Medical paranoia

[vanillafluffy]

I'm on my way out the door, but wanted to share this---in an email to a friend, I wrote:

"It seems to me that once you go to a doctor, they will *find* something wrong to keep you coming back. Pretty soon, you have a condition---or two or three---and you're having tests and more tests and all kinds of drug interactions and you go from being a little achy from your original complaint to hurting from some procedure or other. Maybe it's fatalistic of me, but dying quietly at home sounds a helluva lot better to me than winding up on tubes in a hospital somewhere while being ravaged by drug-resistant strep that I picked up while I was in there getting poked for something that wasn't bothering me until some doctor decided it was a big fat hairy freakin' deal. (/rant)"

To which she responded, "Tell me how you REALLY feel!"

I know, there are a lot of conditions that don't manifest outward symptoms until a late stage. And the older you get, the liklier they become. But geez Louise, I've seen the constant-tests-and-a-boatload-of-meds scenario, and I don't want to go down THAT road, either.

OR the road to Melbourne, but I gotta....

Comments

[ang5fam.livejournal.com]

Well, I say yes and no to that. Had my brother-in-law gotten to the doctor before 25 years had passed, they would have caught his cancer and he would still be alive. He died at age 57.
Last summer, being sent to the chiropractor for my back actually helped me as he uncovered a high blood pressure problem that I had no idea about. It could've caused much more serious problems had I not gotten it under control .
Breast cancer runs in my family so I go for mammograms twice a year at Mayo Clinic- that way I can hope to be one of the lucky ones like my Mom who only had to undergo a lumpectomy and 6 weeks of radiation. I don't want to go in and get a death sentence because I haven't kept up with preventitive visits. It's just silly in this day and age with all of the modern technology. Yes, it takes time out of the day and yes, it costs a few bucks but I intend to live to be a really cool old lady!
My father ignored the facts, too, and died this past January at the age of 68 when he could've made better choices and stuck around a while longer.
Keeping one's head in the sand is just not the smart thing to do.
That's my story and I am sticking to it!!

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

There are enough issues in my family that I ought to at least get a general exam done, which is on my to-do list for this summer. I seem to be lucky as far as BP goes---my dad had BP issues for ages, but I must take after my mom. On the other hand, I also have her varicose veins, albeit nowhere near as severely---she had both thighs, I have one calf. And there's other stuff on the family tree that I'd as soon rule out---although my dad's parents both lived well into their 70s, as did he, and my mom had two maiden aunts who reached their late 80s-early 90s. (Her dad died in a car accident and her mother was estranged, so I've NO IDEA about her cause of death.)

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

If it's not bothering you and it's not serious or going to become serious, chances are good a doctor will just mention it and that will be it. They don't get reimbursed enough on insurance to chase every little thing.

That said, I do know what you're referring to with people who either think medicine can defy natural aging or who wind up being overtreated by multiple doctors. Being a good patient and keeping up with your own records is pretty much essential.

(Even the simplest things can go awry: The hospital that's a stone's throw from my doctor's office had not sent her my test results after a week, but I had a copy that I took my appointment with her.)

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

people who either think medicine can defy natural aging or who wind up being overtreated by multiple doctors

Or the ones who run in to see the doctor every time they sniffle, or bang their elbow, or pass gas. Okay, maybe that's a wee bit extreme, but I tend toward the other extreme. If I'm not in pain that's at LEAST +7 on a scale from one to ten, if I'm not spurting from an artery or unnatural orifice, I figure I'll probably survive. Sometimes there's a fine line between hypochondriac and plain old WIMP.

But yeah, I'm gonna have a little preventive tune-up done....

[ang5fam.livejournal.com]

I have the veins, too, on one leg.
Don't wear shorts out of the house anymore because my leg looks so bad- don't wear dresses, either. They are all over the bottom of my right leg. Younger sis is only 36 and she already has them, too. Our Mom has them,

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

Ah, shorts. There was a mandatory dress code of shorts for gym class at my elementary school. I hated it, and that, combined with my general body-image insecurities meant that after my 8th grade graduation, I didn't wear shorts again for decades. Then, oh, about 10 years ago, something snapped. I said, I don't care if I look like the Pillsbury doughboy's girlfriend on vacation, it's too damn hot for long pants. I don't wear Daisy Dukes---I'm not completely crazy---but a few good pairs of bermudas? You betcha!

Kind of the same story with dresses---got traumatized at St John's, only wore them for church for quite a while---but that was partly because my school daze coincided with the era of miniskirts, and with my height and weight, finding dresses was a nightmare. These days, skirts and dresses are a vital part of my wardrobe, because they're cooler than jeans, more forgiving to my figure, and more...I hesitate to say more ladylike, because it sounds like my mother, but me in a dress vs my coworkers in jeans? I win!