Luckily for me, an osteopath was willing to see me -- when the MD's wouldn't.
Because an earlier pregnancy had put me in the hospital for three weeks, I decided to get my maternity care from an OB instead of with our family practice physician – and all had been going well. Then, when I was six months pregnant, I suddenly became very ill with a fever and cough.
When I called the OB to tell them I was afraid I had pneumonia – I had had it four times in the past and recognized the symptoms – they said they couldn’t see me, because I was sick. (They didn’t want to expose anyone else.) They told me to call our family practice physician, so I did.
I told that MD’s office that I was six months pregnant, that I felt like I had pneumonia again, after four times in the past, and that the OB couldn’t see me and said I should call them. Nobody in the primary care office, not my doctor or her partners, could squeeze me in. This was a Monday. The earliest anybody could see me was on Thursday. Thursday!
Beginning to panic, I told them I couldn’t wait that long, that I was having trouble breathing, was worried about the baby, what should I do? Should I go to the emergency room, or what? And the nurse gave me the name of a newer doctor, another family practice doctor, she thought might be able to see me.
That doctor turned out to be an osteopath, and she squeezed me in that day. She confirmed that I did have pneumonia and immediately started me on an antibiotic. I saw her a few days later and, though I’d improved, I wasn’t improving fast enough, so she switched to a different antibiotic, which did resolve the problem. Later, she told me that she’d come close to putting me in the hospital, but because I had such good care at home – both my husband and sister were taking care of me – she decided I could manage there. But she called me at home every day to make sure I was still doing okay.
So two different practices full of MD’s failed me. The first, because I had a problem that didn’t involve my uterus. The second, because they had no time for an appointment for 3 days – and wouldn’t consider squeezing in a seriously ill pregnant patient.
I stayed with that osteopath through the pregnancy and afterwards, till she and her husband moved to a different part of the state. Along the way, I learned about osteopaths and their training. They are not equivalent to chiropractors or homeopaths. They are not quacks. They are fully licensed physicians, who take the same boards that allopathic physicians take.
And that osteopath – viewed as a quack to many DUers -- might have saved my life, or my baby’s life. I’ll never know but I’ll always be grateful.
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It’s the best thing I’ve heard all day, and it made me cry. 
Sounds to me like Trump’s personal doc simply has the same personal flaws as so many of those who find themselves in his orbit: they find themselves overwhelmed by his dominance and Will to Power. Someone wrote a whole book about that: Everything Trump Touches Dies.
It was scary for a while there, but it all worked out in the end.
