I have long had a dislike of doctors and medicine, in general, although I do tend to actually like most of the people who wear doctor's suits, and I feel better when I've taken the medicines they prescribe.
I guess what I mean is that I see doctors as a necessary evil. They do what they can do to alleviate our aches and pains, and we feel better, pay our increasingly higher bills, and hopefully, life goes on. But......
Quite a number of years ago, as a young man in the Air Force, I had a mandatory visit with a dentist. Maybe, one of the first in my life. The dentist said that since I was in my early twenties, and my wisdom teeth were finally "coming in", that they should be removed. So, I underwent surgery to have them removed, and suffered no long-term ill effects. Good? Good. However, they gave me laughing gas, and I don't much recall the effects of that, except that when we got home, the base construction guys were digging up the yard across the street, and I blustered that they'd better not come dig up my yard! The "medicine" changed me, beyond the scope of what it was intended for - if only for a few hours.
Other than that occasion, and a visit to the emergency room when I was seventeen to have a bit of my thumb sewn back on after hitting it with a chopping maul trying to steady a stubborn piece of wood that kept wanting to fall over as I whacked at it, I had never been to the doctor, except for checkups, until I was in my 30s. The thumb thing was pretty neat, I've got to say. They let me watch as they sewed the tip of my thumb back on - it had been dangling there, by a piece of skin. It was only the tip, maybe a chip of bone missing, and now only a very small scar remains of the incident.
When I was thirty two, and work and life in general were really stressing me out, I started having funny feelings in my chest. My Dad died at 55, when I was 14, and the last thing I want to do for my kids is to leave them so early, or earlier. But, at the same time, I didn't do a lot about it, other than force myself to slow down, and I left my job a few days early for summer vacation - which provided a long-overdue break.
That fall, the job got slightly better, although I was on the go a lot. One Sunday we had a scout outing where we climbed up and down 7.5 miles of the Appalachian Trail, and that night, I drove to Philly, a couple of hours away, for a disaster recovery test from work, and stayed there until Wednesday. On Saturday, my grandparents flew in, we had a big birthday party for my son with tons of his friends, and my grandfather, who had loved the drive through the autumn colors a few hours before, started having some severe pains, and passed out. The ambulance came, and took him to the hospital, and we followed, and ... suffice it to say, a few hours later, despite all our and the doctor's best intentions, he was gone from this Earth and returned to his Creator.
Needless to say, Saturday night was a sleepless one, and Sunday was full of exhausting phone calls and heartaches, and, after a few hours of sleep, on Monday, I dropped my wife and Grandmother off at the airport, and the kids and I started driving for 'home', twelve hundred miles away. That night we stopped in middle Tennessee at a 29.95, squishy-floored motel room, because I figured if I kept on going, he'd not be the only one in heaven.
Early Tuesday, we were at Mom's... and I got an almost normal night of rest, but Wednesday was Halloween, and that morning, we got up, went and had a big breakfast at the Mount Ida Cafe, and went back home. I stayed over at Granny's house for a few hours, and when she came in, she offered me a piece of cake. By this point, it was late afternoon, and although not really hungry, I accepted.
Of course, the kids had to do Halloween, but instead of the traditional trick-or-treating that could have been done around town, we decided to load up and drive into Hot Springs, 40 miles or so away. On the way there, I found myself actually getting a little dizzy. The funny chest feelings were there, too, and it scared me. I told my wife, let's stop at Wal Mart, and I am going to go in and check my blood pressure. It was high, but.... as the doctor later told me, not dangerously high, just .. pretty darn high.
The next day, I went to see the doctor there in town, and he advise me to start watching my diet a little more closely, and lose a few pounds, and I'd probably be all right. The diet because chances are the dizziness I had felt, even the chest pains, were probably caused by blood sugar issues, more than anything else, and when your blood sugar gets out of whack, it causes your blood pressure to do so as well. He said, don't skip breakfast, or lunch, and if you do find yourself needing something to eat, find something high in protein, like peanuts.
And, when I got back to my other 'home' and went to see my doctor here, he pretty much said the same things, but considering my family hereditary conditions, maybe I should also start taking something like Toprol XL, a beta blocker, just to 'regulate' my blood pressure. It's a low dosage, and can be taken once a day, and I was scared enough to accept it.
Since that point, I've lost more than ten pounds. At times, it's been closer to twenty, although I tend to bounce around a bit. But other than the blood pressure thing, everything was perfectly normal - never had cholesterol problems or anything else that would cause grief.
So the other day, a couple of years later, I go to the doctor for a checkup. Good news is, my blood pressure is at it's lowest level in recent memory (120/70). My new doc says, well, you've been here a while, and never had a blood test, let's go ahead and do it. Today, I got my results back and all is normal, except, triglycerides. Hand-written on the results is the comment to cut back on carbohydrates and alcohol.
Now, in the last few years, I have been guilty of drinking a grand total of two beers and a glass of wine. So the latter is probably not a problem, and I have no doubt the former is. But I digress. Being the online information type, I headed on over to WebMD to edumacate myself on triglycerides. Here's some highlights:
They list normal (150 or less - where I've always been)
Borderline-high (150 to 199)
High (200-499 - I am now in the upper end of this range).
Very High (500+)
So, what causes "High"?
"There are several causes of high triglycerides, including obesity, poorly controlled diabetes, hypothyroidism, kidney disease, estrogen replacement therapy, and excess consumption of calories, carbohydrates, saturated fats, and alcohol. Some medications may cause elevated triglyceride levels, including birth control pills, diuretics, beta-blockers, steroids, and some of the newer antipsychotic medications."
I am not obese, even though I am admittedly above where I should be. I do not have diabetes, hypothyroidism, kidney disease, heaven knows I don't need estrogen replacement (I hope), and I do try to be somewhat healthy in my eating habits. The medications though, my birth control pills haven't bothered me yet (that's a joke). I don't do diuretics, steroids, and my antipsychotic medication is limited to expressing myself via words. But, beta-blockers. Bingo.
So, here I is... the older I get, the more examples of this I see. We are given a medicine to cure a problem, and it helps, then we have another problem, if not caused by the medicine, then at least aided and abetted by it. Examples? Kids whose parents over-react, sending them to the doctor for a sniffle, get antibiotics, and a few weeks later, something else comes up, and more antibiotics, and then something serious, and their bodies have built up a resistance to the antibiotics and then they're really sick. It happens. And my wife, for years suffering from a disease which causes her to have one type of problem, finally given a regular dose of "prednisone" to help battle it, and it makes life more bearable. But, by the way, it can cause some side effects, like causing your body to not absorb calcium that well. And, she doesn't drink milk too often, preferring Coke instead. So between the medicine and bad habits, she develops some serious bone issues... leading to fractures and surgery.
Medicine is bad stuff. And, when a month or two ago, everyone said, maybe you ought to go get your arm checked out... I was in pain - serious pain, more than I've probably ever been in, when I pulled a muscle in my shoulder and it led to a few weeks worth of aching all down my arm. Don't know if I tore a muscle, or tendon, or got tendonitis, or what, but the most I took was motrin and aspirin. Mostly, though, I stretched the muscles, every time I got the chance, and worked out the pain. And it's fine now.
Heck, if I'd gone to the doc, likely he'd have given me a miracle drug or surgery and I'd have felt great, till a hidden side effect came along, and I started having fingers fall off into my soup.
Well. To quote the great Gump, "That's all I got to say about that."
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