The state of our health, whether physical, mental, or emotional, has a lot to do with everything we are and whatever we will become in life; that's why it's important that we are always doing the best for ourselves whenever it has to do with our well-being. You will agree with me that the importance of staying healthy can't be quantified, and we must have had or seen why health is indeed wealth.
At different times in my life, I have had to deal with minor health issues, and those experiences opened my eyes to the importance of going for regular check-ups even though I am still sometimes lazy about it.
I am not the type who loves going to the hospital because the hospital environment makes me uneasy, and that's probably because my mom treated her kids mostly with herbs while growing up. There is always a herb to treat anything that comes up, so I don't know what the hospital environment looks like until a time when herbs fail to treat me as usual. It was a funny experience that day because it took three nurses, including my mom, to hold me down before they could check just my temperature. It was my first time seeing a thermometer, and I thought it would hurt my armpit. Taking injections was the worst part, and that was how visiting the hospital became an option for me instead of just depending on herbs.
Going to the health center in my community back then was easy and smooth. They don't waste time, and we even got free drugs like paracetamol, vitamin C, and a few others. But the moment I left that environment, I had no reason to visit the hospital because the government hospital in my new environment is always crowded, and going to a private hospital wasn't an option. To worsen things, I developed a silly thought that even if nothing is wrong with you, the doctors will always see something after running a check on you which is somehow true, but would they claim there is an issue if there's none?
Everything changed for me some years ago when I got really sick and could barely walk with one of my legs. I tried self-medication for some time, but nothing changed, and I didn't have a choice but to visit the hospital, where my fears became a reality. It happened that before I was attended to, a nurse did some simple tests for me, and she screamed after checking my blood pressure.
I was given some drugs immediately and a compulsory rest at the hospital even before my leg was attended to. The doctor said if I went about with that blood pressure without a treatment to put it under control, things could get pretty worse for me. It was at that moment I knew the importance of regularly going for check-ups, and I ended up believing that the leg issue came up because God wanted me to know the state of my blood pressure since I wouldn't have visited the hospital ordinarily to check it.
In today's society, we have read stories of how people just die without falling sick or after a small illness that could have been treated. Many of them had illnesses they didn't know about, and unfortunately, it ended up taking their lives, and things could have been different if going for regular checkups had been a habit for them. They could have prevented some illnesses not to even speak of curing them.
I am not saying people who go for checkups regularly don't die unexpectedly. Yes, they do, but it must be after trying to treat an illness that didn't work out.
The last time I went for a check-up was in December due to my illness throughout November. My blood pressure hit a new figure, plus I had a severe chest pain that rendered me almost useless. The checkup in January was to see the progress of my medication, and I am happy about the changes. I feel a lot better now but will be going again mid-February, and after that, I can fix a time for a regular check-up.
It's a good thing to always check whatever is happening in our body so we can discover things and tackle them earlier. I know it can be challenging due to our busy schedule or the stress you have to go through at hospitals, in the hands of those annoying nurses, but it's worth all the stress. Going through all of that once in two or three months for our well-being shouldn't be a problem.
There is also a lot the government can do to make checkups easier, and the most effective of them would be empowering health centers that are available in different communities. That way there wouldn't be a long queue at general hospitals just to do check-ups.
