Freckle Exorcism
You know that you have a cool doctor when you ask him if you can take a picture of the 3 evil-looking freckles he just carved out of your body, and he replies;
No problem! I wish I hadn’t just thrown away that big bloody pile of gauze, it would have made a better picture to have that in there.
Thanks go out to Dr Hamula & his staff. They are the excellent examples of thoughtful medical professionals. (it’s worth noting I am very grateful to have health insurance through my wife’s job as a veterinarian).
I sometimes joke that each freckle on my body is the record of a beautiful day that I went out for a satisfying bike ride.
If you know what I look like in person, that is a lot of sunny days!
In my early 20’s, I used to like the color that I would turn after a full summer of training and racing bicycles. My freckles seemed to grow & merge into a wild orange that matched the orange beard & ponytail I had then.
I almost never wore sunscreen (a normal case of young man invincibility-syndrome.)
Well, I’m dodging bullets right now because of it. My grandmother even had skin cancer back then, so I have triply no excuse.
Or as that famously misattributed speech Kurt Vonnegut never gave wisely says: “wear sunscreen”.
Just as I was leaving the Doctors office, I asked him, “What percentage of the patients that you see are suffering from ‘lifestyle influenced’ preventable health issues like weight problems, alcoholism, smoking, & combinations of stuff”
He thought about it, and replied:
“at least 40%, and I am always compassionate, but Ya’know, it’s really hard to see it over and over and over, and what do I say to people?”
I could not do what he does. Or what my wife does, for that matter. Being a medical professional is a VERY hard job.
As I was driving home, and ruminating over this 40%, I realized with a sudden jolt that I belong firmly in that category.
As much as athletes like to imagine ourselves as not “at-risk” we can just as easily be killed by behaviors that bring us as much satisfaction as the nicotine fix to the smoker, the wine to the wine-o, or the soda to the overweight.
Certainly the percentages, generally speaking, are far better than those of people who truly abuse themselves. But who cares about percentages when it’s you the scalpel is slicing into?
p.s. I wrote this entry on the 9th, the day of my appointment.
This morning, the 11th, Dr Hamula emailed me with the results
“negative”
Whew!!
We had an email discussion, wherin I sent him the preliminary draft of this post, he commented on it thusly:
For clarification, I wanted to say that 40% of an individual’s health is a result of lifestyle decisions (30% genetic, 20% public health issues like vaccines, clean water, etc. and 10% access to health care).
The percentage of people I see who have health issues related to lifestyle decisions is at least 65% and probably a lot more.
Michael Moore’s film would do well to discuss this. With all we spend on health care, it really doesn’t have a huge impact on an individual’s health
(but it sure makes for good film making talking about how a certain HMO decided to withhold a $100K procedure which hasn’t been proven to improve the health outcome it intends to treat - is that really withholding health care?).
So reform our health care system all you want. If you want to make a difference in someone’s health, get them to stop smoking, lose weight, and get out and exercise.
(For the record, I have yet to see Sicko - hope to this weekend.)
So I guess as athletes, we should feel good that we are getting as much out of that 40% as we can!
if we remember our sunscreen!!!
Filed under: from home
Great Entry in your blog Andrew! I’ve been recently thinking about these issues! I am a Phys Ed teacher to 1000 students, out of which, 60% is overweight! Parents want their kids to exercise but they themselves won’t and are not ineterested in changing eating habits.
As an athlete, I have experienced great health but a recent skating crash made me the object of wrist surgery. It is my first fracture and surgery of my life so at age 42 I am a victim of my lifestyle!
Throughout this wrist surgery experience, I cannot avoid feeling how insurance seems to be a rich pie that EVERYBODY wants a slice from. It makes me want to vomit my slice!
Hopefully this entry reminds me to start using sun block! Miami is a darn hot place year round!
Negative ROCKS!!!
See Sicko, I have and I’m going back. I think it is factual and fair having seen all of Mr. Moores films it is the least one sided and angry. You will come out of it angry all right my friend kept saying “plastic explosives” when we came out but he is still stuck in the 60’s. I hope this film starts a marching in the streets revolution because we so desperately need a change.
In all of this smokey air we are breathing I now have sports induced asthma and I am so happy to have an inhaler and health insurance but we are the very very lucky ones. After seeing Sicko I am also very very angry and NOT afraid. (You need to see the film to get the afraid part.)
For all the hype about health insurance, the evil HMOs and the uninsured, your doctor is absolutely right about life style.
I have seen SICKO. Although it is Michael Moore’s best film to date, it does exaggerate. Although most of it is true, it concentrates on the exceptions. Neither insurance companies nor Medicare pay for “experimental” procedures and should they?
It does ignore really good research that demonstrates that the major cost drivers of the health care system are due to obesity and “mental” illness and the fact that we treat both much earlier and more aggressively. Think stomach stapling, statin drugs and angioplasty. Think all the mental health drugs that are used to help people deal with the fallout from the so called “social morbidities” of poverty,sexual and physical abuse and illegal drugs.
Glad your freckles turned out to be benign.
It’s worth saying that my mom has worked in the health care field, and knows it well…
and Jamie, you are someone who, truly, has taken on the challenge & changed your life & health by becoming active… You have felt both sides of that 40%
it’s such a hard fight, and you are doing great!!
I almost did not publish this entry, because it’s not clearly about purely speed skating & brings up political subjects…. but now I am glad I did..
Yeah, I am pretty happy they turned out bengin too…. I was not really-worried, but definately mildly-worried, as they had changed over the past year & had odd borders…(warning signs!)
I have enough freckles, I can spare 3 of them to gain peace of mind…
I haven’t seen Sicko yet, either, BUT I just had to have two surgeries within 6 weeks, and I am feeling the pain financially. And I work for a company that is said to have one of the best benefit packages of all US companies. I’d hate to see what it would be like for those who don’t have that. Of course, I’m not 100% sure as to what the answer is, because I have a dear friend in Canada whose mother had an aneurism in her brain, but had to wait almost a year before she could see a specialist, because she didn’t have private health care. Luckily for her it is low risk, but it was extremely stressful for everyone during that waiting period.
But, I do agree with Jamie… we have to get angry, because if we don’t do that, we won’t be inspired to do anything about it.
If we don’t have our health, what do we have? Ask Pat Knox? He is a perfect example and an inspiration to everyone.
Very good post - don’t hesitate to cover subjects like this: skaters are, first, people - thoughtful beings in fragile bodies. (and some of your most devoted readers don’t skate.)
This must be the season - I also just had 2 moles removed, also benign. Sunscreen isn’t an issue, they were on my back, which rarely sees even the bits of sun we have here.
Very complex issue for me, as I suppose for many. I’m absolutely convinced that most of health is attitude and responsibility. At the same time, I depend on medication for a condition that could easily be dismissed as “mental health” in quotation marks. And I agree both with the doctors who get so discouraged by people who neglect their bodies and then demand to have the damage patched up, AND my mom, who found that once doctors learned she smoked, practically stopped listening to her on matters that were unrelated to that. (Sorry guys, drug side effects happen irrespective of nicotine addiction - especially when years have passed since you quit.)
I would think that athletes are more conscious about the risks they choose - “If I race bicycles, I’ll probably break my collarbone. OK, I accept that.” Do you folks agree? Or do very many people start sports when they’re young, and think they’re invulnerable (if they’re thinking at all)? Do you think that coaches, in general, deal well and responsibly with these issues?
kate,
I honestly think that athletes practice so extensively to overcome “risk” in their activities that it only adds to the invulnerability syndrome. (if you have raced bikes for more than 4 years, there is a 50% chance you have busted the collarbone).
And a coach must build confidence in overcoming risk, not awareness of risk & consquences
after all, athletes try, and succeed, at doing things that are often quite dangerous…
echoing all these concerns, an article about excercise in cities just appeared in the New York times. Here is a .pdf I saved of it.
depressing… but the alternative is worse…
I will have to tell my mom to comment on sunscreen, since she keeps up to date with which one is the BEST.
It might just be me, but there’s a difference between taking risks for excitement and really training for a purpose, so working hard for skating makes me consider “is that one workout worth losing several months of training if I crash” vs. “I need this workout to have a good racing season”. I mean, there’s the everyday inline/bike ride/etc. where you could crash and could get hurt, but whaddaya gonna do, sit at home? But then a track (bike) race that I haven’t tried before, an inline race that crosses a street on a big downhill, etc…fun, but maybe some other time.
I haven’t seen and don’t know much about Sicko, so, conveniently, no political comments from me. (Although I think most of us tend to agree anyway.)
I once had a malignant melanoma removed from my left inside forearm…a part of the body seldom exposed to the sun, except while excercising with one or two arms on the back as one might do low-walks or other imitation excercises. I attribute this condition to having spent many hours in the sun doing such excerciese.
In other words, training for speed skating gave me cancer. But I’m OK now.
Thanks for the suggestion, Carla, and Andrew, I’m glad you brought up the issue. I don’t know how many times I got sunburned before I had the sense to start wearing sunscreen. Carla’s dad (still suffering from “young man invincibility-syndrome”) has yet to use sunscreen willingly, though he will impatiently and vociferously endure the discomfort when I insist on putting it on him. So this past year he had to have two basal cell carcinomas removed from his nose. They were so deep that the doctor used skin grafts to get his nose back in shape. It looks fairly decent, but not as good as before. So, our lifestyle decisions are what makes our lives interesting and fun, but we do have to take care. And…since Carla considers me an expert on the BEST sunscreen…Consumer Reports rated Neutrogena ultra sheer one of the best. They also recommended No-Ad. These are not endorsements - I just use neutrogena because I hate the sticky greasy sunscreens and this one is tolerable.
Other than that, Andrew - now minus the three negatives - I always liked your freckles. That’s what makes you Andrew
I might note, on the perception that being an athlete is the heart of a healthy lifestyle…
Actual hard training for high-performance sport isn’t necessarily the optimal lifestyle for optimal health either. There’s MUCH unhealthiness to demanding so much from one’s body, from breaking down and building one’s self up.
While it isn’t as damaging as too much drinking, being obese or smoking, hard core high-performace sport isn’t the very healthiest possible lifestyle either.
We do it, however, because we like it. I doubt any serious competitive athlete would stop his sport in the interest of living a more balanced healthy life - we continue because it is who we are, and what we do.
I suppose that’s why smokers smoke and drinkers drink too…