Merry Christmas from Sparrow

Merry Christmas to the Sparrow family. I truly wish the best in health to all of my families - physically, emotionally, and spiritually. May God bless you all. Here are some end of the year reflections.

So many questions

We are living in unique times. More people than ever are questioning the healthcare system as we know it. Physicians went from “front line healthcare heroes” in the midst of the pandemic to villains in its aftermath. It turns out the “experts” may have not been as noble as we were led to believe. Those of us who were trained under these authorities are now faced with the reality that we have been unknowingly complicit in propagating false, and in some cases harmful information. Once that foundation is cracked, the whole building crumbles and we are left picking up the pieces. Unsettling, right?

What is this feeling?

As a parent myself, I can completely understand the sentiment. It has taken some time to unpack this, but I believe it all comes down to fear of losing control. As parents we want to be able to make the best decisions for our children. Which vaccines to get? What supplements to use? To sleep train or not? Do these leggings cause cancer? And on and on…so naturally we spend lots of time researching. We scroll all the social media pages and scour the internet looking for reliable information. But what information can be trusted? How does one differentiate between a well designed and poorly designed study? How to detect biases and figure out if an association is correlation or causation? It is difficult to make decisions when we don’t feel confident in the information we have. These are challenging questions and I understand how anxiety and fear develops. 

What we can do

Here is my advice: take a deep breath and give yourself some grace. We do the very best we can with the resources we have available knowing that we will never have all the answers. To think we can control everything our child is exposed to and prevent every harmful substance from entering his or her body is ludicrous and enough to drive a person mad. The fact is that we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world. My approach is to raise healthy, strong, resilient children to the best of my ability and pray for God’s protection over them. 

I have spoken to countless parents in the past few months who are desperate for something different. Parents who have been fired by their pediatricians for “noncompliance” with vaccine recommendations. Parents who have felt pressured into interventions that they were uncomfortable with by pediatricians who either were unwilling or unable to have an honest conversation about risks vs benefits. These stories break my heart. I believe that parents (with rare exception) truly want what is best for their children and should be trusted and equipped to make those decisions.

This is why I love my job and why I opened this practice. My mission is to walk alongside parents as they navigate decisions for their children, both big and small. I never claim to be the expert, and I admit to having to unlearn many things in my training over the years. 

I want to do better for my patients. We don’t have to let fear take over. I want to have the conversation. I want to hear your concerns and validate them and talk through all the options. I am so thankful to have found a way to do it well through direct primary care and I have been truly humbled by those who have entrusted me to walk alongside them in their parenting journey.

So…here’s to a new year. May it be filled with peace and the ability to sleep well at night (for those of us without newborns!) knowing that we are doing our very best and that is enough. 

Best,

Dr. Christy