Take off Your Pants and Cough

Here’s the Thing:

Make an appointment for a medical checkup.

I can’t tell you how many people have said to me in recent weeks that they know they should go to the doctor but they just haven’t gotten around to it, or they haven’t been to the dentist in, well, you know, five years.

My teeth, in paperweight form.

Idiots.

Going to the doctor and dentist regularly will save you and me money and it could save your family and friends a heck of a lot of heartache.

I’ll give you my story first. It had been over two years since I’d seen a dentist when I finally got around to scheduling a checkup and cleaning last summer. Four fillings and two crowns later, I’m out 700 bucks, my insurance is maxed out at $3000 (over two calendar years), and I’ve wasted about seven Thursday afternoons getting shot up and drilled into. Plus, by maxing out my insurance, I’m doing my part to make sure rates stay high for everyone.

But that’s just teeth. The stuff going on inside your body can be hundreds of times worse. Cancers and other diseases seem to be crazy-common these days, and with a lot of this stuff, catching it early can be the difference between knocking it out quickly and living with it the rest of your life, or dying with it…soon. That difference can mean thousands of dollars for you, millions of dollars for insurance companies and the government (i.e. the rest of us), and some of the worst days, weeks, and months of their lives for the people who love you.

Granted, really serious things like that aren’t going to happen often in your life, but probably once, right? And when it does, if you haven’t been checking, you’re not going to catch it.

Living a healthy and simplified life, of course, can help keep you well too. And we’ll talk about that on this blog a lot, I’m sure. But getting over your medicophobias — and getting your ass into the doctor or dentist’s office from time to time — can also help.

Women, get your pap smears. Men, let them stick that little diddly up inside you to make sure you don’t have colon cancer. Don’t be embarrassed. We’ve all got colons and rectums and anuses and vaginas. (Well, you know what I mean.) And don’t be afraid, either. If it turns out you’re healthy, you’ll feel a million times better once you know that. If it turns out you’re, shall we say, less than healthy, you’ll feel a million times better once you start treating it than if you hadn’t. Either way, a preventative visit to the doctor is going to make your life better.

Isn’t it time you got those weird inexplicable thingie-majiggies looked at?

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If you don’t know about Web MD, you should. Check it for some great background resources on just about any medical condition you could imagine. And here’s their portal into healthy living for men, women, children, and seniors.

Plus, if you’re in need of a dentist in NYC, I’d be happy to recommend mine. Just shoot me an email at jeff [at] onelittlething [dot] org. He made those sweet molds of my teeth (above).