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Walking It Off
What is the key to a healthy life?
I came from a generation before truly modern healthcare. There was healthcare, but for my family any medical intervention was tantamount to giving up. We rarely went to the doctor, although we got immunizations, and we had check ups when we were young.
We did the usual home remedies of Vick’s Vaporub for colds, except when the big guns were needed, in which case there was an old bottle of Robitussin in the bathroom cabinet. Preventative care was cod liver oil, (which has proven to be wise), and Rawleigh Salve, in a tin so old I can’t imagine where they got it. The smelly salve would cover cuts, burns, scrapes, and the like.
That being said, we did have a basic health philosophy. My parents believed that, for the most part, any problem mental, physical, or spiritual could be handled by one simple prescription: Walk it off! I have thought about that a lot lately.
My parents both passed on rather young from cancer. My Dad worked in a factory with cancer causing chemicals, and was a victim of that industry. My Mother had a hereditary cancer that was incurable. Yet their level of activity seemed to do more for them than the pointless attempt to cure their illness with chemotherapy. Oddly, neither of them lost all of their hair, and both got to a point where they were able to let go when it was clearly time to stop the drugs. They were active and lived life until they died, and lived longer than expected with their disease.
I can not tell you how painful it was to lose them, and how much anger I still carry at the surrounding circumstances, like my Dad’s workplace, or the second hand smoke that was everywhere in those days. Many adults smoked as the only self medication they had against the stress of the day. That was life, until it wasn’t.
I was fortunate to be young enough to avoid the smoke, and healthier food was available to me in general. But I am still hesitant to go to a doctor, and more likely to do what I was taught. If at all possible, I walk it off.
This has gone better than you might expect. Sure I get my medical tests once a year. Yet my parents prescription is still the one I fall back on when something comes up.
