What A Way To Go

Now that I'm a septuagenarian, I am bombarded by health advocates who want to practice "preventive medicine" on me.  Not a week goes by that I don't get mailers advertising hearing aids and other devices and aids for the elderly.

But the real kick came last week, when I received a health alert from University Hospital here in Augusta in my email Inbox.  In it was a list of preventive care screenings that I am eligible for through Medicare and that are overdue.  They included colonoscopy, td/tdap, hemmocult, prostate cancer screening, digital rectal exam and flu shot.

The first action I had to take was a search of the Internet to learn what some of those ominous-sounding screenings were.  (Isn't the Internet grand, that we can learn just about anything in short order on it?)  Then I had to think about whether or not I really wanted to subject myself to some of those procedures.

I won't bore you with my medical history here, other than to state that some of those tests and shots are already accomplished.  However, I have a real aversion to volunteering for some of them.  I also have a theory that some things are better left undone.

I am convinced that some health problems--cancer, for one--are aggravated and/or initiated by the very tests to detect them.   I don't have any factual proof to back that up, but I do believe that when cancer cells are exposed to air, they seem to take off and start multiplying.

There are a lot of people who have had cancer that went into remission, but there are many more whom, once the disease was detected and treatment was started, died in a very short time.  One has to question the timing from onset to terminal.

Here's another reason I don't care to undergo uncomfortable screenings and procedures: Since I am already on the cusp of the hereafter, do I really care how I go?  Everybody's got to die of something, and, for me, I suspect my "something" is well established as coronary artery disease.  To learn that I also have another deadly disease would just be adding insult to injury.

With such a morbid topic, I can't leave you in a funk over it, so here is a little "kicker."

My barbershop quartet has a song we sing called, "Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven" that has a great ending.  The last line is, "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die!"  Isn't that the truth? 

If I have to go anyway, I’d just as soon go out quickly and painlessly.  But if that is not to be, and I have to linger on awhile, I prefer to go out like this guy-note what’s in the IV bag.