Not your Average Joe

Average life expectancy for a male in America is 78 years. If I’m an average American male, that means I’ve got less than 8 years left. I have no reason to think I’m anything but average.

To quote Margaret Mead, “I’m unique, just like everyone else.” We just cannot escape that basic fact. We can’t avoid that at some point, we are reduced to a statistic.

Average. What is average? I don’t think I’m average at all but I also know that I’m not promised even tomorrow. My little bike wreck and collapsed lung thing could have not turned out so well but my own mortality is just not something that I think about.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are a lot of things that you can do to stay healthy longer. I also know that you can’t ignore your genetics.

Blame for my hypertension has to be placed on my gene pool. Both my parents had high blood pressure. I only knew one of my grandparents but I suspect it was shared along the way.

Goodness knows I’ve tried everything that I know to do. I’ve always eaten well, exercised regularly, kept my weight under control, and followed medical advice anytime it was provided.

Yet, here I am, taking multiple blood pressure medications every day and getting a colonoscopy every time Dr. Kline tells me I need to. And will for the rest of my life. If I knew more to do, I would do it. My cardiologist considers me an enigma—otherwise healthy but still nagged by that one silent culprit.

I have a deep fear of heart problems. My dad had his first heart attack at 45. Even with cardiology science as primitive as it was in his era, he lived to be 84. That was rare then. You can imagine my concern as I passed 45.

So, before you begin to think I’m all self-righteous about the pursuit of health and all this, my approach and my lifestyle choices are all because I’m scared to death about heart attacks and heart disease and all that.

I may be more dedicated than the Average Joe, but when I get up in the morning, it’s easy to make the decision to do the right things that day because of that fear. I don’t want to be the next statistic and I sure don’t want one of those incisions down the middle of my sternum. I want to live long and stay healthy for as long as I can.

What’s a person to do? Well, I guess you could just accept your health as your fate. You could just go on doing whatever you want to do and eating whatever you want—and avoid health care because doctors and medicines are all bad for you.

Or you can do your part. Eat healthier. Do some form of exercise every day. If you smoke, stop. Do whatever it takes. See your doctor.

So many of the bad things that plague senior adults are preventable. Get your weight under control. Go to your gastroenterologist and if they recommend a colonoscopy, get it. Go to your dermatologist and do what they say. As I’ve said many times before, everyone should have a primary care physician coordinating all of your health care and, if you run into them in the grocery store, they know your first name.

Not because you’re a nag, but because you get regular checkups and do what they say.  It’s perpetually amazing that people base medical decisions on what they learned on the internet. The practice of medicine is much more complicated than that.

My personal bottom line is that I want to live as long as I can and be as healthy as I can be for as long as I can. Not to accumulate “things,” but to live life, to take adventures, to enjoy family and friends. For. As. Long. As. I. Can.