How should a nurse nurse?

I had a delightful time with family last week. It was such a delightful time that I fought tears for hours as I faced the prospect of piling everyone into the car, and then as I left with my four securely buckled in. A few times tears did spill especially as I hugged my dearly loved parents and siblings goodbye. I love and enjoy the people who gave me life and a future!

As always, the grouping of several families that live different lives creates tension. This past week highlighted some of our differences as my extended family and I encountered various health problems. An interesting cream that one family member used for every skin lesion was a colloidal silver preparation. Another application of this silver preparation was used on a young boy who presented with an upper respiratory infection that had a moderately high fever (103 f). An oral liquid with silver suspension was given to the boy regularly throughout the day with the hope that the body would take the minute amount of silver in the liquid to the area of infection and kill the causative organism.

Reflexology and what appeared to be craniosacral therapy was used to treat this small boy's fever as well as garlic cloves that were attached to his feet where they were supposed to be more easily absorbed. The parents involved also gave the boy a vinegar bath and oral feverfew (herb) to reduce his fever. I will not discuss the efficacy of these methods now, but I will state that the mother of the child finally resorted to acetaminophen to bring the fever to more tolerable levels.

I also encountered a family member using a "Q-Ray" bracelet for his musculoskeletal health. In the midst of all this were the dietary options provided by various family members who believed their siblings or spouses had food allergies with questionable symptoms, and the ubiquitous ozone generators that the host family uses to "clean" the air in the home.

What is the nurse who follows science-based medicine to do? I love each of these family members and want to have meaningful encounters with them in the future, and yet I can identify several lapses in science-based health care which are sometimes purposeful and other times inadvertent. I finally chose to overlook the poor science while practicing it as best I could, and hope for the best though I did mention to the parent involved that I had acetaminophen if she wanted it for her child. I do not know what the hardcore ethical thing would be to do. I suppose I could have sensitized my family members to each of what I felt was their poor choices, but I feel as if I would have ruined my future potential for good with them as well. More importantly I love each member of my family and the concern of losing my relationship with them is greater than the desire to have them follow perfect health practices which they would not necessarily recognize as such or even be prepared to recognize.