Pssst…… Can You Hear Me?

I mean, CAN YOU HEAR ME?????? Warning: public service announcement forthcoming because I feel the need to speak out on something I feel is so important.

Do you know what? Your body SPEAKS to you. And you need to listen and pay attention and be PREVENTIVE.

Six years ago, I decided for our 40^th birthdays, my handsome hubs and I would go for his and her cardiology appointments. Isn’t that just su-weet?????? There we were in a room together, gazing across a sterile doctor’s office, gazing into each other’s eyes over the head of the nurse all the while taking turns getting hooked up to EKG machines. (And they say romance is dead.) Why was this important to us? Our gene pool had kind of stacked the proverbial cardio deck against us and we felt like we needed to establish a baseline. HH hubs passed with flying colors while I got the call back for several more tests. The end result? A small, non-life threatening issue that required medication and eventually disappeared for a bit.

For a bit……..

So fast forward to 2016…. late last week and early this week I went to a cardiologist for some heart irregularities I was feeling. And while I’m still not quite done with testing, my EKG, echocardiogram, and stress test came back for the most part really good. Like really, really good.  Apparently my heart is one strong sucker. The same minor issue re-surfaced, so back I go on my low dose prescription.

I went because I am LISTENING to my body. I have experienced what can happen when you don’t. And while preventive testing of any kind will not eliminate every possible thing that can occur, it can be a pretty good shotgun approach to try to find any multitude of medical issues.

AND, pay attention to your loved ones. Look for signs FOR them. There is a difference is being paranoid and being aware. Because if something bad does happen to your loved one, you will question yourself, blame yourself, and kick yourself for a long time as to what you could have possibly missed.

So puh-leeze peeps, listen to yourselves. I don’t want anyone’s life to follow the same path as my sweet daddy, who at the age of 51 and seemed to be in perfect health, one evening in September 20 years ago went for his nightly 2 mile power walk with his daughter. And shortly after leaving the house, started complaining of pretty bad heartburn. And when daughter says, “Let’s not walk tonight” he says that the heartburn is a result of the licorice in the Good & Plenty’s he had been sneaking from the pantry and, “Do NOT tell your mother.” And the next thing you know, three blocks from the house, his daughter is on her hands and knees in the middle of the street performing CPR on her daddy, a man who she thought would live forever, all the while making every bargain with God if He would only let her daddy open his eyes and start breathing again. Suckiest night ever.

There WERE signs. And he missed, or made excuses for, them and we missed them and 20/20 hindsight can be soul crushing and suffocating and completely irreversible.

So please, get yourself to an annual physical every year. Make the appointment. Run the labs. Don’t blow off nagging symptoms and don’t let your loved ones blow off nagging symptoms.

Listen to your body.

Your body speaks.

Your loved ones will thank you for it.