Thursday, November 4, 2010

Day 28: Stop Procrastinating!

I can honestly say that I am not much of a procrastinator. If anything, I tend to jump impulsively into most activities, often before I’ve carefully considered what I’m about to do. (“Ready, fire, aim!”) If there is something unpleasant that I need to do, I’d rather get it over with than brood about it. Such things have a tendency to gnaw at me, interrupting my sleep at 3 A.M. with the inevitable committee meeting to discuss it at length. In some cases, if the task at hand is something distasteful but not urgent, I find that putting it off by writing it on next month’s calendar page is a good way to practice “positive procrastination”!

But there is one area in which I am guilty of extreme avoidance behavior: all things medical.

There was a time when I dutifully went to the doctor every year for a checkup (usually my Ob/Gyn during my childbearing days). I had my teeth cleaned at the dentist annually and my eyes checked every year or two since I wear corrective lenses. But as I got older, health care got more expensive, insurance harder to come by, and “required” tests more common, so I began to slack off. At about the same time, I began to notice more and more cases of “CYA Medicine” being practiced – stressful tests and unnecessary, expensive procedures being done just so doctors could cover themselves against any future threat of lawsuits. This was also when it became common knowledge that too much stress could negatively impact one’s mental, physical and emotional health. So if doctors were requiring pointless tests that put undue stress on patients with little or no benefit, wasn’t that counterproductive? That’s when I began to develop a severe aversion to all things medical.

But the seeds of that distaste likely had their origins in my early childhood – like everything else – in the days when the doctor made house calls (yes, I’m THAT old) with needle in hand and ultimately in my butt cheek. I was the kid who had every childhood illness – measles, mumps, chicken pox, German measles – usually just in time for some major life event like graduation or First Holy Communion. Just about the only ailment that turned out beneficial was the stomach virus I picked up in the summer between grammar school and high school that allowed me to shed 15 unwanted pounds.

In my college dorm, I lived on the floor below the pre-med students. After a couple of months of witnessing their antics, I made a conscious decision not to visit any doctors once they had graduated. And in my junior year, suffering the after-effects of too much grief, booze and toxic relationships, the doctors I visited seemed incapable of diagnosing – much less treating – my panic attacks despite repeated visits to some of the best clinics in the Boston area.

After figuring out and treating my anxiety on my own, I began to put more faith in healthy food, vitamins and exercise than I did in the medical profession. Of course I sought the appropriate medical care when I got married and had my children, and I took them for all the required checkups and shots when they were growing up. But little by little, I began to distrust some of the advice I got from their doctors.

Like when my infant son caught the flu that all the rest of us had two days shy of three months old and the pediatrician insisted on drawing blood from his tiny little arm at the hospital to test him for meningitis – just because that was standard procedure. Even the phlebotomist was crying. I finally stormed out, baby in arms, called the doctor and told her off. (She was gone about a month later from the practice.)

Or when another pediatrician suggested that because my daughter was short, I should give her growth hormones. (Have you ever given blood? They ask two questions: Have you had intimate contact with anyone who has AIDS and have you ever received growth hormone?) We changed doctors right after that.

As I got older, it seemed that more and more tests were “required”: an amniocentesis, should I get pregnant after 35; a mammogram annually once I turned 40, and a colonoscopy at the mid-century mark. Of course every one of these tests was extremely costly for someone like me – self-insured with a high deductible. So some of them I argued successfully against, others I reluctantly endured, and still others I avoided altogether.

Which brings me to the present. Right now I am behind in getting some follow-up blood work done (it requires fasting, and I can’t drive without my morning cup of coffee), having a mammogram (last time they screwed up and scared the crap out of me) and scheduling an eye exam (I hate having my pupils dilated and driving home half-blind). Having just finished up with a root canal – something else I put off, due to the distance and time involved – I am not in any hurry to make these appointments. And yet I realize I am procrastinating. Out of fear? Perhaps. Out of distrust? Most likely.

But for now, the best I can do is to practice some of that “positive procrastination” and write a note to myself in my calendar. Maybe after the holidays.

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