Columnists
When someone else is you
“It always happens to someone else, until it doesn’t.” Maybe that’s a quote. I’m sure I didn’t make that line up all by myself. What I do know is that we all think this way. Oh yes, we do. It’s easy to get comfortable when we get away with making stupid choices. The longer we get away with it, the easier it is to think “it won’t happen to me”. And so it is with heart attacks and strokes. If we’re getting away with poor lifestyle choices, we get smug and comfortable. This week’s column is for the smokers. It’s for the inactive. It is for the obese. It’s for the consumers of high fat, low fibre diets. It’s for the people who think that a glass of water can easily be replaced by just about any type of liquid. This is for all of the people who think bad things only happen to someone else. Well, bad things do happen to someone else—and sometimes we’re the someone else.
In 2004, my father underwent life-saving heart surgery. Dad was always a very active person. He wasn’t overweight, but like a lot of men his age, he had been a smoker for decades and he wasn’t afraid of a meal heavy on the saturated fats. Oh, he drank a glass of orange juice in the morning and occasionally ate an apple in the afternoon, but most of the meals weren’t what anyone could call balanced. Perhaps he ate an iceberg lettuce salad every other day but that couldn’t right all of the wrongs on his plate. My dad had a stroke in the early 2000s and was diagnosed with hypertension and high cholesterol. Triple bypass surgery a few years after the stroke, added five years to his life. Did he learn anything? Not really. Oh, the salt shaker disappeared from the table and Mom would only let him have eggs four times a week instead of seven. He didn’t attend cardiac rehab, nor did my parents take advantage of the “eating healthy” seminars offered at Toronto General Hospital. In the last year of my dad’s life, he wouldn’t take any of his prescribed medications and pretty well lived on a diet of coffee and grease-laden or highly processed foods. The end. Would have lived longer? Who knows? He was an old man when he died. Could he have been spared the stroke and the by-pass surgery? Likely, if he’d chosen a healthier lifestyle.
We all know better. Right. We’ve read the articles and have seen the news reports. Perhaps our healthcare specialist has given us a warning. We know that being active is as important as eating properly and is as important as not smoking and is as important as lowering our cholesterol levels and is as important as taking our prescribed medications and is as important as getting enough sleep. In spite of what we know, we don’t think a heart attack or stroke will happen to us. Be honest with yourself. Speak with you doctor or nurse practitioner about your lifestyle and find out if your lifestyle is putting you next in line. For those of you who have all of the signs and symptoms, get in touch with the Prince Edward Family Health Team. They have excellent educational and rehabilitation programs for when it isn’t someone else.
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