I used to have a friend back in school who always complained about headaches. She started taking paracetamol whenever the headache came and she would start feeling okay. I told her to visit the hospital for a better checkup, but we both knew she couldn’t afford it because we were both struggling in school. Later on Paracetamol stopped working for her headache and she started taking Panadol. Some months after it stopped working and Panadol extra was prescribed and after sometime it stopped working. This was how it was as her body system continued to become used to the medications the doctors prescribed. At a point we couldn’t even tell whether she was getting worse or just becoming used to the medications, it was nearly too late when we discovered it was both and she was rushed to a psychiatric hospital because of migraine.
Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash
Her experience made me realize how important it is for us to take our health seriously and not just assume things. For her money was an issue, and she was just lucky to be dating a rich guy when it got worse. This is what a stitch in time saves nine. I have a very bad habit of allowing things to linger, I am not used to the hospital, I hardly visited it in the past on my own, and thus I develop cold feet whenever the idea of going to the hospital comes up. The last time I went I was forced by my partner after constant complaints of ear pains, luckily I hardly take medications unless they are prescribed, I would not even know what to take on my own lol. But I noticed the pain meds the pharmacy gave me was no longer working for my ear and had to take her advice to go.
This was when I got to understand that there are symptoms you manage and there are those you treat immediately. When the doctor washed my ear I was shocked at the things that came out that had been causing the ear pain. Pain meds only make the brain forget it is in pain and when it wears off, it remembers even more. After some time that particular medication can no longer deceive the brain because it has evolved. This is why we need to learn not to teach our bodies to forget pains that we do not know the source of, and most importantly, it is why we should never self medicate. When we take certain medications overtime and our bodies get used to it, it becomes hard for our cells to regenerate easily and become reliant on meds and when that particular medication gets used to our body system it becomes harder to function and this is another form of drug addiction people do not talk about because this time our bodies no longer functions without the meds.
THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S
PROMPT FOR WEEK 197 EPISODE 1
