If you are reading this online, the chances are you live in a country with relatively good healthcare available, assuming that you have the financial resources to access the latest medical technology. But as Woodie Guthrie famously sang “But believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot, if you ain’t got the do-re-mi.”
For most people, non-life-threatening chronic illnesses have a far larger impact on their daily lives. For example, eight in ten Americans will experience back pain in their lives, 40% of whom will have pain severe enough to interfere with everyday activities. While we spend 50 billion dollars a year on treatment for back pain, only one half of those receiving treatment said it was effective.
I’ve had sinus headaches for over thirty-five years. I’ve been fortunate enough to have the resources to access some of the best care available, but I continued to suffer until I learned these six important lessons that I hope will be helpful to other men.
1. For a lot of men, the first step is acknowledging that they have a problem and are going to need to do something about it. Men are trained to think of pain and illness as weakness, or vulnerabilities that should not be acknowledged to others, especially to women. A lot of men suffer, and sometimes even die because they decided to try and “tough it out” and not tell anyone about what was bothering them until it was too late. The first step for a lot of men is taking themselves and their health care seriously and believing that anything that significantly interferes with the quality of their life is important and should not be ignored.
2. Once you have acknowledged that you have a problem and need help, the second tip is a lot easier for men, and that is to never give up. Passivity is your worst enemy. Chronic pain and disability are exhausting, they sap the energy you need most to work on your recovery. To makes things worse, if you’ve been sick for a long time, it’s probably not very gratifying for your healthcare providers to continue to treat you. Try as they might, it’s difficult for them to not subtly give up on you and stop believing that you can ever get well. If your doctors give up on you, you damned well better not give up on yourself or you will spend the rest of your life suffering.
No one can maintain the kind of energy it takes to fight a chronic condition all the time. You’ve got to give yourself breaks when you are not working at it, but then you’ve got to pick yourself up and get back at it again. Giving up cannot be an option, not getting well is not something you can’t even consider. When you run out of steam, and you’re not getting the encouragement from your healthcare providers, turn to friends, or online support groups, wherever you can connect with people who believe in your recovery.
3. Run your own healthcare. My father used to tell a story about a cop walking his beat late at night who came across an obviously very drunk guy crawling around on his hands and knees under a streetlight, looking for something on the ground. The cop asked him what he was looking for, and the guy replied “I’ve lost my keys.” The cop asked if that’s where he lost them, to which the guy replied “No, but the light’s much better here.” Medical care can be like that poor guy searching under the streetlight for the keys he’s never going to find. If you’ve got a chronic medical problem, you are probably being treated by highly trained specialists who are outstanding at finding things that are very difficult to find, as long as they happen to be under the streetlight that they trained to search in.
Your healthcare providers will make well informed recommendations to you based on extensive research about how effective treatment options have been across wide groups of people. The fact is that nobody knows as much about what works and doesn’t work for your body as you do. It’s very important to pay exquisitely close attention to your own experience and not let yourself get too distracted by the statistics.
4. Hire the best people, develop strong collaborative relationships with them, and be a good consumer. Do your homework and find the best people in your area. Ask friends for recommendations, go online and see what other people have to say, and schedule consultations with several providers. Ask them how they understand your condition and what their plan is for treating you. Make sure that they believe in your recovery. Pay close attention to how you feel when you are with them. If you feel nervous, embarrassed, or reluctant to ask the questions that are most important to you keep looking, regardless of the provider’s credentials. It isn’t going to work for you in the long run. Keep looking until you find someone you feel comfortable confiding in, someone you don’t feel like you are intruding on when you ask for help, and who clearly believes in you and your recovery.
Once you’ve found the right provider, then it’s your job to be a good consumer. Don’t ever leave the office without making sure that you understand everything. If you are reluctant to ask a question, you’re in the wrong office
5. Try ANYTHING, and I do mean anything. This is no time to be shy or squeamish. When people say they are reluctant to try psychiatric medications I’m always a little puzzled because I have been willing to try just about anything if I think there is even a remote chance that it will provide some relief.
I’ve tried just about everything that anyone has ever suggested to me, and a lot of other things I’ve thought up on my own. Some of it helped, most of it didn’t, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. I’ve had five sinus surgeries. In one case I flew 1,000 miles to have a surgery that no surgeon in my area was willing to risk. I have tried acupuncture (three different providers), naturopathy, chiropractic, various forms of sinus irrigation, and too many herbs and supplements to even count. One of the most helpful things in my current treatment regimen is an inhaler that a patient offered me one day, another is an online tincture my daughter suggested. Try everything, because you just don’t know where help is coming from.
6. When you find something that does help, even if it just helps a little bit or for a little while, don’t abandon it, keep at it. In the past, if I tried things that helped a while but then were ineffective, I stopped using them because they didn’t provide complete or long-lasting relief. What I learned is that my recovery is not likely to be a sudden transformation, or a miracle cure. My recovery has been the result of an incremental accumulation of treatment approaches, each of which contributed some small effect that was hard to notice on its own. I’ve learned that if any treatment is effective at any point, continue to use it and trust that it is still contributing to my well-being
I am happy to report that over a period of many years I have finally developed a treatment regimen that is very effective for me. I would not be where I am today without the help of some of the highly skilled, dedicated physicians and other health care providers who have treated me. At the same time, it is also true that I would not be well today had I not taken charge of my own care and followed these six lessons. I hope they are as helpful for you as they have been for me.
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