Today’s guest post on a technique called osteopathic manipulative treatment is brought to us by Jill Roberts. She is a UF alumni just up the road from me, now living in Oklahoma. We “met” on Facebook via the CF connection many of us have as mutual friends and she told me about osteopathic manipulative treatment this week. I was intrigued, so I asked her some questions I had and offered her a guest post. I asked my doctor about it and he didn’t have any info on it for CF, but he didn’t warn me to not give it a try. Ask your doctors at clinic and check it out if you’re interested. That’s how it happens, so I hope you enjoy the topic as much as I did.
Recently, a friend of mine was devastated because the OB-GYN who delivered her first child was now considered out of network and she couldnโt continue to go to him for her second pregnancy. She was frantically trying to find a new physician as she was 3 months pregnant. Another friend said, “Do you want to go to a MD or a DO (osteopathic physician)?โ She said, “I would really prefer a MD as I have never been to a DO.” I quickly pointed out to her that the physician that she was crying over was in fact, a DO. Most people do not know the difference between a MD and a DO. The fact is that both DOs and MDs are fully qualified physicians licensed to prescribe medication and perform surgery. Where a DO differs from an MD is that DOs “combine today’s medical technology with their ears to listen caringly to their patients, with their eyes to see their patients as whole persons, and with their hands to diagnose and treat patients for injury and illness.”
OMT and my experience with it
I have CF and had a double lung transplant in 1997. When my health started to decline, I was hospitalized a lot for “tune-ups.” The CF center I went to was a teaching hospital for a large medical school. I grew up with MD physicians, residents, and student doctors. One time when I was hospitalized, an osteopathic resident was doing his pediatric rotation at the Childrenโs Hospital. He was the lone DO among a whole bunch of MDs. He developed a special interest in me and he asked my mom if she would be willing to let him try OMT (osteopathic manipulative treatment) on me. She agreed and he snuck me into a treatment room. [Read more…]
I was sitting at my desk on the Interwebs minding my own business when 
