My Journey With Health And Fitness – Ensuring You Are Healthy

Yet another beautiful day here in Playa del Carmen. It’s hard to believe that as of tomorrow I will have been here 7 weeks and still have 3.5 to go. Because this has been such a long trip issues have come up like my husband’s US taxes. It’s been fun navigating the IRS system from Mexico. After many hours of my time I managed to get time sensitive information faxed off to them before the deadline which hopefully will resolve everything. Now we just have to wait to see if Canada Post goes on strike since we need to mail a new tax return which can’t be filed online. Worse comes to worst we’ll have to let it wait until we get back home next month and can mail it from the US.

The other day we learned that Joe Biden has been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer and that it has metastasized to his bones. Sadly there are all sorts of people commenting on social media with all sorts of conspiracy theories about his doctor hiding the diagnosis while Biden was president, how there is no way cancer can metastasize so quickly, etc. My comment to that is the only words they should be posting is wishing Mr. Biden the best as he goes through treatment.

What his diagnosis did for me is to remind me how important it is to make sure you are healthy by being checked by medical professionals. I am going to concede that it may be easier said than done especially if you don’t have universal health care like we do. Having said that, I know plenty of people who believe that you only need to see your doctor when there is something wrong. Unfortunately that kind of mentality can lead to something not being diagnosed until it is too late or until serious damage had been done.

For me, I make sure my health is checked on a regular basis. I see my dentist twice a year (while we now have universal dental care, my husband and I don’t qualify so it is paid for out of our pockets). I also have my eyes checked by an optometrist every year (this is recommended for diabetics as you can be prone to things like glaucoma, retinopathy and cataracts). I do an annual physical with my family doctor which always includes a gamut of tests. And I ensure to be tested for colon cancer every 2 years and do a PAP test every 3 years. Of course since my Mom had breast cancer I do a screening mammogram every year.

Now I am pretty lucky because (knock on wood) at nearly 60 I am pretty healthy. My diabetes is in remission and I will continue to work hard to keep it there. Once I lost weight and got fit my blood pressure returned to normal levels. But I’ll be honest, if it wasn’t for a doctor 7 years ago who was concerned about the level of stress I was under so ordered every test imaginable including an EKG, I could have gone on for years with diabetes until such time as it had done a lot of damage. I dodged that bullet because of the fact that doctor was very old school and believed that diseases could be asymptomatic.

And so for all of you out there doing the ‘I feel fine so I don’t need to see a doctor’ routine, please stop. Take your health seriously and make sure it is being checked by the professionals. I know, there is still no guarantee that you will be long lived but I figure if there are tools out there that will better my chances of being around for a long time I am going to make use of them.