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In life as in nursing, Gabriele Franklin, RN, tends
to run counter to convention. So it made perfect sense
that on a Saturday afternoon she and her husband, Andy,
were covering their front lawn in Northfield, Minn.,
with mounds of dirt. "Monoculture is so dull,"
Franklin said, envisioning more natural perennial plants,
herbs and "whatever we want."
Sixteen years ago, Franklin decided she wanted to be
a labor and delivery nurse, choosing her specialty over
neurosurgery and her other experience. After being hospitalized
for seven weeks before the birth of her twins, she found
that labor and delivery seemed to involve less medical
intervention than the other fields, she said.
It was less grass-seed lawn, more natural environment.
"That has totally flipped around," Franklin,
47, said. The vast majority of labors are drug-induced
because physicians want to manage the care and 99 percent
of women receive epidurals, she said. "Basically,
when I work at the hospital, I am a drug pusher. Of
course, the patients are sick and tired of being pregnant
and they're all up for it. I look at that as women sort
of giving up their power."
But giving up power is what America is doing when it
comes to health, Franklin said. What's won her heart
is a nutrition-based philosophy of preventive health
care and therapeutic doses of vitamins, minerals and
herbs. The coined phrase is "nutraceuticals."
"The medical community thinks it's a joke,"
but that is from physicians who barely taste a nutrition
class in medical school and hospitals that serve new
mothers coffee, white bread, desserts and canned vegetables,
Franklin said. "How can a dietitian think that
coffee is good for anybody, much less moms who are in
labor or are having their first baby? It's another form
of drug."
Franklin said she grew up in upstate New York with
parents who never bought prepackaged food and didn't
go out to eat. She was a young mother working as a volunteer
in a natural foods co-op in Iowa when a chance meeting
with a new nurse awakened her to the possibility of
a career beyond waitressing and driving a minibus. "I
thought, 'I like healthy people. Maybe this would be
a good profession for me,' " she said.
She works about four shifts a month-"Just enough
to keep my skills up"-at St. Francis Regional Medical
Center in Shakopee, Minn., and at Abbott Northwestern
Hospital in Minneapolis, which is known for its high-risk
birth center.
Abbott Northwestern may have four or five cesareans
a day and 20 labor patients, Franklin said. In an eight-hour
shift, she typically is assigned to two or three women.
Or one who is considered high-risk because the hospital
recognizes that she needs more attention.
Franklin calls it a mission to share her move away
from the allopathic model of health care to prevention
through diet.
"The typical American will eat whatever tastes
good," she said. "If it's advertised on TV
and it's in the stores, if the FDA approves it and says
it's good for you, they just trust.
"You know how common chronic fatigue is? Well,
look at what people are eating. They're buying cases
of soda and packaged, frozen, preservative-laden, color-laden
junk. How can your body possibly utilize it?"
Franklin credits great nutrition with dropping her
cholesterol level 70 points, the loss of nearly 35 pounds
from her 5-foot, 8-inch frame and more energy to devote
to home, family and her second passion: making beaded
jewelry.
"I used to own a bead store," she said. "I
even have a propane and oxygen torch and I melt glass
rods and make my own beads."
Franklin, who once was a vegetarian, sees herself out
of hospitals in the coming years. "I will have
educated lots of people on good nutrition and still
be playing with beads," she said. "And being
in my garden and maybe being a grandma. Who knows?"
Contact
Phil McPeck at getpjm@aol.com.
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