soopastryheart

My mother, bless her heart, isn’t so much a hypochondriac as she is drama queen. If she feels a little heartburn, she will furrow her brows and inform me that’s she’s overdue for a mammogram. If her joints hurt, she’ll ask me the symptoms of osteoporosis. If her eyes are feeling particularly dry, there must be an underlying, pernicious cause. A headache is never just a headache, but a foreshadowing of darker and scarier things. Everything is grave and super serious and really, it’s a miracle she’s alive.

It takes every bit of me to fight the temptation to roll my eyes at her each time she predicts a new ailment, but I do my best to restrict sarcasm and rationalize: she’s had too much spicy food and she rarely uses her reading glasses, causing her to squint while reading the paper. Also, she is 54 and has to be tricked into exercising.

On more than one occasion, she has accused me of being too skeptical or dismissive. And she may be right. But if having worked in hospitals throughout college has taught me anything (other than that security should almost always be present when dealing with crack addicts with large lacerations), it’s that people can be fanatically paranoid when it comes to their health. A paper cut is no laughing matter. A cough should definitely set off some alarms. And everything is a sign of cancer.

Collective hysteria was worst when it came to health-scare fads. I can’t even begin to tell you the crazies who came in during the initial H1N1 scare. It didn’t matter if there were only one or two cases in the entire state, or the fact that the regular flu took more annual victims… her kid got coughed on at recess, damn it, now make sure he doesn’t turn into bacon! Clinics were overwhelmed of families with parents who had yet to teach their kids to wash hands and not lick things. We went through rounds of these of-the-moment health scares; spinach recalls, salmonella outbreaks (and by outbreak, I mean one unfortunate soul from a frugally-catered office party), with almost never finding a true victim.

For the general public and healthcare professionals alike, the human body can be quite the mystery. The only difference between these two groups though, is that the latter have the facilities and means to find a way to answer some questions. My fellow pre-med classmates and I could converse fluently knowing that we shared a background of general knowledge. But then the business or humanities majors couldn’t tell the difference between the trachea and esophagus – and if college-educated folks were this limited to basic anatomy, what about the rest of the population? How much more terrifying (once in high school gym, this kid worried he had strained his ovaries during power squats) was it for them?

But when it comes to health, it’s easy to judge and ridicule when yours is on good terms. However, it’s even easier to jump the bandwagon when it’s not. Our minds are quick to walk in to a dark alley of what-if’s, unable to find our steps back into the lighted streets of rationality. We’ve all read stories about the man or woman who went in for back pains and never came back out. Or, stories about a man or woman who went in for a yearly physical to catch an otherwise deadly disease before it became lethal (i.e. syphilis). Stories like this come aplenty, feeding our preexisting neurosis, all but physically pushing us to jump to conclusions at the first sign of a symptom. What many of us fail to realize is that the stress we place on ourselves worrying about these potential dangers plays a major component to our health. You may have an ulcer, but it’s made worse by the fact you are thinking it’s worse than that.

For every valetudinarian, there’s always a skeptic, someone who plays down the actual malady because it doesn’t seem like a necessary reason for a hospital trip. Once, my roommate was violently ill for an entire day – literally crapping blood every other hour, and suffering unforgiving stomach pains. After 24 hours of agony, we drove to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a case of E.coli. To her defense, she wasn’t recreationally licking toilet seats – she worked in a lab that handled, among other bodily goods, poop. She had a legitimate, hospital-requiring need – and yet, she waited as long as she could before she sought medical attention.

Like many parents, mine have always had high aspirations of their kids becoming physicians (to cover all the bases, my parents wanted a surgeon and a dentist, which meant one of us had a free pass). Sure there’s the bragging-rights (I’m convinced my dad will be one of those people with a “my kid’s a cardiologist” bumpersticker), but more importantly, free health services (on speed dial, no less). Fortunately for my parents, I was always more than a little interested in medicine, so I didn’t resist their suggestion (except that brief period in my young life where I desperately wanted to pursue a pop-music career). But as much as they have praised doctors, I never understood their constant reluctances to avoid them. My dad once fell off the roof and landed on the hot tub, subsequently dislocating his shoulder. He waited a week until he finally got it looked at. I have scheduled, canceled, and rescheduled my mom’s appointments with the optometrist for over a year now. A few days before each appointment, her eyesight is miraculously better, and the services are no longer needed. A few days after that, she’s “practically blind.”

On rare occasions where my parents found themselves in absolute need of authoritative care, I have accompanied them to a wide range of awkward and often humiliating specialties: gynecologists, urologists, colonoscopies, and questions about sexual activity (Oh. My. God.). I would sit in the room, always facing the wall, my back to whatever body part was being examined, and dutifully translate languages as calmly as I could (easy to do now, not so much when I was eleven). Don’t get me wrong here – I’m perfectly fine with naked body parts – I’ve seen plenty of penises and vaginas (err, I mean in a clinical setting). Blood does not make me squeamish in the tiniest bit (my roommate and I used to watch surgeries on TLC during dinner). But it’s a whole different story when it’s your mother or father’s urethra you’re talking so candidly to the doctor about.

I always advocate preventive care as being better (and cheaper) than treatment, and though I have yet to receive my MD-club card, I’d say all physicians would agree. But active prevention takes diligence –healthy diets, consistent exercise, and regular checkups. Sounds easy enough, but for those without health insurance or the funds to do so, a single routine visit is the difference in paying the utility bills on time. When you compare all the other necessities, health maintenance will always take a backseat. We tap into our “I’m not even sick, so why should I bother?” mentality, or convince ourselves that it’ll go away on its own.

I think part of the reason (and the problem) some people can be hesitant to visit the good ol’ doctor while others are trigger-happy is because it just seems like too much work. What’s covered by insurance? What isn’t? Well, what if you don’t have any at all? There seems to be so many different channels you must barrel through before you get your answers, and even then it’s murky at best. And it’s never just the doctor who’s holding your life in her/his hands… it’s also the coordinators, the interns, even the operator. You call the main office to be greeted by a snooty and clueless receptionist who puts you on hold. You’re then transferred to no less than three different divisions, ultimately landing at a voice mail of so and so, who is currently away from his desk or assisting other customers. Often times, you are left at the mercy of those without the medical degree but with power and control regardless.

I’ve been frustrated and inspired by both sides medical bureaucracy. I’ve witnessed some pretty epic blowouts between desperate and weary patients at the hospital, arguing with the health care representative with stacks of paperwork in their hands. It didn’t take much eavesdropping to understand what the frustration was about (or to take a side). When I go to have a prescription filled and the bill ends up being higher than expected (even with the insurance), I know I’m almost never going to get a satisfactory answer from either the pharmacy nor insurance company. Sometimes, the diplomacy of healthcare is enough to scare whatever disease out of your body.

But like I said, I’ve also been really appreciative of those who understand the significance of their jobs as something more than just answering phones and looking up policy. I recently had to schedule a blood test for both my parents, something that should have been fairly uncomplicated (with a doctor’s request). But because of one complication after another, it took almost three hours to get everything straightened out. I spoke to the coordinator of the schedule, an efficacious woman who remained patient, resourceful, and personable during each of my seven calls. Experience taught me that when someone in management tells you that they will call you “as soon as they can”, it meant hours, if not days. But she returned my calls before I could begin to stress out, even calling to confirm she received the fax I had sent. She did not know me, and she did not know or question whether or not this blood test was urgent. Still, she handled it as efficiently and professionally as it could have possibly been, and for that, Mary in scheduling, I was truly grateful.

And that’s the scariest part about healthcare, isn’t it? You’re almost completely dependent on the word and work of those who are otherwise strangers, believing in their expertise and efficiency. You have to trust that the doctor you’re speaking to is more than competent, that the labs didn’t screw up the test results, that it really is a mild case of food poisoning and nothing more serious. A blood test isn’t just a blood test when an entire family with a history of high cholesterol is concerned – it’s not just results or answers, but a remedy to enormous emotional (and often times, physical) exhaustion. Squeezing in appointments, fast-tracking applications, or looking for discounts or exceptions aren’t just favors you’re doing for the person on the other end – they’re the things people depend on. They’re the differences between whether or not an annual breast or prostate exam occurs, and whether a rash gets treated or left to “hopefully go away on its own”.

The human body is an enigma, a temperamental and stubborn blob of questions, concerns, and fears. And with the seemingly endless ways we can intentionally or unintentionally screw it up, the last thing you want to worry about is whether or not you can fix it when it’s broken. It doesn’t matter if you’re an overprotective parent, a 54-year-old melodramatic Korean woman, or a resilient tough guy – fear (of either needles or the bill), hesitation, and inconvenience should never be reasons to avoid the doctor when you think you need the consult. However, acceptable reasons include irrationality – use your brain: you probably don’t have polio.

Probably.