Admitting the Problem
At three in the morning you wake up and brood about it. You feel a cold chill down your spine when the thought occurs to you randomly during the day. You don’t want to think about it. And yet it worries you and eats at you. It makes you wonder what will happen and how long you will be around.
What is it? It doesn’t really matter; it is whatever set of symptoms or problems you don’t want to tell your doctor. The ones you hope will go away, but they don’t. The ones that might be getting worse.
In general, most problems start small and get big. If you address a problem when it is small, the process of addressing it may be relatively easy and not terribly painful. Unfortunately, as the problem progresses, the cure also gets more difficult or even becomes impossible.
Think about all the people you know: your doctor, the nurse who checks your blood pressure, your minister, your best friend, your spouse, your adult child, and so forth. Pick one of these people, the most sympathetic, to be the one to hear about your problem. This is the person who is going to help you talk with the doctor if talking to the doctor is difficult for you. Make a time to get with that person and tell him or her that you need help. Set up your doctor’s appointment so that person can be with you.
When you do talk about your problem, whether to a doctor or a friend, be sure you tell all the symptoms, or at least write them down to be given to your doctor when you go to the appointment. If you have a hard time talking about it, write down each symptom and when it began to occur and that information will help the doctor a whole lot.
Facing the illness and mortality of our bodies as well as the potential consequences of bad decisions we have made in the past is really difficult emotionally. Yet the only way things can get better is to find out what is going on. Also, the stress of not knowing and always guessing is actually much worse than the stress of dealing with a situation. Finally, it is a guarantee that you are not the only person who has faced this particular problem, but the only way for you to find this out is to let other people know.
Dr. Phil always tells us to “Get real.” This is excellent advice, although challenging to put into action. Getting real with your doctor can save your life and save you a lot of worry and stress along the way.