Medical Check-ups

When were you last to see a doctor for a medical check-up and how often do you do so? If you are over 55 years old, do you do these check-ups once a year? Many people listening to me may say: “No. I have not been for a check-up lately. I only visit the doctor when I am sick and I feel better after he or she gives me medicine or a prescription”.

Some may even say that they do not see the point of going to a doctor when they are not sick. Doctors are there to treat sick people, they reason. But I am quick to tell them that they are wrong. Doctors are not there only to treat sick people. They are there to help you take care of your health in general.

Medical check-ups are a very important element in the way we take care of our lives because the body is not unlike a machine. It has 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.

This is no different from a car which, if not serviced regularly, could stop running in the middle of a traffic jam when all that was required to prevent this inconvenience 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.

I feel more inclined or freer, possibly because of age, to talk about this with my age-group colleagues or even younger people. I take the opportunity to talk about prostate cancer check-ups if they are men. And if they are women, I may ask if they have had check-ups for breast cancer or cervical cancer. Whether they do self-examination for telltale signs in their breasts.

Many men surprise me when they say that they have never had prostate specific antigen cancer tests or digital check-up for prostate cancer enlargement. Yet they may be in highly vulnerable age groups. It surprises me because these tests are not expensive and are routine. Some are part of general medical check-ups. That is the point. Most people do not have routine medical check-ups.

I am lucky that most of my working life was within an institution with medical insurance that required regular annual medical check-ups. On retirement, I remained in the insurance cover and therefore continue to have regular medical check-ups. Most importantly, I believe in medical check-ups and not because someone, somewhere is going to ask me when I last had a medical checkup. I do my medical check-ups because I believe in them staunchly.

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 altogether. The purpose of an annual check-up is to help monitor these interventions and ascertain whether they have been effective or not.

I encourage people to be the guardians of their health. Do not leave it to the doctor to tell you how you are. You should be the first frontline person interested in your health. Find the markers that tell you

whether is not right. If you can take care of the problem, you should do so. If you cannot, take it to someone trained to analyze the health issues. Take it to the doctor.

High blood pressure/hypertension is called a silent killer because the telltale signs come slowly to most people. Nagging headaches, for example, can be overlooked without the suspicion of hypertension. After all, we get them for different reasons, all the time. We tend to write them off and reason that they will eventually go away of their own volition; little knowing that they could be a warning sign that our blood pressure is running out of control.

You do not necessarily have to take these problems to a doctor because they can be self-managed with a change of lifestyle; drinking less, exercising more, going outdoors and instituting a healthier diet. Eating well does not mean eating expensively. It can entail eating nourishing food in reasonable quantities and thereby control your weight. In other words, feel your body and be the person in charge of it.

I have a rule that I set for myself: My body belongs to me and when I go to a doctor and lie down for an examination, I always ask him or her, as they conduct the examination, what he or she is finding. I tell them that I am not totally uneducated and that 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.

If I have an ache in my back, it is me that knows exactly where it is. The doctor is only supposed to help me correct the problem either by guidance or intervention. And if I am given a medical form of intervention, again, it is my personal rule to ask what side effects I should expect, etc. Most doctors, unfortunately, do not talk to their patients about these things, apart from asking for the patient’s name and what their complaints are; or telling them to turn here and there.

They write up a prescription and tell the patient to go and pay at the counter without informing them what the medication is supposed to accomplish. In fact, not all medicines work to relieve symptoms and treat the ailment. They may make you drowsy, nauseous or lethargic; not because of any reason other than that this is how the medication is expected to work. But if the doctor has not warned you, you may conclude that the problem is becoming worse and actually make it worse due to worry. To make matters even worse, you could then abandon the medicine before its full course is completed, leaving you with the original ailment untreated.

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; things they previously thought were unique to them. For example, some people have deteriorating hearing which can start with high-pitched noises in their ears.

It does not hinder hearing completely but will interfere with hearing acuity over time. These noises may be worrisome and lead to serious thoughts that one is going mad or deaf. If not spoken about, a person could falsely be led to believe that they are the only one with this issue, little knowing that a high percentage of individuals in their age group have the same problem.

As for pains and aches in your joints at different times of the day, you may think that you are the only one experiencing them in the morning until you talk to your age mates and realize that it is a sign of aging. I am not saying to sit back and relax about it as a result. But as you compare notes, you may find collective means of relieving the telltale signs.

The point is to be the guardian of your body by sharing notes with your colleagues. Have your body checked up so that any deterioration as you age can be taken care of. Do not be misguided and say to yourself: “Nature is nature so I will go when I go”. No. God gave us the ability to think and senses to use.

Think about it.