Take Advantage of Every Health Opportunity

So about a year ago I was working with one major hospital in Kumasi, a town named Santasi, it is quite a popular one in Kumasi. A1 Hospital is quite a beautiful place and a big facility, so whiles I worked there we had some days that we went to the neighboring communities to check on their health and advice them on the need to come for care every now and then.

Now what made this task a bit difficult was the fact that we would drive all the way from the town to these rural areas and the community members wouldn't turn up for the free health exercise we would be doing. I mean, how long does it take to check your blood pressure, or your glucose level, check your eye, and inform your healthcare provider of any wrong happenings within your system?

But then the excuse that many gave was that they were farmers and had to attend to their farms in the morning before they can come for care, interestingly whenever we had the opportunity to check the health of these individuals we realized that they had lots of things going wrong in their system.

So I remember the story of this woman, she was in her early 40s, and for the past year, she has never been to the hospital after she had her last checkup a little than a year and was detained because her blood pressure was over the roof and was thus given some drugs to use. She had not yet been confirmed as a hypertensive patient and was supposed to report back after some weeks, apparently, she took it as a diagnosis and has since been buying hypertensive medication from the drugstore for usage.

We were a little concerned when she told us about her visit to the hospital over a year ago and how she has been meticulously taking her medication, we checked her BP and it was so low it was terrifying, we wondered whether she has just been lucky still walking around without collapsing or the system is seeing that as the new normal, it was an interesting perspective of science. But yeah, literally this woman could have caused damage to herself had she not been lucky enough to have come for that health program.

Now we asked her to stop using the drug and come for comprehensive care at the hospital and she literally couldn't stop taking the medication, the body was so used to the drug that when she tried to skip it, she went through serious withdrawal that sent her to the hospital. Now we had to wean her off and it took quite a long time to get it done and how her blood pressure to return to normal as it ought to be.

And this wasn't the first instance of a narrow escape I had encountered over the years since I got into healthcare practice, we meet a lot of these from time to time, from all aspects of health, ocular, general, etc and it is always a sighing situation to see these individuals escape severe health implications or impeding doom they probably never thought about.

So what's the moral lesson here? I seek to draw your attention to something I have always been saying in my videos and blogs over the years, let's develop the habit of frequent care, visit the hospital from time to time just to see if everything is fine with your system, check your eyes at least twice every year, conditions like glaucoma can cause blindness without you even realizing until is too late.

Do well to avoid over-the-counter medication, and do not use your intuition or judgment to just keep buying drugs just because it was prescribed for you once at the hospital, it is always best to go back to your healthcare provider, find out how it went with your medication if there is any change warranted or perhaps you have to even stop with its usage.

Remember Your Health is your wealth, Life is quite precious for without it all fades away and everything you may be sacrificing for may be meaningless. So even as I wish you a pleasant week and a beautiful day, I say thank you for reading and I do hope that this helps someone out there who read this. Cheers to life.