Falling Sick

Welcome to the Fork in the Road Blog: Reflections on Life, musings based on my perception of life, spanning decades of active life. This episode – Falling sick – muses over the experience I had when I needed a major treatment.

Falling sick is something one does not normally spend time worrying about as one goes through one’s life’s journey, especially the early part of the journey. Yet sickness is around us. Its presence and closeness are noticeable when it is viewed at a broad context other than at the individual level. We see clinics and hospitals which we know are housing sick people, but we do not spend much time pondering on their suffering. We move on because we are not sick.

Some of us are afraid of being called hypochondriacs and avoid going to the doctors as a result. Hypochondria is a psychological disorder characterized by excessive preoccupation with one’s health. Hypochondriacs are constantly worried that they are falling sick with a serious illness irrespective of how minor the perceived symptoms may be.

There are grown up people who may not remember when they ever fell sick. They are the people who may be in a house full of people with colds and they are not affected. They may be the people who went through the Covid pandemic unaffected despite having been exposed to the virus by the people they interacted with.

Until the end of last year (2022) I had been in hospital as a patient four times only in 82 years. The first time was in 1955 or 1956, the second time was in 1966 both times the doctors could not find out what was wrong with me, and I got better without any medical intervention. The third time was in 2000 for a 24-hour minor intervention and lastly in 2006 for a 48-hour relatively routine intervention. Serious sickness requiring hospitalization has not been part of my life, by the Grace of God.

I am musing over falling sick because of what happened when through routine medical examinations my doctor (General Practitioner or GP) noticed that there was some abnormality in my body. I undergo routine regular medical examinations by choice, as I mentioned in my blog on Medical Examinations. Results have over the years been normal. This time results came back with body system markers that needed further examination by specialists. I was slightly rattled but confident that the tell-tale signs will be found to have been false positives.

The specialist I was referred repeated the laboratory tests done by my GP and the tell-tale signs were confirmed as positive. He therefore decided to make routine non-invasive examinations which pointed to a need for invasive treatment. I have a rule I set for myself: My body belongs to me and when I go to doctors and lie down for an examination, I always ask them, as they conduct the examination, what they are finding. I tell them that I am not totally uneducated. In any case to know my body I did not necessarily have go to school. After all, it is me that lives within my body and experiences it every day. I had long discussions with the specialist over what he planned to do and why and, in his opinion, what he thought he might find. Luckily, he respected my questions and requests for information. I had no apprehension over the surgical operation, and it went well.

I was, however, not prepared for my body’s reaction to what turned out to be a major invasive surgery. My expectations were pegged to the reactions I had had in 2000 and 2006. There were at least two differences between this intervention and the earlier interventions. First, the earlier interventions were not anywhere near this one in invasiveness and second, my body was at least nearly 20 years older.

While the internal and external surgical wounds quickly healed the feeling of a highly traumatized body lingered for a long time. I felt weak and, for the first time, OLD. It is this reaction that led me share it with senior citizens who might find themselves in the same situation. I learnt that the lethargic feeling I had was not unique to me but more a result of age after a senior citizen who had undergone a surgical operation told me that she felt lethargic long after the operation. My point is that you need to be the guardian of your body and talk about the little things you feel when you are with your age mates. You will be surprised how many of them have the same issues, which they previously thought were unique to them. When one is in good health one does not “feel” one’s age. Before surgery I did not physically behave as an 82-year-old man. I was just “me” active and executing my daily activities with little hindrance.

In one of my earlier blogs, I wrote about medical check-ups. I used an analogy of the body being like a vehicle. I wrote that the body was not different from a car which, if not serviced regularly, could stop running in the middle of traffic when all that was required to prevent this inconvenience and embarrassment was a little oiling or greasing. But since you did not take care of this in due time, it died on you at the most inopportune moment.

This recent experience has made me appreciate more the importance of medical check-ups. I had no symptoms for any illness. If it had not been for regular routine medical check-ups, by the time I would have started feeling any symptoms the problem would have been too advanced to manage. Our bodies are not unlike a machine. They have parts that degenerate over the years and if not discovered in good time and repaired accordingly, they are bound to break down. This could mean the end of your life or comfortable existence at the very least.

As I have grown older, I have come to realize that my body parts are wearing down with time and that the best way to maintain a good healthy lifestyle is to ensure that they are checked on a regular basis before they grind to a halt due to negligence. As a result, minor issues have been identified and taken care of before they turned into something bigger. The purpose of an annual check-up is to help monitor these interventions and ascertain whether they have been effective or not.

If you have not had a medical check-up recently, have one soon. Do not wait until you are sick. You may already be sick but without symptoms.

Thank you for being part of the Fork in the Road Blogs: Reflections on Life. Be sure to look out for the next episode when I will be writing about Faith. And if you gathered something useful, please feel free to share the blog. My books, Fork in the Road: Creating a future of value starting from where you are and A view round the bend. Setting goals for your life’s journey are available for purchase at Aristoc bookshops in Kampala, Uganda and online at Amazon.