Bob was a fit forty-year-old man who unexpectedly developed a nasty bout of diarrhoea and vomiting. Normally these afflictions would last between 24 and 48 hours, and resolve on their own. However, in Bob’s case, on day three he still was unable to hold down anything solid, and was even struggling to drink water. Bob was admitted to hospital. He was put on a drip, and while he was being rehydrated his blood was tested to rule out bacterial or parasitic causes for his infection. As is often the case, his illness was caused by a virus, but after 24 hours of intravenous fluids he felt much better and was discharged home, without antibiotics. The key thing here is recognising that the drip didn’t fix Bob’s problem; rehydration didn’t cure the virus, all it did was help maintain water levels adequately whilst his body fought off the illness.
Another prime example is Max. Max is recovering after a ‘heart attack’. The heart attack caused a part of his heart muscle to have a shortage of blood, and by consequence a shortage of oxygen, for long enough that a portion of the muscle has been damaged, or more accurately, some of the muscle has died. Once a heart attack has occurred, the damage is done; all our medication can do is help prevent another heart attack occurring and help the weakened heart to pump effectively.
But, as I said, there is hope. New treatments are being discovered all the time. In Max’s case, there are now alternatives. Where the problem lies in circulation in the vessels supplying the heart with blood, then there’s always open-heart surgery to replace the vessels. I guess that’s a cure. It repairs the blockage, but even then it doesn’t repair the dead tissue. If you really want a cure for your weakened heart, there’s always a heart transplant. Of course, these are pretty drastic cures with their own inherent risks.
I don’t want to scare you and I don’t want you to begin thinking there’s no point going to hospital, as we can still do many wondrous things. The vital point I’m trying to make is that you can’t always expect medicine to cure your problem, but you can expect it to help you live with your problem. It’s your body that does most of the healing. No drug or treatment is as effective as your body when it gets a fair chance at healing itself.
If you think this is an obvious point that I didn’t need to make, all I can say is that in all my years of nursing, this is one of the most common misconceptions.
As a Kiwi from one of the largest farming areas of New Zealand, it may seem brave or even foolish of me to start talking about sheep, but there is a story about sheep well worth telling.
I first read the story in a book by the British celebrity vet, James Herriot. He was called in to a farm to see some sheep that were sick. After a thorough examination Herriot turned to the farmer, shaking his head, and explained that there was nothing he could do for them.
While the farmer didn’t want to lose his stock, he also didn’t want them to suffer. The sheep were too unwell and it was too late in their illness to do anything that might save them.
Herriot knew the sheep were destined for a painful death if left alone. So he did the kind thing and gave each of them a significant dose of sedative, to enable the sheep to drift off to sleep and die peacefully.
Some time later Herriot was called back to the farm to see some other livestock. When he arrived, he noticed some familiar looking sheep. Surprised, he asked the farmer if those were the same animals he’d attended to during his last visit.
The farmer replied that they were the very same sheep, which Mr Herriot had seen and cured.
Herriot couldn’t believe what he was seeing; he quite rightly believed he had put them to sleep … for good.
The farmer explained that the sleep had slept soundly for a long time, a good 48 hours.
Herriot came to realise that by relieving the sheep from pain with the sedative, he had had given their bodies the chance to rest and gather the strength needed to shake off their illness. Their own immune systems just needed a break to get on top of the infection.
So there is hope.
What we do very well is treating symptoms to help a patient get better. Another key part of our job is reducing a patient’s chances of getting ill again. How do we stop you getting ill again? Well that’s really up to you. You see, it all comes down to ‘risk factors’ …
Whenever medical people deal with a patient, they will at some point consider the patient’s ‘risk factors’.
Quite simply, health, or the lack of it, comes down to a handful of things that you can do to either increase your chances of staying healthy or increase your chances of getting ill. All medical staff think in these terms, and it doesn’t matter where you’re from, the risk factors are the same for everyone:
– Alcohol and other drugs
– Diet and cholesterol
– Weight
– Smoking
– Exercise
– Environment
– Family history and genetic factors
– Age
How a patient shapes up against these factors will affect their treatment and prognosis.
You might have noticed that there are only two factors that you can’t do anything about, and those are the final two: genetics and age. However, even by just being aware of your family history you can help yourself. For example, if you know every male in your family has had a heart attack in their early forties, you can get regular check-ups of your heart.
The other factors are entirely up to you. People may think that it doesn’t matter how they live, because modern medicine will cure them. They may think that the doctor at your local hospital will fix any problem they may have, but for the most part, they’d be wrong.
You can have a huge impact on your future health – even by making very small changes to just one of your risk factors. This book is not about how to deal with your risk factors, but I do want to emphasise the importance of being aware of what the risk factors are in your own case.
I’m not suggesting you start studying biology. However, you should, for instance, take some time to get to know your family history. Knowing if your mother, father, siblings or grandparents have or have had any illnesses can be vital. Indeed, acting on such information pre-emptively can be life saving. Pre-emptive treatment doesn’t necessarily have to be drastic, it can simply mean having screenings for certain diseases once or twice a year. This might involve a simple but regular blood, heart and lung check. Or it may involve early screenings for certain kinds of cancers, especially if members of your family have had a particular type.
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