My husband knew his body.
When he was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation in his 40s, despite the fact that he was a dedicated runner, every physician he ever saw recommended that he take some blood-thinner or other. Each of them gave as their rationale the fact that he had a five-percent chance of experiencing a stroke without such medication.
He was well aware that the possibility was real because, among other reasons, I am a medical librarian and kept up with the literature on Afib, which I passed on to him.
Regardless, he refused the pills and said he’d take his chances. He had always been a slow metabolizer of drugs and almost always experienced bizarre adverse effects; ergo, he preferred to refuse any meds that were not absolutely essential.
Flash forward some 40-plus years, to when he died of a pulmonary problem, strokeless to the end.
Leila M. Hover
Lacey, Washington