The expiration date of our body
Some time ago I noticed that I had difficulty reading the messages on my cell phone, I thought at that moment that perhaps it was due to the fatigue of my long working days as a doctor, however, this situation continued and even worsened, so I wanted it easier to solve, I wrote to an ophthalmologist friend who had been a student of mine before.
- How time flies my friend! You are already a specialist!
I suppose that this memory in his mind, that I had been his instructor when he was just beginning his medical career, will have caused his mind to associate my symptom with presbyopia (age-related decrease in visual acuity).
- That’s presbyopia Doctor!
Next step, I went to buy those presbyopic glasses that they sell in pharmacies… easy peasy!
But to the surprise of this scientist, the symptom continued! So I said to myself, now this is a matter of going to be examined even though I didn’t want to get out of my work routine.
- What do you do for a living? — Asked the ophthalmologist
- I´m a Doctor
- Oh great! How can I help you?
That is how, after telling her about my symptoms and expressing that my presbyopia was not improving, I decided to request her help.
- That’s not presbyopia! The specialist assured me after asking me my age
Since then, I have been here with my glasses when I need to see screens and things up close due to a condition called farsightedness combined with astigmatism… words from doctors that more or less mean that I don’t see well up close.
Occasionally when I’m working I have patients who come to the ER or the office with a very advanced condition, so I ask them: why did it take so long to come for goodness sake!? (Imagine me tearing my garments)
However, life itself allowed me to understand the reasons, and this is where the story I told before fits in.
It seems that the human condition leads us to deny when we have new symptoms that may suggest that something is not going well, as if in our essence it was impregnated that we are infallible. In our mind, we have no expiration date.
So if we feel something strange, we rationalize it and look for an explanation within our reality… oh that’s because I didn’t like that chicken I ate!, or maybe I made a very sudden movement, or it’s because I’m very tired.
No matter what level of education we have, even being a doctor! our humanity catches up with us and takes precedence. And the idea of writing this is not to make a sermon so that people consult the doctor promptly but to put on the table something that happens to us and that is that I think we are never prepared to accept those moments when the body informs us about the loss of the guarantee from certain services… vision is no longer the same, you must wear glasses, or you can no longer do this exercise because your knee will hurt or in the worst scenario you will have an injury; or the typical situation in which you already realize that you can’t party until so late because you know that the recovery will not be as fast as before!
An old friend of mine once said to my then-younger self: the most horrible thing is not death but old age! Of course, at that moment I did not understand her words very well, today I remember her while writing on my computer with my ray-ban glasses that are not exactly for the sun.
