Constant Reminders
Surviving illness is just the beginning — the real work that nobody seems to talk about is health maintenance. Personally, I find myself thinking about my health all of the time. After two bouts of cancer, heart failure, and some arthritis and torn joints thrown in, I am constantly juggling both the treatment of, and preventing the worsening of all of those problems.
The way that this manifests is that my health maintenance routine becomes an ever increasing presence in my day - at this point it’s about a 50% part time job. Main job duties might include: shopping for healthful food, strength training, stretching, booking appointments, reviewing test results, cooking healthy meals, walking, trying to contact health providers, holding on phone calls to insurance companies, or journaling about health or recording for the podcast (which honestly helps both my mental health and also my physical health by making me reflect on important health topics that relate to me and all of you). So I’m retired, but not quite, since this is now my part time job.
In addition to the daily job duties of simply being healthy, a good number of extra minutes per day are taken up by either a memory of a health problem or a worry about a current one. I might smell something that brings me back to the chemo treatment room, or without any sensory prompt at all will remember how self-conscious I was at that party that someone would know that I was wearing a wig. Or, a muscle in my leg will twinge and before I’m even on the conscious level, I’ll be worrying that my lymphoma from 1990 is back in my bone marrow (it doesn’t even happen that way) and causing that leg pain again, which is how it all started. It feels as though chronic serious illnesses are always just under the surface, ready for attention at any time.
Between the endless to-do list and the regular reminders of health problems, it’s fair to say that health as a general topic occupies my mind most of the day, most days. I’ve learned to process it via several coping mechanisms - keeping busy, journaling and writing for my podcast, Dr. Patient. Though, I sometimes wonder if my choices of processing skills are actually just feeding into it more, giving me even more to do related to my health. But I also can’t let it go. Perhaps it’s because of my ultra-medical background of being both a physician and near-professional patient. I guess I’ve just leaned into it. Hopefully at least you will benefit from my coping mechanisms.