fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

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He Made His Own Decisions

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

 

 

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