Read these questions and answer them, and be honest with
yourself.
When was the last time you went the doctor for a checkup?
When was the last time you had some ache or some complaint
in your body where something didn’t feel right for a time and you went and saw
a doctor about it?
Have you looked into the medical history of your family?
What do you think the condition of your health is? Really
healthy? Healthy enough? Questionable?
The point of all this isn’t to make people into
hypochondriacs or paranoid about their family’s medical history. It is to
encourage people to take a moment in their day and pay attention to the small
signs their bodies are telling them. If you will listen to your body, it will
tell its secrets willingly; a small ache that won’t go away, a discoloration of
the skin and to even leg cramps and shortness of breath. Take notice of these
small unusual signs with a check-up to a doctor. Doctors are the best to tell
if a small symptom is a sign to something bigger or just something that can be
easily fixed.
People might say, “Nothing serious will happen to me, I take
good care of myself.” That might be right, but there is a chance that there is
a buildup in the body to something more serious. For an example, look into the
life of an ordinary stay at home mother who thought there wasn’t anything to
worry about.
Her name is Rebecca and she was first a mother, a
grandmother, a big sister, a wife, a daughter, a niece, friend and aspiring
entrepreneur. Like the average mother she had her daily to-do list, kids,
babysitting grandkids and nieces and nephews, cleaning a house, paying bills,
making dinner, and the list goes on to more items. She was a busy woman but
regular checkups with her doctor were few and far between. I’m sure many people
are guilty of that, there is so much to do in twenty-four hours that sometimes
it doesn’t seem like there’s enough time.
Born with asthma, Rebecca was good at keeping it under
control, but when harvest time came around, with the pollen of soy beans
floating about the air, her asthma was at its worse. Soy bean pollen hindered
her breathing even more than dust and cat hair.
It was a warm summer Sunday afternoon in a small country
town in Ohio during soybean harvest time when something like an asthma attack
began. It came on so suddenly it was within the hour 9-1-1 was called. Nearly
two hours later three ambulances were parked in front of her country home. Then
before the week was out her family was planning her funeral.
It wasn’t until the autopsy that the doctor finally revealed
his opinion of the real cause of her death, a pulmonary embolism and not an
asthma attack. Several blood clots were found in her legs and the doctor made
the educated guess that one of those blood clots got loose and got caught in
her lungs. The doctor thought the attack came on too suddenly to be an asthma
attack.
The idea that is was a pulmonary embolism, that caused
Rebecca’s death, became even more probable when a genetic blood clotting
disorder was found in her father’s side of the family. The disorder is
inheritable and involves a mutation in the Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase
(MTHFR) gene. This mutation often shows up in various disorders, one being
called Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT).
The discovery of this mutation began when Rebecca’s youngest
sister found, through testing, that she had this blood clotting mutation. Then
the dominos fell into place as aunts and cousins were found having the same
mutation.
The symptoms of having this mutation are small and can be
easily overlooked because they are ordinary and sometimes fleeting. “The
symptoms can start with pain or tenderness in your arm or leg – often described
as a cramp or Charlie horse – with one or more of the following: swelling, red
or purple skin color, (and) warm to the touch.”
(Signs and Symptoms of Blood Clots, 2008) Left uncared for these blood
clots, like what happened to Rebecca, can get loose and travel to the lungs and
cause a pulmonary embolism, and those start with difficulty breathing, chest
pain and a racing heart beat; then can elevate to fainting and even as bad as
coughing up blood. Those blood clots can also result in heart attacks or
strokes when they travel to other vital parts of the body.
Just shy of coughing up blood the symptoms of a pulmonary
embolism sound much like the attack Rebecca experienced before being rushed off
to the hospital.
This story of Rebecca is one of many, I’m sure everyone has
someone they worry about and wish that person would see a doctor. Then again,
there are people whose health problems hit them suddenly when they miss one
crucial sign. “Nobody knows how many people put off medical visits or whether
it is harmful for most people…But public health experts agree that scores of
people who have money, health insurance and access to good medical centers are
choosing not to go for checkups...” (Epstein,
2001)
I personally have begun to pay more attention to my health
and it’s started with the death of Rebecca because her story hits home to me,
she is my mother. Until my aunt was diagnosed with this mutation, I’d never
heard of this disorder. I’m sure there are plenty more disorders, diseases, and
other medical conditions I haven’t heard of; but to think that something this
serious is actually in my family tree surprised me. I can just as easily have
this mutation and not know it. My next step is to get tested for it myself. As
it has been said before, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Again the whole goal of this isn’t to make people paranoid
and have them running to the doctor worried that every new symptom is the sign
of something dreadful. It’s just that the number of people not going to the
doctors regularly seems to be more common that I originally thought. “More than
a quarter of women—26 percent—delayed care in the past year because of cost,
compared to 20 percent of men, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey
of nearly 3,000 women.” (Khazan, 2014)
It seems that the lack of time isn’t the only factor in
delaying medical care. Yet, whatever the reason is, is it really worth the cost
of your life? Think of how many more mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers,
sisters and even grandparents can be around for those special family events if
people took time to check up on their health, gritted their teeth and stepped
into the doctor’s office and made sure they are as health as they assume.
Epstein, R. H. (2001, October 31). Retrieved from New
York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/31/health/major-medical-mystery-why-people-avoid-doctors.html?pagewanted=all
Khazan, O. (2014, May 15). Retrieved from The Alantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/all-the-reasons-women-dont-go-to-the-doctor-other-than-money/370952/
Signs and
Symptoms of Blood Clots. (2008). Retrieved from Stop the CLot:
http://www.stoptheclot.org/learn_more/blood_clot_symptoms__dvt.htm
