Saying Goodbye to a Friend
Today is the funeral for a woman I have known for over 27 years. She was a young 54 years old at the time of her death from breast cancer. She leaves behind three children in their 20’s to raise themselves. When I think of her story, it is the nightmare that I would envision for myself. For you see, she lived a tough life and many of the decisions she made took her down a path that lead to today. It is now that I reflect, wondering what decisions I make today and tomorrow and how that will culminate in the outcomes for my future.
When she married, everyone would have thought that she had picked a spouse who would have been able to give her all that she wanted. She married a man who would become a doctor and all she wanted was a home, family and especially her children. She was a dedicated wife, worked hard as a court reporter and had three children while getting her husband through his residency in medicine. If that had been the beginning of many more happy chapters, things may have worked out differently. Unfortunately, as it turned out, her husband suffered mental illness and became an ineffective husband and father. Worse yet, he was drug and alcohol addicted and eventually the toll it took on her married ended, not surprisingly, in divorce. He became an unreliable contributor and she was left to raise the children by herself. Then came the news that he was found dead in his apartment, an overdose. Whether this ended some of the pain she had, I will never know, as we had not spoken for years.
Unfortunately, this should have ended a fairly painful chapter for her but it did not. Around this time she was diagnosed with untreatable breast cancer. My understanding is that she fought valiantly for the last five years, but succumbed to cancer yesterday. She will be buried today and her three children will only have the relatives that step up to the plate to help them there for them in the future. This is my nightmare.
In a way, her situation reminded me of Dana Reeves, Christopher Reeves wife. After all the years of caring for a man (that she loved deeply) she developed lung cancer. She was a lifetime nonsmoker and developed a very lethal form of lung cancer and died shortly after his death. We know that the stresses in life that we suffer, sometimes in our control and often outside of our control, affect our health. Dana, too, left a son to be raised without parents. This becomes the nightmare of most mothers. Something we could hardly envision when we have children.
What I would like to emphasize is how the choices we make and how it affects our health. This is a critical point, that most people do not give much thought to. When you are young, choosing your mate (who seems awesome at the time), taking your first drink, eating fast food because you don’t have the time for making food, or taking that first puff on a cigarette-you don’t realize the effect that the culmination of these decisions will have on your life 10, 20 or 30 years later. They do. Every choice you make today is the building block for tomorrow. What is my advise as a doctor? Well, some of the advise is easier than others. Our brains are hardwired to be weak, to give in to the behaviors that are momentarily gratifying. That is what the advertising industry counts on. Fast food, processed snack foods, tobacco, drugs and alcohol all stimulate pleasure centers in the brain. The unfortunate effect on your health cumulatively is devastating. You have to make the conscious choice to realize that you will have to deal with the long term consequences of these decisions and it will be painful. Making better choices everyday is a decision. It is not hard, it takes effort. The payoff is huge. There is an additive effect of good health behaviors. You eat well and exercise, then you sleep better, you perform better is school and get and maintain that great job you wanted. You meet different people, with better physical and mental health habits and you develop a community of people in your life that move you down a better path.
For my friend, the chances for change or over. For those of you reading, there is always hope. Today is a new day and a new direction. Choose wisely with intention the people you choose to have in your life, the food you eat and where you live. Make sure to choose a life that makes you happy and healthy and if there are things to improve upon, take the first step today in that direction. I know I will.
