Counting my Blessings

I left a comment on a blog recently, I wrote it without thinking about how it might be read by others.   It wasn't anything unkind or critical, just that I have not been to see a GP or any other kind of doctor for over 18 years, nor have my son or husband, my daughter was hospitalised with pneumonia in late 2015 but has not been to a doctor again since.

We forget that our ordinary lives might be extraordinary to others, particularly when our experiences do not mirror the norm.  It did not seem unusual to me as I wrote that comment, but when I actually gave it some thought I realised it is.

Our lack of doctor visits does not mean we haven't been ill just not ill enough to warrant a visit. I will admit I have a distrust of doctors so am unlikely to be reaching for my phone to book an appointment and more likely to be doing some research.

In my twenties I was diagnosed, after a barrage of tests which went on for a number of years, with Crohn's disease.  If you have not heard of this it is a chronic condition effecting the digestinal tract my symptoms were in the large intestine.  It floored me for a couple of years restricting my ability to do much physical activity.  Being so young I was frustrated by an illness that was preventing me from doing the activities I loved which required a level of energy that I often struggled to achieve.  I couldn't bear the thought of that being my life, for, well, the rest of my life.

This was in the days before the internet and google doctor.  I had to accept my fate and just get on with it and I largely did until I had a seemly new set of symptoms which put me back in the GP waiting room.  This time it wasn't Crohn's it was the medication I was taking to manage it, they were slowly destroying my liver.  To say I was devastated was an understatement.  More tablets to support my liver?  That is the road I could have gone down but I didn't.  I stopped with that GPs support.  I perhaps should say that at this stage of my life I was moving around a lot working contracts that lasted about 9-12 months, I moved to new GP practices too.  In hindsight this was beneficial as I got lots of different opinions.  The GP that supported me to stop had not been the one to put me on the medication, she was stopping, in the first place.

She also sowed a seed, there were alternatives.  I didn't venture down that road for a few more years.  I stumbled on in the way you do when you are young, largely ignoring and accepting the symptoms I had.  They were not as bad as for some, I functioned in a job that required high energy levels and had a discomfort every time I ate that I had gotten used to.  I questioned this discomfort with a specialist, could my symptoms be related to what I ate.  The answer was not what I expected, Crohn's is nothing to do with what you eat, this was 1996 that may not be what you would be told now.

Nowadays I am symptom free and have been for nearly 20 years.  I restricted my diet for a number of years to manage this until I realised that was a different kind of managing things.  I did a mountain of research and changed my diet again, restricting my intake of a few foods (wheat and refined sugar were two of them) to see if I could reset things.  Thankfully it worked, with the exception of coffee which I absolutely cannot touch and tea which doesn't make me feel great, I can eat anything now.

I am grateful each and every day that my health is good, that I don't need to visit the doctor from one year to the next.  An unexpected consequence, is that by taking responsibility rather than handing that over to someone else, I feel far more in tune with my body.   I am not for one minute suggesting that everyone can and should do this, it has been a slow considered process over a number of years and I am so grateful it has worked for me and had a really positive outcome.

The last time I set foot in my doctors surgery I was there to see the nurse for a routine blood test as part of my continuing management of Crohn's.  I caught flu as a result of that visit.  I went in healthy.  I have never been back.  I have reach age milestones and I get calls inviting me for appointments which I turn down, they are not compulsory and I was not given a reason for attending other than the surgery gets paid for each patient they test.

And no other illness since, I have yet to have Covid.  That could be down to a number of things.  We eat healthily and in season, a lot of our food is organic.  I don't have any refined sugar in my diet.  Or house is relatively chemical free we don't use any products with artificial scents, make most of our cleaning products.  We do lots of activities that are keep us active.  I take rest when I need it.  I sleep well, most of the time, the odd blip here and there is not the norm.  I reach for herbs when I feel something is 'not right' researching when I don't have the answer to hand.  

I have worked really hard on my mental health processing many of the things that have effected me over the years, slowly making sense of them and moving to a place of acceptance from one of resistance and denial.  The connection between physical and mental health and the effect the latter can have on the former is something I am reading and hearing about more often but it is far from mainstream yet.

Is it all of these things, some of these or none of these?  Who knows?  What I do know is that I have worked really hard to be blessed with the good health and I plan to keep it that way for as long as I can.