Diagnostics Only, Please — I’ll Fix Myself, Thanks
Why I never want to be “under the care” of a physician.
I just turned 49. This is an age when you start reading more obituaries than births and you start considering your own health and mortality differently.
My mother was just a step or two below hypochondria. If I even looked like I was going to get sick, she strapped me in the car, and to the doctor we went.
Over the course of the first 17 years of my life, I was diagnosed with anemia, a heart murmur, thyroid disease, and even rheumatoid arthritis. (None of which I have now, btw.)
She handled her own healthcare that way, too. Mom managed her entire life around various doctor appointments — general practitioner check-ups, pharmaceutical refills, a foot doctor, an endocrinologist, a gyno, and later it became oncologists and specialists. She trusted in her doctors like the Pope trusts in the gospel.
She was paying more than $600 a month for insurance and at least that much on co-payments and prescription refills. But you know what Mom (and Dad for that matter) never did?
They never changed. They didn’t change their diets. They didn’t stop drinking. They didn’t take into consideration the chemicals, pesticides, and herbicides they dumped all over their garden or sprayed on their…
