My dad, his name was Al. Most of my life I worried that he would die. When I heard him tell his half-brother that the doctor had found a heart murmur, I was sure he was going to die. I worried...and worried. I was 16 and I did not want to lose my dad.
When I was 19 I heard Dad tell Mom that the doctor said he had hardening of the arteries. He was evidently told that he was in danger of losing his legs. He came home extremely distraught. How would he work again if he lost his legs? I never knew how the doctor knew this about his arteries. This was in the early 50s and I nor a lot of people had ever heard of cholesterol. I don't want to lose my legs, cried my hard-working daddy. He worried...and worried... and I fretted. That doctor had him scared to death. We waited for that fateful day. It never came.
When I was 28, three doctors confirmed to Dad that he had a stomach ulcer. They said he could not eat anything spicy, including his favorite dessert of all time, mincemeat pie. He wanted that pie so badly but he did not eat it. He had to watch his diet religiously if he wanted that painful ulcer to heal. For two years he watched everything he ate and hoped the awful pain would go away soon.
Finally he could stand the pain no longer and went into the hospital. He told Mom that he hoped he would not be there long because he had to get back to work. The doctors decided to open him up to check on that ulcer that was causing him so much pain.
They opened and closed. Two weeks later he was dead. One doctor called Mom saying, I am so sorry, I never even thought of stomach cancer.
My mom, her name was Alice. She survived being a widow and a year later married a man 10 years younger than she. She had a new lease on life, much different from her previous life. After 17 years of marriage she began to feel a lump in her throat when swallowing. She went to many doctors who looked and did not see anything. The last doctor told her it was nerves (lump in the throat? why it must be nerves.) and to go home and take Valium.
After about five or six doctors, she gave up and decided to treat it herself. She had some sort of spray that she sprayed into her throat to ease the discomfort. One morning, about two years later, as she stood in front of the bathroom mirror to spray her throat, something unseen grabbed her wrist and pulled the spray away from her mouth. Try as she might, she could not get her hand back to spray her throat.
She went to another doctor who soon discovered that she had a cancer growing between her windpipe and her backbone. It was pressing into the back of her windpipe. She had surgery and the doctor announced he was sure he had gotten it all. She suffered for the next 6 months through chemo and radiation and then died of suffocation when her lungs filled with cancer.
My late husband, his name was Bert. He was very active with his Grotto and spelunking and rappelling. He was off every weekend to explore caves with his younger buddies. He was 65 and they were in their 20's, 30's, and 40's. They could hardly keep up with him.
But the doctor found he had high cholesterol. He started taking statins to lower it. As side effects, he suffered muscle and bone pain. He could no longer keep up with his younger buddies. He became the lookout at the entrance while they explored caves. His memory began to fail him. People said he sometimes acted odd and worried about him. These are some of the side effects of statins but I guess we thought it was worth it.....
Because his cholesterol was under control.
When he was 68 the doctor found a spot on his lung. Come back in a year. He went back and the spot was still there, maybe a little bit larger, but not much. Cancer they said. We must remove half the lung for your own good.
They did the surgery and he survived the worst experience of his life in the VA hospital. It gave him nightmares for a year after. But the biggest nightmare of all was after he got home a couple weeks later and wanted me to look up his cancer on the internet. Now he knew what it was called.
It was called small cell. I looked it up and printed out the page. He read it and said, they've killed me. It turns out that small cell lung cancer should not be operated on because that causes it to spread into the bloodstream and invade the whole body. Two years later he was dead.
I am not knocking doctors. They try. But as far as I am concerned, my life is in my hands, not theirs. I will make the decisions on what medications I take, on what tests I have, on what decisions are made in my final days. I can only hope the powers that be will at least heed my directives.
