Everyone Will Experience Health Problems At Some Time During Our Lives, But Some People Show Remarkable Courage In The Face Of Incurable And Serious Health Problems
As we age, we all realise that some parts of our bodies don’t operate quite as well as they used to and some unlucky folk seem destined to have to deal with one problem after another throughout their lives. However, many of those people who appear to endure numerous health issues often display a resilience that the rest of us must envy.
I am aware of two such characters in my life who have displayed a determination that has kept them going for much longer than medical science would have estimated. My own father was diagnosed with asthma as a teenager, which meant that he frequently went through periods of breathlessness and had to use medication from a young age. Around the age of 45 he was admitted to hospital with a particularly violent asthma attack and within hours he experienced a cardiac arrest. He was given no more than a fifty per cent chance of pulling through and we were advised that if he did live there was a considerable probability that he would have experienced some level of brain damage as his brain had been starved of oxygen for too long.
However, he did live and his mind had not diminished intellectually although his physical reflexes had slowed down somewhat. A few years later, whilst hospitalised again after another severe asthma attack, he complained of other symptoms and discovered he had bowel cancer. Luckily it was at a very early stage and he went through successful treatment for it.
In later years, his lungs and heart became so badly damaged that he had no option than to be hooked up to a permanent oxygen supply and became completely housebound. His lungs were so bad that even moving from one chair to another would make him gasp for breath and completely unable to manage anything else at all. Even putting a glass to his lips was impossible. He passed away four years ago, but to live into his seventies whilst suffering from such serious problems genuinely was an achievement.
The mother of a close friend has gone through a similar catalogue of health problems. She got polio as a toddler, was confined to an iron lung for years in her childhood and was told she would never walk again. She baffled the doctors by learning to walk and went on to have a career as a singer and after that trained as a nursery teacher. She married and gave birth to three children even though she had been advised that she probably couldn’t reproduce, and spent years looking after her husband after he broke his back and developed a severe heart infection.
However, after her husband’s death, she had a very painful fall which badly damaged her ankle and this, together with the symptoms of severe arthritis in her arms, legs and hands, meant that she became practically housebound. She also had a lung complaint and then started having problems with her eyesight. An operation on the left eye did not go well, and although she was recommended Laser eye surgery for the other eye, she didn’t want to have it done due to the bad experience she’d had during the conventional eye surgery.
A chest infection a few months back had a serious effect on her already poorly lungs and saw her rushed into hospital only a few minutes away from death, but somehow she managed to hang on to life and slowly recovered. However, she now requires a constant oxygen supply and has had no alternative other than to go and live in a residential care home where her mobility issues and breathing difficulties are reviewed regularly.
Since she moved into the home though, she is once again mixing with other people rather than spending a lot of time in solitude at home. She now takes much more pride in her appearance, and has become a big favourite with the carers due to her feisty opinions on life. Whilst she will always say that the place isn’t ‘home’, it has definitely given her a renewed enthusiasm for life. A recent appointment with the optician again suggested that she have Laser eye treatment on her other eye as she was having trouble just viewing the television, and this time she actually thought it a good idea to have an appointment with an eye specialist for a Laser eye surgery assessment.
She recently went to the local hospital where a extremely friendly specialist carried out the Laser eye treatment and at last she realised just how bad her sight had got. Her only complaint now? That when she uses the mirror, she can now see how old she is!
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