By Gina Barreca/The Hartford Courant/TNS
Can everybody please have his or her bits checked?
Don’t tell me that you don’t want to hear about medical appointments right now. Don’t tell me it’s too early in the morning, that you just sat down with a cup of coffee or that it’s after five and all the offices are closed anyhow.
I can recite every excuse there is to avoid medical care because I studied with the best: I was raised by Italians.
My relatives sought medical care only when they were mortally ill - or afterward. Naturally enough, they therefore associated treatment with fatality rather than with what we’d now call “wellness”. (If you’d used the phrase “wellness” they would have thought you meant “somebody who’s got a lot of wells”.)
“If you go to the hospital, you’ll come home dead” was one of my grandmother’s favourite lines. It was a step away from thinking that if you went to the doctor’s, you’d come home sick.
I’ve heard similar things from other immigrant families who, like ours, relied on home cures - garlic, mustard plasters and herbal teas - rather than some fancy MD for relief. It sounds all holistic, except the mustard plaster produced third-degree burns and the garlic produced agida.
Besides, my family also treated illness as a form of gambling. You were either lucky or unlucky with your bones or your lungs the way you might be lucky or unlucky with the ponies. Only fools thought they could change the course of destiny.
If only they’d thought of going to the doctor the way they’d thought about going to a friend for a hot tip on the fourth race at Belmont, a few more of them might be around.
Here are some reasons otherwise smart and conscientious people give for not getting tested or going to the doctor:
They don’t find medical checkups amusing (as if the rest of us think of it as going to the Rainbow Room).
They don’t think they’re necessary (“Nobody in my family ever got sick” works as an answer only if every one of your ancestors is sitting in your living room right now watching Wheel of Fortune).
They don’t like getting weighed.
They’re scared of finding out that something is wrong and would rather not know (“What I don’t know can’t hurt me”).
They feel ignored, disrespected and poorly treated by the medical personnel they meet (“The staff keep us waiting for 45 minutes, technicians don’t make eye contact and doctors won’t listen to what we say” were the most common reasons for avoiding trips to both clinics and offices).
They don’t like getting weighed (you can always just close your eyes or else ask them to translate the sum into kilos).
“To a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” meaning that doctors will inevitably find something wrong with you; this is not true. This is true of storefront psychics (“You have someone wishing you ill and need to dispel their influence”), but not of polyps.
It’s inconvenient (as if all the rest of life is lyrically simple; you can schedule a haircut, you can schedule a test).
They are so deeply in denial they think they can do it “later”.
“Later” is now. Haven’t you noticed that?
Look, I’m no poster child for healthy living; the minute you look at me, you’d say, “This broad should lose10 kilos, learn to lift weights and eat more kale.”
But if I give myself permission to eat cake (I’ve always felt as if Marie Antoinette were speaking directly to me), I don’t give myself permission to skip checkups, mammograms and colonoscopies. My husband goes for his respective tests and we remind one another to make sure these are scheduled.
And you too can do this, dear reader - I need all the fans I can get.
♦ Gina Barreca is an English professor at the University of Connecticut, a feminist scholar who has written eight books, and a columnist for the Hartford Courant. She can be reached through her www.ginabarreca.com.
