This is a very emotionally loaded topic for me.
My mom was terrified of doctors. Deathly terrified. She believed that going to a doctor’s
appointment was a first class ticket to dying. While I know now that fear was rooted in some very sad events in her
life, as a child I alternated between being terrified, too and feeling
not-taken-care-of.
I could give you a list of ailments that my brother and I
suffered through without any sort of proper care. But I won’t because I have
far more to say about our topic of the month than what I went through as a
kid. And my brother serves a better
example, anyway. He grew up with bad
cases of bronchitis at least four times a year. We knew it was bronchitis because that’s what my mom decided it was.
Fast forward to my brother being 20 and in the Air Force and
then getting a medical discharge for asthma.
He never had bronchitis. He was having severe asthma attacks.
Let me interrupt myself here to say that my mom was a good
mom. At the very least she was the best
mom she knew how to be. But like all
imperfect people she sometimes let her fear keep her from taking care of
herself and her loved ones.
When I was a senior in high school my mom took her test for
a black belt in karate. During a
roundhouse kick she fell and hurt her leg. She limped for the next five years. Sometimes it was better, mostly it was worse. She never once had it looked at in that time.
Finally, something happened that forced her hand and sent
her to the doctor. My dad threatened to
leave her if she didn’t.
After one quack, one referral, one misdiagnosis, and one
wonderful doctor in Dallas
we all
came to terms with the fact that she had Multiple Sclerosis. But she didn’t have the run of the mill
variety. Instead of relapsing-remitting
as most MS patients do, my mom just continued to get worse. And the worse she got, the faster she got
worse. At last they gave her a final
diagnosis of Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis. And as is the trend with PPMS, she developed
an “offspring disease.” For her it was
AIDS II (not contagious or hereditary.) It meant her immune system was shutting down, and if we had so much as a
sniffle we couldn’t come to visit.
Ten years after the fall during her black belt test she was
paraplegic. In another two years she was
quadriplegic. The following year she
passed away due to complications of both MS and AIDS II. She developed a bed sore. They hospitalized her to take care of it, but
in the process she went septic. She was
on life support for three weeks. Ultimately
we knew when it was time to take her off. (If this sounds familiar, it should. It was the same condition that took Christopher Reeves the next year.)
If she wouldn’t have waited so long to go to the doctor,
would we still have her today? No. As there is no cure, the disease would have
run its course the way it did regardless. The only differences would have been her level of comfort. Pain medication and Prozac did amazing things
for my mom’s outlook on life. She and my
dad both came to have a new love and respect for the health care industry
during the last five years or so. And
that love definitely filtered down to my brother and I as we watched how well
and how warmly she was cared for.
I’ll interrupt myself again to tell you that a year before
my mother died, my father was diagnosed with salivary gland cancer. He had it surgically removed and went through
radiation for several months. He made
every single appointment for checks ups with his primary care physician, his
oncologist and his oncology surgeon. He
was all clear at every one of them. But they
missed something somewhere and in the months after my mother’s death the cancer
metastasized through his entire body. His funeral was ten months after hers. And he had done everything by the book. Went to the doctor the moment he first felt the lump on his neck.
Both my parents died before the turned 60.
It should come as no surprise to you that I go to the doctor
these days. At just about every
opportunity. I don’t even have health
insurance right now (and that is an entirely other ball of Health wax), but I
still go. I go for check ups. I go when
I hurt myself. I go when I’m sick.
I have even managed to get over one of my greatest fears in
the world: the dentist. I’ve just finished three months of intensive
dental work. It was expensive. It was painful. But I am so proud of my mouth and myself that
I can hardly contain it. I smile all the
time these days. And would be willing to
do free advertising for my dentist; I love her so.
And should I ever have a child, I will do what my mother couldn’t. I will make his health a priority to both of
us. We will start him young and get him
going regularly for check ups and dental cleanings and whatever else his little
self might need. And it won’t be a big
deal. I’ll be a good role model and take
myself to the doctor regularly, too.
I’ll do whatever I can to make going to the doctor and
caring for his health as un-scary as I possibly can.
