Ben A Gozar said:Below is the way I meant my note to be read. It was an
estimation of course, but we men aren't exactly known to be
running to the doctor at the rate of women. The sad news is
once we pass forty things go wrong and we men tend to die
off rather suddenly. Two of my friends went in for a check
up only for the doctors to have bp readings on both of them
of almost
Quoted message said:visited my doctor for completely different problems I could
no longer ignore and I found out I am not 16 any more. In
the United States at least, I think the Doctor may be
closer to correct, than farther from it.
At any rate I do not have an informed opinion on whether it
is a true statement or not, I was just passing on what was
told to me.
Quoted message said:When I read it, I gave it a totally different
interpretation than either of the above: For every man
that he sees in the office, he estimates there are 15
others with serious health problems who are not coming
in, and could be at serious risk.
And I'm saying that if you are active, have no obvious
risk, such as smoking, overweight, alcoholic, and soforth
that there's no reason to be this paranoid. Of course if
you walk down the street you'll see lots of examples of
couch potatoes walking out of bars, chain smoking. I'd say
90% of these guys are at significant risk. But without
doing a physical, guess what? I'd be pulling that
estimation out of my ass.
Certain risk factors might be predictable based on your
genetics - many black men have high blood pressure, and for
them, over 40, go get that checked. Otherwise, to quote that
kind of figure to any particular patient is a scare tactic,
and meaningless. You pretty much know your risk factors,
b/c you know how you're abusing your body. But among a sub
group, such as bikers who have been doing it for 10 years
and are lean and fit and active and don't overdo their
vices, would that be the case? My dad is 81, active all
his life, and has smoked a pack of unfiltered cigs a day
since he was 25, and still going strong - go figure. In my
case, go look at my pic at 50 and tell me what kind of
risk factors I have.
pbase.commediumOpen ↗
So, IMO, for your doc to say that is meaningless,
irresponsible (for making you paranoid, if it did) and he
could have said 9 out of 10 or 1 out of 100 and both been
right, depending on demographic.
I'll tell you what's dangerous, though. Go into any hospital
to have a minor procedure and your chances of never coming
out again are quite high, due to nosocomial infection
(hospital antibiotic resistant bugs), surgical mistakes, and
other misadventures. So I could say doctors - stay the freak
away from them, b/c you could be misdiagnosed or they could
just have seen a patient with resistant strep and forgot to
wash his hands. Did your doc wash his hands before he left
your exam room? He didn't? OMG! ;-)
Go check out some sites that talk about 'what they don't
tell you about medical exams'. Do you know that the devices
they use for endoscopy and rectal exams can not be properly
sterilized? THat's right, the chances are good that the last
patient they scoped has left a little bit of blood or body
fluid inside the device and now it's inside you. There's no
known way to sterilize against prion infections (mad cow),
so if you have an operation, you might be innoculated with
CJD and not know it. What if you're having an appendectomy
and they nick an artery and you have to get blood? Or the
anesthesiologist gives you the wrong gas (happened to my dad
and they tried to cover it up - he actually went into
cardiac arrest b/c they gave him 5 times the dose needed by
mistake when he had a kidney stone removed). See, it works
both ways. ;-p
OK, sorry for the rant....
-B
