Building a Health Care Team

When you face a major health crisis, one of the most important things you can do is build a health care team made up of health providers and physicians who you trust, who will listen, and who will think outside the box, or beyond the constraints of their specialty or health care silo. I benefitted greatly from including practitioners who looked at my health from all different angles, considering different possible causes and offering different approaches to improve my health.

I am quite sure that I would not have survived AE without the lifesaving drug treatments (steroids, anti-seizure medication, immune suppressing drugs etc.) that the conventional medicine doctors prescribed. While these treatments began to work, I also started seeing a respected holistic health practitioner who considered my body as a whole system of interconnected factors to determine imbalances and contribute to restoring balance by addressing other factors that might be causing inflammation and symptoms in my body.

Team Players to Consider Including

The following providers can each play a role in the management of AE and look at your health concerns from slightly different perspectives:

• General practitioner

• Neurologist: epileptologist, neuroimmunologist, rheumatologist

• Endocrinologist

• Holistic health provider

• Psychiatrist

• Psychologist: counselor, neuropsychologist

• Rehabilitation specialists

It’s also important to reach out to organizations such as Encephalitis International and the AE Alliance, seek accurate information and support from established groups, and become a strong advocate.