Yeah....do your colonoscopies, and get your dang prostates checked. It ain't fun, but it can save your life and your family a world of heartache.
Also, do an annual checkup and get basic lab panels drawn annually, no matter how old you are. That can also avoid so many problems. Often times people won't do labs until there's a problem, and that's fine a lot of the time, but there are the odd cases--like one of my issues--where not having baseline "normal" numbers prior to a problem makes treating the problem more of a guessing game than it should be. The "normal range" for lab tests don't mean what most people probably think they mean. "Normal" for a controlled test of a sample population, but the upper and lower bounds are almost certainly not normal for any particular individual. It's good to have a record of what's normal for you.
Mr. Tulip said stay on him.....well....consider me stayed. In my three years working at a clinic I have seen about 10-15 of our patients pass who didn't need to, because they just wouldn't take the time for whatever reasons, and then they come to us with horrible problems and it's too late, shortly thereafter they're gone, yet it was statistically completely avoidable. We still treat most of the spouses and it's always heartbreaking to see what the family left behind also goes through.
And while this is a minor pitfall in the scheme of your life and health, not doing what you should be doing is grounds for a discharge, if your provider wants to play it that way, and you could be having to find yourself another one. Mrs. DeTiger has discharged a couple of patients who repeatedly refused to see oncology, get colonoscopies, etc. when she had strong reason to suspect cancer activity, but they'd keep coming back to her insisting that she do something about their declining testosterone level or their cramping pinky toe or some whatnot. Turns out, if patients refuse your care, you don't have to treat them.
