Navigating Health
I awake early to write. I have promised my coach, yes, I had one at the start of this. It may sound pretentious, but I need someone to help me focus my thoughts, there are so many you see. They tumble like playful children, refusing to be pinned down. I make this promise, not to my coach, but to myself, that I will write; and dedicate myself to pen these tumbling thoughts onto paper in the hope that they will help someone out there.
I had an epiphany, in the latter half of my 50’s and the resolve grows stronger with each passing year. I intend to live this one precious life I have been given as long and as healthfully as I possibly can. To drink life to the last drop and not to waste one second.
I work in the medical field as a coordinator. It’s my job to try and make our patients lives just that little bit easier in navigating the healthcare system, by helping to book and get to their tests on time. I deal with a wide range of people, from busy executives to families, pregnant moms, and the older female client.
It is they that steal my heart. Many have lost their husbands, or they have put them into care facilities. Some have children who live far away, and they are left to their own devices to manage in an ever-changing world of technology.
My second favorite is the older mom, their children are leaving home and heading to university, so they are dealing with empty nests. Children are a buffer for many things in marriage. Suddenly they are alone with this man, who may have become a stranger. No more kids to ferry to and from activities. They are together, but do they have anything left to talk about now that the children are gone? Do they even like each other?
Then the tests begin. The probing and squishing of our bodies to seek out the reason or the causes of the symptoms. The routine screenings that reveal things that hide under the surface of our skins. The strange lumps that appear, thankfully often, benign. Heart disease rears its head. We tend to think of heart disease as a man’s illness, however, heart disease is the most common cause of death in men and women in North America.
I have deep gratitude for our healthcare system. Broken though it may be, it is free and available to all. I also have deep gratitude for the privilege of sharing a small part of these patients’ lives and helping in even a small way to ease their journey.
It is to the above readers that I hope to connect. The older woman, the older mom, that’s where I am somewhere in between the two. I hope to connect because I really want to pass this joyful discovery on to you.
This is not the end, this is the beginning of something new and wonderful, there is ahead of us a journey of discovery, we have only to take the first step and the path will begin to unfold before us, I look forward to your company.
Margi Raffan 