immediately. And that’s exactly what happened. Only this time, the pain was much, much worse, and I was immediately prepped for surgery.
The plan was to remove the diseased portion of my Crohn’s disease intestines because that’s how they “treated” Crohn’s disease, and each time there’s a flare-up— the cycle is repeated—until the patient (who is clearly patiently waiting for them to know what to do rather than “practicing” what they think they should do) becomes so thin and weak the patient ends up dying from “complications.”
When I woke up, however, my team of four doctors told me that when they took out all my intestines in order to find that diseased portion, my appendix ruptured! Thankfully, it was outside my body, sitting on my abdomen, so the poisonous contents didn’t kill me. I’m now left with a full “c-section” scar rather than the usual tiny scar left by an appendectomy.
The next reason I don’t trust doctors.
The year was 1995 (when I began voicing my non-trust in doctors) after a life-altering experience with my father. Let me preface by saying my father was repeatedly told that he would die if he did not take his prescribed medicine for his heart. Yet, after one of his many strokes, he was forced to stay in the hospital on my parents’ 59th wedding anniversary. We were told he would die that night from his stroke. My father was in a coma, and I couldn’t bear to think of him dying alone. Separating my parents seemed cruel, so I appealed to several of the nurses who allowed my mother to sit up in a rocking chair all night by his bedside. I would have gladly stayed myself, but I had a nursing baby who they wouldn’t allow in the hospital.
When I woke up three mornings in a row, I was expecting to hear my father had passed in the middle of the night, only to hear that he was, in fact, still alive! On morning three, I was finally pushed to do what I wished I’d done sooner. I abandoned any more hospital “care” for my father. My father did not belong to the hospital or to the doctor—my father belonged to us! So I called my mother, after my husband and I had agreed, to tell her our plan of breaking him out. Without hesitation, my mom said, “I’m getting his bed ready!”
After I signed a stack of papers agreeing that I was going against the doctors' orders and that it would mean my father would die—even though for the past three days and nights, they told us he would die at any moment—I signed the papers. The reason it was me who was signing my father out of the hospital is that my father had given me his Power of Attorney. Anyway, the point is this— something unbelievable happened!!! Okay, this is the point I always tear up...
Holding my husband’s new pajamas that I’d grabbed along with a blanket before rushing to the hospital, I leaned down just inches from my father’s ear and whispered, “Dad, we’re going to take you home. Dad, do you want to come home?” My father opened his eyes and said, “What do you think?” I gasped and cried while we hurried to get him ready to leave. Even now, after so many years, I will never forget that moment. As I said, I tear up every single time. It’s even more powerful now because my heart broke during the 2020 pandemic when loved ones were separated from their families, suffering and dying alone!
After my husband and a male nurse helped him change into his new (huge on his tiny, frail frame), my father was lifted into the back seat to be cradled by my husband while I drove. My parents lived only blocks away, so we had him settled in his own bed within 5 minutes. After I’d helped him to drink some apple juice (he’d had nothing to drink for 3 days!!) by feeding him just as I’d done with my six babies (by plugging a straw and dropping it onto his tongue until he was strong enough to suck from the straw), he was soon able to drink apple juice and was even able to eat a small breakfast meal by that evening.
After he’d fallen asleep, we all agreed that we would just let him die naturally. We all agreed that when God wanted him home, He would take him, so we took him off all his medication that, as you remember me saying, we were told if he didn’t take, it would kill him. But instead of dying, my father lived—my father lived a full nine more months that allowed each of his seven children the opportunity to come and spend time with him—saying all the things they wanted to say and words they longed to hear from their father.
⏰ Less than a 4-minute read
Do you still wonder why I don’t trust doctors? Or is it finally making sense?
Does this mean, as Believers, we can’t go to see a doctor? No, it doesn’t mean that at all. It just means that you should never TRUST doctors. That's not just my opinion. It’s what God says. God says you can be either blessed or cursed based entirely on whom you trust.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust IS the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream And will not fear WHEN the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit."
“Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt that is not inhabited." Jeremiah 17:8, 5.
What I believe He means is what you should do no matter what you are “planning” to do—simply asking Him. Ask your Husband or Father or Savior whenever you or your loved one is feeling sick or suffering an injury— just as you, hopefully, ask Him about everything else.
Restoring your health is a journey, after all, and this journey is designed first to establish a closer relationship with your Maker, Creator, and Lover of your Soul. This journey is also designed to show you and reveal to you so much more about so many things:
- You may have wondered why God didn’t instantaneously miraculously heal you—well, this is why. He wants you to spend more time with Him when you’re broken, open, and vulnerable.
- Many people are instantaneously and miraculously healed, and you may have longed for this—who wouldn’t?
- Yet, to be called to take a journey with the King of kings and Lord of lords, well, when you think of it that way, you could almost get excited!
Setting out on this journey where you may have exhausted every procedure, prescription drug—basically, every “trick in the book” to the point doctors are finally stating the truth—they can’t heal or fix you. You’ve come to the juncture in your painful journey where you recognize that it’s the "truth that will set you free," and the truth is that doctors can’t cure you.
Only God can heal or cure you.
Doctors may “treat” the disease, but that term (that’s entirely true) reminds me of when people loved to say my husband was having an “affair”—um, NO, it's adultery, not an affair I would think to myself. God knows adultery is not a party; it’s adultery, and it’s painful when someone does it to you.
Being mistreated, misdiagnosed, or experiencing any malpractice leads to zealots like me, who will go to some weird extremes to avoid the doctors they hate and no longer trust. Here's how I live...
“I’m Married to a Physician”
As for me, each time people challenge my medical decisions (especially over the past two years when we were locked down and quarantined during the pandemic and I picked up in the attempt to finish this book), anytime they'd ask me about "injectables" (you weren’t even allowed to say the word) or masks or quarantining, I'd smile and answer gently but honestly, saying, “I’m married to a Physician” end of discussion.
The prophet Jeremiah asks us, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no Physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?” This promise is one I’ve used to encourage women to trust the Lord for their emotional healing. Yet our Creator is more than able to heal us emotionally and physically—not just spiritually—but in every way we need to be healed.
One of the many names of God is Jehovah Rapha, which means "Healer, the Lord who heals you." Once again, God said, “‘You must obey [or listen to the voice of] the Lord your God and do what he says is right [is right in his eyes/sight]. If you obey all his commands [statutes, ordinances, requirements] and keep his rules, I will not bring on you any of the sicknesses [diseases] I brought on the Egyptians. I am the Lord who heals you [your Physician].’” Exodus 15:26
My hope in writing this book, specifically this chapter, is not so much that you stop trusting your doctor but begin to trust the Lord and make HIM your trust.
Allow Him to lead you; don’t allow fear to dictate your decisions. Unfortunately, what I’m saying is that it’s nearly impossible to ignore when your doctor is telling you what you might have or should do— because not doing what he says could result in far more harm than what you came to your doctor to find out about. Am I right? Hearing your symptoms, your doctor does his best to diagnose what it could be, but each malady could mean a dozen things—one of which almost always seems to be cancer and/or death. Doctors are not free to honestly tell you what they really think or may even know due to the potential of losing their license to “practice” medicine. Trust me and my many testimonies that I will continue sharing throughout this book as He leads me, you need to put your trust in the One who is truth and make Him your Physician.
Doctors GOD Used for Good
⏰ 7-minute read
“In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet. His disease was severe, yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians.” After God had been with King Asa, blessing him, and keeping him healthy, he turned to the physicians to heal him. As a result, “So Asa died in the 41st year as king, was buried and rested with his ancestors.” (2 Chronicles 16:12-13).
Let’s look a bit deeper at the Hebrew. If you are studying this online, you can see a lot—such as the disease becoming increasingly severe—God’s way of giving us time to call out to Him. But then it says “Even so” even after giving Asa time he still sought the help that meant he was no longer fit to remain the leader he once was. Yet, note the word seek דָרַ֣שׁ (ḏā·raš) Strong's 1875: to follow, to seek, ask, to worship. When we follow or seek or ask anyone but our Creator, we ultimately are taking a stance of “worship” and as I’m typing this my Husband reminded me of how many Christians take the stance of worship by seeking relaxation through yoga. If you believe this to be harmless because it’s offered at your church, I’d strongly encourage you to seek God for wisdom.
“But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a doubleminded man, unstable in all his ways.” (James 1:5–8).
With my loyalty and whom I seek out of the way, there’s no better way to explain that I am not crazy and I’m not trying to lead you into a cult-like relationship against doctors or medicine, than for me to use one of several of my birthing experiences with you. The first that came to mind while writing the paragraph above has to do with the doctor God led us to at one of the most terrifying moments in my life. But to set the stage and lay the foundation, I must go back one birth and begin explaining my birthing journeys with the birth of my firstborn, my oldest son.
The doctor I went to was one of the most prominent doctors in the entire area of Minneapolis-Saint Paul. What I discovered was not an expert doctor but a doctor who was completely ignorant of the beauty and miracle of birth. I also discovered that he did not hold his pregnant mothers in high regard. For the most part, this is not entirely the doctor's fault, but it's us, I believe, the women, the mothers, who put our entire trust in a mere man (or woman). Not only did my doctor question my weight gain and tell me to eat one egg instead of two (when I never ate any white flour or white sugar and had been a health fanatic since I was probably 13 years old), but I'd watch other mothers who were sitting in the waiting room, drinking their diet soda, boasting about how little they ate and gained, were the mothers who would get a pat on the back for not gaining weight.
What solidified my lack of trust and what “God used for good” led to me later choosing midwives, twice giving birth at home for my next six births along this journey, was when this expert doctor secretly and coarsely induced me by scratching my membranes, causing my water to break within 24 hours. Not only did they break a full month early (he determined I was incorrect about my due date), but my water broke in the center of the airport just after picking up my sister, who'd flown in from California.
When I began to push about twenty hours later, the nurses began moving me across the hall to the delivery room—as I was telling them, no, I arranged it with my doctor not to have the baby in a delivery room but to have a more natural birth with dimmed lights. They told me that my doctor would never, ever deliver outside the delivery room. He had lied. Regardless, I did have a somewhat natural birth only because the doctor had left the floor and couldn't get back in time. When he arrived, the head was already out, so there was no time for anything else he’d agreed to.
Later during my six-week check-up, I said nothing to this man. I'd put him in the place of authority over me, therefore like my Savior, “He was led as a sheep to slaughter; and as a lamb, before its shearer is silent, so he does not open his mouth.” (Acts 8:32). Instead, I "pondered these things in my heart" because I knew He was leading me and teaching me along my birthing journey.
It was after moving back to California when I watched a documentary about midwives and homebirths that I knew that this was the way that I wanted to give birth to the large family that I'd always dreamed about having.
Now, it’s time to get back to one of the most terrifying moments in my life. I did give birth at home to my second son, and I was also allowed to go into labor in God’s time, not a doctor’s, not only reaching my due date but I went almost four weeks past my due date. Later, I found out this is exactly what my mother had, ten-month babies. It wasn't just that my baby weighed 11 lb 7 oz (5.2 kg), but he was stuck due to his extremely (to this day) wide shoulders, which is another reason I am so thankful that I didn’t deliver in not in the hospital. The way to dislodge shoulders is entirely different with a midwife than it is with a doctor, who will grab his enormous forceps, grab hold of the head, and pull, breaking one or both of the baby’s clavicles.
Instead, a midwife uses what she has in her hands— knowledge and wisdom, trusting the miracle of birth by working with the natural birthing process. My midwife told me when to push while my husband lifted my left hip up, and the midwife's assistant pressed the baby's shoulder down, while the midwife held the head as my secondborn son gently slipped out. Viola!
Thrilled with two boys, it all happened the next morning when we got a phone call from the midwife who asked my husband, “IF the baby is STILL alive, you need to rush him to Children's Hospital—they are waiting for you!” We were told that cord blood indicated that my son had a blood disease that would result in infant death within 24 to 36 hours. Hours later, we discovered that an incredible God had sent us a doctor who knew there really was no way to treat this, and the transfusion they'd set up wouldn't work. So we rushed to the hospital, driving 90 miles an hour (144.84 kph) in our stupid little station wagon, and met the doctor who insisted on doing a second blood test rather than transfusing him— arguing with the attending emergency physician at this highly esteemed Children's Hospital.
My son's blood was ultimately taken from the top of his head due to his screaming, but that's another story. Briefly, I forced my way into the room to comfort my son, and he immediately calmed down and stopped crying so they could draw the blood. But here's the miracle: not only was the blood not showing any signs of the disease— it later proved not to be the same blood type as the cord blood. Everyone agreed that God had to have changed my son's blood because there was no other answer. The cord blood was retested and it hadn’t gotten switched in the lab because “no other baby turned up dead.” It was, he is, a miracle.
The wisdom and knowledge of this physician God provided was demonstrated once again when my third son was born, and we were told he would be severely brain-damaged. The ICU doctor told us that if we did not give him a complete blood transfusion, he would be handicapped for life. We trusted God, who used this same doctor, giving him the wisdom and knowledge, who went against what was normally done. He later explained it was due to his very large size of over 10 pounds, it was safe not to transfuse. And later, God used this same doctor to save the life of my nephew from dying due to his finding the correct diagnosis. My nephew was highly allergic to the dozens of formulas he couldn’t tolerate.
When we moved from Southern California, did I search for a good pediatrician in Florida? Did I call my doctor in California or fly across the country when facing other serious medical issues with my children? (This doctor had patients from all over the USA and Canada). No, I did not. To be honest, contacting him never once crossed my mind until I wrote this chapter. It’s because—ultimately and forever— my FAITH and trust are not in and will never be in any doctor. My faith, hope, and TRUST are in the Lord, who IS my trust. My trust alone, period.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust IS the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit." (Jeremiah 17:5-8).
As I said, the journey with my Husband who wanted me to experience and give a report if you will, so you can relate and speak to your Husband, who you will one day see as and maybe even refer to Him as your Physician. Who knows? God knows— you may even go as far as I have traveled to the point you say, “I’m Married to a Physician.”
It's time to Journal and "RECORD the vision...” and INSCRIBE it on tablets [phones and computers] so that the one who READS it may RUN. For the vision is yet for the APPOINTED time; It hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail. Though it tarries, WAIT for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.’”
Journal list all the reasons you've discovered that confirm that God has a greater plan than simply "want" you to suffer. Maybe it's the beginning of writing your own testimony to document your journey to full health in order that you may encourage others who are being called to follow the same or a similar path.