by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Apr 8, 2014 | Fiction, Relationships, Writing
I enter the used clothing store, my expectations healthily repressed; it is better to approach the vintage-shopping experience from a position of openness to possibility, devoid of excessive hope and need. If one starts in this way then one has nowhere to go but to the land of pleasant surprises and amazing finds for under a dollar.
I browse through the racks, taking in the moth-balled musty scent of used clothes. Perusing the garments is like visiting a library or a bookstore. The fabrics contain the memories of the people who bought them, wore them, loved and hated them (secretly) but remembered to always have it on when Grandma came to dinner. I wonder which blouse was tossed to the floor in anticipation of passionate lovemaking and which pieces of clothing have borne witness to arguments, death and divorce. Which sleeves contain the traces of desperate tears? If the clothing could talk, I can only imagine the stories they would tell about desire, disgust, revenge, passion, despair, loneliness, bitter disappointment and the tragedy of lives of promise that fade away unnoticed.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 27, 2014 | Body Image, cancer, Women's health, Writing
This piece was meant for the CCNM Body Monologues during the 2014 Women’s Health Week. It is an important story for me to tell, so I decided to finish the final edits and publish it here.
It was in Kingston, Ontario on the campus of Queen’s University, my alma mater, where I first met my roommate, C. We were both giddy with the nervous anticipation of coming face-to-face with the person we’d sleep beside for the next year. We were like two halves of a mail-order marriage; since divorce wasn’t an option, we were determined to make it work.
The pictures we pasted on the walls of our respective sides of the room highlighted the differences in our personalities and adolescent experiences. On her wall, there were sunny photos of rows of carbon copy, bikini-clad young women, posed in a way as to accentuate their lean abdomens and disguise obtuse hips. Their skin was bronzed from the sun. They could have been models. Why weren’t they models? I’m sure some of them were models. On mine, I plastered photos of my mishmash of weird friends. We wore sideways baseball caps, looked into the camera making cartoonish Zoolander faces or tucked our necks in to parody double-chins. We held up our hands in ironic peace signs. We emphasized our ugliness in order to assure our public that we were not trying to fit in. It was hilarious.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 25, 2014 | Cleaning, Detoxification, Health, Nature, Self-care
Spring is about cleaning. The April rains wash away the dirt and grime from the winter, people emerge in fresh, light clothing, we tackle the stacks of papers on our desks, sweep out dust and clutter, open the windows to allow fresh air to ventilate our lives and donate old, knobbing winter sweaters to charity. Spring is also the season of the Liver and Gallbladder in Chinese Medicine. This means that our body’s ability to clean revs itself up at this time of year as well. Some wonderful plants also push their way through the ground. Pick some from your garden and start throwing them into everything you eat. Spring is in the air!
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 20, 2014 | Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Health, Medicine, Motivation, Naturopathic Principles
I remember sitting in the walk-in clinic. I’d been waiting for over an hour, not to mention the time lost denying my symptoms, waiting until they got bad enough to warrant the visit in the first place. Finally, it was my turn. I walk into the treatment room, where a thin, middle-aged doctor was seated, her hair short and grey, her eyes encased in dark, baggy skin. She didn’t smile. “How can I help you?” She asked, bored already. I began where I thought the story began, at the beginning. I got a few sentences out before she cut me off. I was surprised; couldn’t she see that all this information was relevant? I didn’t just have fatigue, it was a part of me. It was woven into the fabric of my life; it had a back-story. This doctor needed to know when it began, what my life was like at the time, what I’d tried to do to treat it myself, when it felt better, when it felt worse. I didn’t believe she could treat me without that information. Surely it all mattered.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 16, 2014 | Body Image, Book, Women's health
Women’s Health Week and International Women’s Day have both come and gone. At the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Women’s Health Week is usually accented with the popular event, the Body Monologues. Body Monologues, like its vagina-specific counterpart, consists of the telling of narratives on female body image. Every yearly event is filled with challenging, heart-felt, angry and inspiring stories by women as they articulate, through poetry, dance, speech and song, their personal struggles with femininity, sexuality, eating disorders, abuse and fight for body confidence. Sadly, this year, the Body Monologues was cancelled (you can still attend the main event in April 2014, in Toronto – click here for more information). However, even if the Monologue is cancelled, the dialogue must still persist; here are some of my favourite books in the world of female health that challenge the way we view femininity and our relationships with our bodies.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 5, 2014 | Chronic pain, Meditation, Mind Body Medicine, Mindfulness
I can feel the general feeling of malaise and a focal ache in the side of my head. My mind slows and I feel that stupid sense of dullness overcome me. I am engulfed in a wave of sickness and pain; I am getting a migraine.
Many of my patients suffer from chronic pain. Their lives become about experiencing life behind a veil of physical discomfort, which intrudes into everything they do. Pain can be a metaphor offered up by the body for other forms of discomfort that are either too hard to solidify or too easy to ignore. When my little dog vies for my attention he cries. Our bodies do that too. Pain can be sticky, it can be complicated and its cause unclear. It can also destroy life; it becomes an unrelenting presence that threatens to ruin every plan or dream we have for a life of balance and well-being. Pain, and more importantly our reaction to it, can succeed at controlling us. So, how can we take back the control and heal through pain?
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Feb 19, 2014 | Community, Guatemala, Healing Stories, Health, Volunteering, Volunteering Abroad, Writing
We take a chicken bus to the hospital in Sololá, Guatemala. The emergency room is simple: 5 beds in a row sheltered by curtains. The sanitation conditions are questionable. There are no respirators (patients are bagged manually, all through the night) or fancy medical equipment. The emergency room is a bustling gathering place for the daily misfortunes of any of the 500,000 residents of Lago Atitlán.
My classmates and I, fresh from the airport, are dressed in navy blue scrubs, shiny and new from Walmart. I have a stethoscope around my neck: a Littman Cardio III. I’d guess that it’s the most expensive stethoscope in the hospital. It’s also auscultated the least amount of hearts; I’d be willing to bet that too.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Feb 12, 2014 | Emotions, Empathy, Health, Philosophy, Psychology, Robert Schad Naturopathic Clinic
If you’ve ever participated in the medical system somewhere in the world, chances are there is a medical chart out there with your name on it. I have one in my hands now and I task myself with the job of getting to know it. It is based on a true story: a patient who has entrusted me with his case. I read through the 200-page document, transfixed as stories in the untidy scrawl of half a dozen interns – some of them now well-immersed in practices of their own – unfold on the white pages. These pieces of paper, bound together by a fragile cardboard shell, capture snapshots in time of the encounter between these young practitioners and the patient. I read between the lines. Coffee stains represent early mornings that followed late nights, plainly stated observations reflect the colour of different lenses with which these young naturopaths-in-training saw the world at that time. Their pens tell 6 versions of the same story. Their treatment plans tell the story of emerging practice styles and personal healing philosophies.
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by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Feb 10, 2014 | Health, Mental Health, Stress
My second year of training to be a naturopathic doctor was horrific in many ways. It began with performance-based physical exams, which brought with them the crippling feeling of being a deer, stunned by a set of bright headlights, unable to act in the face of the impending doom before me. Before practicals, my stomach would do whatever it wanted, my heart would boom in my chest, rocking my whole body with its force. I swore in these moments that I didn’t know my name, let alone the entire series of steps of a thorough lung and thorax exam. I became a bumbling mess. I hated the feeling. (more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 29, 2014 | Balance, Health, Ideal You, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Nature Cure
Most people who come to see a naturopathic doctor are in some sort of state of dis-ease. That is, they are often exhibiting symptoms that indicate that their bodies have begun to offer up warning signs that something is off balance. After all, if they didn’t have symptoms, how would they know something was wrong with them? The trouble with our society is we often don’t notice our bodies until we have a glaringly obvious symptom that we can’t ignore – like how I never pay attention to a car I’m driving until there is a red light and a beeping noise I can’t turn off. And, even at that, how often do we find ourselves out-of-touch with even the most annoying symptoms – like gas and bloating or pain and itching – simply because we’ve “learned to live with them”?
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