Illness in the Otherwise Young and Healthy

Most of us realize if we live long enough our health will eventually fail. We can’t expect to maintain the health we enjoyed in our 20’s and 30’s into 80’s.  However, contrary to the opinion of my children, in my 50’s I still consider myself very young and I’m planning on decades of good health.  I believe this is a common optimism.  

But then disquieting events occur that remind me of my vulnerability.  Kirby Puckett, a famous baseball player about my age dies suddenly.  The non-smoking wife of Christopher Reeves loses her fight with lung cancer at age 44.  Closer to home, I see patients with really no risk factors diagnosed with cancer or suffering untimely heart attacks or strokes, diseases modern medicine is supposed to be helping prevent or postpone until the sunset of a long and happy life.  If I, a doctor who works around unexpected illness on a daily basis find this unsettling, I imagine many of you feel it even more acutely.  I wish to share my observations and offer some suggestions for the “young and healthy” who feel uncertain about their future.

Illness, injury and death are as much a part of our existence as birth, vigor and joy.  Despite its many advances, medicine is a “practice” that will ever be working toward, but never attaining perfection.  The variables of genes, genetics and environment are impossible to control or perfectly predict. Despite the many and wonderful advances made in medicine over the past one hundred years, we’ve only just begun to understand the complexities of physiology and disease.  I’m amazed at how much our understanding has changed just in the past 10 years!  But we’ve a long way to go. 

Some suggestions.  Have faith in modern medicine, but don’t “medicalize” your life.  Follow recommended health screening guidelines, take medications when prescribed, and return for indicated follow-up.  Seek medical care when ill or concerned, follow treatment plans when given, and when a cure can’t be found, move on with life and try to do the best you can.  Paradoxically, worrying about possible illness may well bring on the diseases you fear.  Unless already being treated for a chronic disease, the less you think about your doctor the better.  Health care professionals will do all they can, but remember, in most cases what you can do for your health is much more than we can do for you.  Eat right, exercise, lose that weight, stop smoking and get the rest you need; be involved with life and find joy every day!  Too much worry about tomorrow can rob you of the joy of today.  Yes, be aware of your risk factors for disease and do what you can to modify and reduce these, but ultimately, no one can predict what tomorrow will bring.  Live well today and tomorrow will be the best it possibly can. 

Horseshoe Canyon on a beautiful fall day