Showing posts with label Listen To Your Body. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Listen To Your Body. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

"Listen To Your Body, Bock" - Part 4

"La Mort de Marat" (1793) Jacques-Louis David
Marat was working in his bathtub, soaking for a skin disease,
when he was assassinated by Charlotte Corday
This is the fourth and final installment of a series of post entitled "Listen To Your Body, Bock".

In the previous posts I have shared some outtakes of my medical history where I have been told by representatives of the medical profession that I should "listen to my body".

What I wanted to show you with the examples in my posts was that "listen to your body" is a crock of shit which no decent healthcare worker should ever utter.

Your body sends you many signals over time, most of them are nonsense. Your body doesn't always tell you when something is wrong and if it does, it isn't always clear about it. Only once in a while does it have something important to say.

Instead of trying to listen to the gibberish coming from the body, observe it carefully. Notice the changes that occur on your body, size, color, density, texture, new lumps, tenderness, whatever. If it is unexpected, get a check-up.

If you feel pains or see blood, get a check up. And always, always, have a regular check-up every year or two.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

"Listen To Your Body, Bock" - Part 3

Greta Garbo as Marguerite Gautier in the American romantic drama film "Camille" (1936),
directed by George Cukor and produced by Irving Thalberg and Bernard H. Hyman
For those of you who haven't read Alexandre Dumas, fils, novel "La Dame aux Camélias", or seen the other works  of art that are based on that novel, mainly the film "Camille" (from which the picture above is taken) or Giuseppe Verdi's opera "La Traviata", let me give you the following short information about it as far as it is relevant to this post.

"The lady of the camellias" (whom the originators of the opera for some inexplicable reason see fit to change the name of) is a luxury prostitute in the 19th century Paris. She hobnobs with high society (mostly the older and wealthier men) and other girls like herself. During the course of the story she starts coughing in the sweetest and most endearing way. This gets worse until she starts emitting perfect small  flecks of blood on her white handkerchiefs. It deteriorates from there and eventually she  dies.

Well, now lets leave that little floozy and move our attention to someone much more important, namely  me.

I have been coughing more-or-less constantly for the last ten years. This is of course connected to my habit of smoking cigarettes. Sometimes I cough much, at other times less, it gets worse when I have a cold or the flu. Now let me also confess that my coughs can in no way be described as cute, discrete or  touching. When they are bad they are really bad and take over my body completely and come out as deep, rumbling cascades, so if I feel that happening I usually get to my feet - if I feel it is safe - and remove myself to another location where I can take care of business alone.

Throughout the past years I have had dozens of X-rays and examinations by specialists of every kind. They find nothing strange and all tell me, "There is only one way to get the cough to stop and that is by quitting smoking."

However, last fall there was a breakthrough, I was diagnosed with a mild case of Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and have since received adequate treatment for that, meaning inhalation medication of Spiriva (tiotropium bromide monohydrate), supplemented by Oxis (formoterol). This medication allows the muscles in my airways to relax and thus helps keeps them open which allows me to breathe.

Lo and behold, my longtime companion the cough almost left me completely overnight, except for a few cute and rather endearing coughs once-in-awhile. That is until about a month ago, when I suddenly started coughing violently again despite religiously adhering to the routines prescribed by the doctors.

After about two weeks of this, I started feeling sharp pains on the right side of my chest. I suspected I had torn a muscle, but due to pressure from my parents, my boss and my consort I made an appointment to see my Hungarian doctor. He - as always - listened extremely attentively to what I had to say and to my lungs. After having done the latter he asked me to lift my right arm, he then jabbed me in a particular spot with his finger and I almost jumped through the roof. With a soft smile he then told me that he had been worried that my right lung might have collapsed, but that he - after the examination - had come to the conclusion that I had torn a muscle. I should medicate for this with regular off the counter painkillers.

Two days after the visit to my doctor there was a new and - for me rather dramatic development (remember I told you in the beginning that I am a hypochondriac). Blood started coming up when I coughed, not small flecks either but rather largish volumes of it, although I am aware of the fact that it always looks more than it actually is.

Sometimes the discharge was pure blood, at other times it was mixed with coagulated blood or big sheets of blood or with yellow gunk. After it had started, it just kept on coming. I first suspected that I had broken a blood vessel through coughing and waited for it to heal, hoping that it would do so fast. The palms of my hands slowly started turning pale, and that had me worried, because then I understood it was not only minute amounts that left my body.

When the blood continued coming - and after a little more than a week - I told Tomais about it. He lovingly convinced me to make an appointment with my Hungarian doctor a.s.a.p. On Thursday morning I saw the doctor, he listened to my story, listened to my lungs, looked at the palms of my hands and gave me a prescription  for ten tablets of Doxycycline, a referral to get an X-ray taken and some cough suppressant. He told me he now suspected it was pneumonia or some other pulmonary infection. What it was specifically, he would get back to me about on the coming Monday when he received the reply on the X-rays.

After starting the cure with two pills on Thursday, the bleeding ceased completely on Friday, instead I kept coughing up gunk with a brownish-yellowish color and a foul taste. Today, Saturday, it is even lighter, not so bad tasting and the cough is subsiding. My energy is coming  back and I no longer get chills every evening.

So, here we can probably conclude that my body has been trying to tell me to stop smoking, which every healthcare worker has told me repeatedly. I have apparently refused to listen to what my body has had to tell me in this matter. 

Friday, June 6, 2014

"Listen To Your Body, Bock" - Part 2

"The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp", oil painting on canvas (1632), Rembrandt
In September 2001 I had just gotten out from a biannual medical check up and was driving back to work when my cell phone rang.

The caller was a nurse at the doctors office I had just left. He told me to immediately stop driving as soon as it could be done, park the car and get myself transported to the emergency room at the hospital. They were going to fax the paperwork there meanwhile. No, I was absolutely not allowed to drive there myself under any conditions.

When I (a little irritated) asked why this brouhaha all of a sudden, I was informed that they had received the results of the blood tests that had been taken and according to them I should actually not be alive, moving about and definitely not driving a car on public roads on my way to work. Apparently the tests showed that my blood count (Hb), which should normally be between 130-170 g/l in a healthy male, was down to 56 g/l.

During the following five days I was subjected to every kind of gastrointestinal examination on the books, gastroscopy, Esophagogastroduodenoscopy, rectoscopy and colonoscopy, I was fed with some radioactive gunk which then was filmed as it passed through my system, from the mouth to the other end.  Despite the extensive examinations no ongoing leakage was discovered, nor any scars or other signs of old leaks. As far as the tests showed, I had the most beautiful and healthy gastrointestinal system in Northern Europe.

It was - and still is - a complete mystery how and from where I had been leaking blood extremely slowly over what must have been a long period of time. If the drop in the blood count had been sudden I would have gone into a state of shock and died.

All the doctors I met asked if I hadn't noticed any bleeding from my body. I told them that I hadn't noticed anything of the sort. I had from time to time been feeling a little tired, but nothing exceptional and I had not had a single sick day during the previous three years.

While at the hospital I was given a bag of blood a day, and I noticed that I became more alert and awake and realized how tired I had in fact been.  "You must listen to your body, Bock" they all told me, but if there was no noticeable shift I cannot understand what my body could have told me.

I was released from the hospital on Monday September 10, 2001, in a much better condition than when I was admitted and told to regularly check my blood count. (There is an easy way to do it without a blood test. You look at the palms of your hands, if they have a nice rosy color all is well but if they go pale you should take a blood test.) I have never had a problem like this after that incident.

I was on sick leave for a month after being released from the hospital, the doctors and my employer insisted on it even if I was feeling better than I had felt for a couple of years. The day after I had come home my father called me in the afternoon and told me to turn on the television, there was something dramatic and strange going on in New York.

As I sat down in front of the television set, I saw a tape being replayed of the first plane crashing into one of the towers at the World Trade Center, I watched live - in a state of complete horror and disbelief - when the second plane crashed into the other tower, and later when the towers crumpled and crashed to the ground, one after the other, and listened to all the speculations all through the night.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

"Listen To Your Body, Bock" - Part 1

"David", marble statue (1501-1504), Michelangelo
At least three times during my adult life health care professionals have seen fit to tell me that I should "listen to my body".

Well it is bloody easy for them to say that, without knowing what a darned chatter box my body is and ignoring the fact that I also have medium to strong tendencies of hypochondria which I try to keep in check. I avoid going seeking medical care and attention if I am not certain that there really is a problem.

The first time this happened, was when I had appendicitis with peritonitis. I was in my late twenties.

A few hours after a delicious Friday lunch, consisting of deep fried prawns  with curry sauce, at my favorite Chinese restaurant, I started feeling queasy, threw up a little and had vague belly aches. I thought there might have been a bad prawn, so I went to bed and tried to sleep it off.

When I woke up on Saturday morning I wasn't feeling queasy anymore but my whole midsection ached. I tried to purge myself but nothing would come out, so I tried coffee. That didn't help either. I slept off and on the whole day and night. Early on Sunday morning I was woken by the pains in my belly, which had now centered down to the lower right section of my belly. That was when I understood what it was, and decided to take the first  bus to the hospital emergency room.

At the hospital I was whisked past the people waiting there and got a drip and private room waiting for a surgeon who could operate me. Which was about an hour later.

It seems my appendix had been close to rupturing. One doctor told me it had been gangrenous, while another said it had been pernicious, both however scolded me for not having "listened to my body" and for having delayed far too long in seeking medical care. They also agreed that I could have died if I had not come in when I did.

The strange thing is, that before the doctors told me off I was rather proud of how I had handled it. I had listened to my body and had sought medical attention when I knew I needed it.