For the past months I have not been feeling well enough to put my fingers to the keyboard to share any thoughts about love, life, and learning. I’ve been sick. And when I am sick, I crawl into my basket, pull the blanket over my head and hope things will pass soon. I don’t go to the doctor unless I feel I am at death’s door. Normally this tactic works well enough, but this time, a virus that I caught at Christmas, decided to come back again and again, and hold up a mirror to the stupidity of my healthcare avoidant behaviour.
I did, of course, self-medicate! I drank litres of ginger infused tea, adding in lemon and rosemary for the incessant cough. A kind neighbour gifted me a pot of magical honey, with eucalyptus and echinacea. I even took a few tugs from a very old asthma inhaler. But when I finally found myself defeated, I took myself off to the doctor and got the help I needed. In two weeks I have started to feel a lot better and ready to reconnect with the world.
Healthcare avoider analysis
When I was back in Holland last February, a dear friend used the expression; healthcare avoider. I looked it up. It’s a thing. And once again I was reminded that I have a pretty messed up relationship to being ill and seeking help from the people trained to alleviate the discomfort. And by the way, that only applies to physical ill health, psychologically I run a very tight ship.
My friend knew that for the past four years, I have also been battling high blood pressure. My Dutch doctor, five years ago, offered a simple cure; lose weight; “we don’t give you pills until you lose weight”. And there you have one reason for being, as my friend says, a healthcare avoider. When you carry the odd twenty kilo’s overweight, most doctors will not look past it to assess what is going on for you. And while the weight does need to come off – and I am doing well in that area – just knowing they see your fat before they see you, is off putting when it comes to seeking medical help.
But it goes much further back than that. I am also caught between two life philosophies; doctors are gods that I need to justify myself to (mum), doctors make you sick (dad).
My mother was always in pain. Doctors could never find a cause. Yes, she somatised, but I also think that in today’s world she might have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. At the same time as being rejected time and again, she still held doctors in high esteem and put them on a pedestal. My dad, in contrast, was a smoker and a drinker, and was convinced that doctors made you sick. The more you stayed away from them, the healthier you were.
Developing my own ‘healthcare’ strategy
Added to this rather unhealthy conditioning came the experience of a seriously misdiagnosed ectopic pregnancy. Leading me to develop my own health avoidance strategy;
- What you ignore usually goes away
- If not, self-medicate as much as possible
- Don’t go to the doctor until you’ve figured out what’s wrong with you
- Come well prepared, i.e. document steps 1, to 3, to plead your case to make sure they take you seriously.
- If losing blood from any part of the body that shouldn’t be, stop hiding and go to Accident and Emergency.
Strategy number five saved my life, and neatly bypasses the discomfort of the previous steps. Nothing to justify, nothing to explain. But it is a little risky to say the least. I get that!
Trustworthy doctors
Having a doctor I trust of course helps a great deal. Dr. Walker, Dr. Bo, you are my medical heroes. These were doctors who saw right through my avoidance and did not make me feel like a wailing wimp. Dr. Walker came out on Christmas eve to confirm a second ectopic pregnancy. Dr. Bo treated my hernia, not my overweight, and said gently that waiting six weeks to come in, to the point of beginning to grow crooked, was not a sign of me being strong, but rather, a little silly.
And thank goodness that in the lottery that is finding a good general practitioner these days, be it in the UK, Holland, or Sweden, I found someone who wasn’t daunted by my two page ‘time-line’ (justification), and applauded the effort to lose weight, rather than the result. I came home with blood pressure pills, new lung medication, a referral to a lung clinic, but no anti-biotics because based on the blood analysis that she also ordered, it wasn’t going to help.
In short, Dr. Beatrice knew her job, yet allowed me to feel proud of taking responsibility for the part I am trying to play in my job, which is to lead a healthy life. And that healthy life now includes less anxiety about contacting her when I feel my physical wellbeing could do with a little of her expertise!
So I am back.
A little wiser and a little more responsible. But also, thanks to another doctor to add to my short list of medical hero’s, a little more reassured that I can revise my healthcare strategy to one point only
- if you feel sick, go to the doctor.
