My approach to my health challenges has been to take responsibility for everything. That doesn’t mean blaming myself. It means that it’s up to me to decide what to do about it and not play the victim game.
Despite the fact that I was born with a congenital heart defect, there was nothing to gain from seeing myself as a victim. I first learned about my issue when I was nineteen. Aside from living a healthy lifestyle, the only thing I could do was to monitor my valve by getting annual checkups.
Alas, in my fifties, as the doctor who identified my problem when I was a teenager predicted, I needed a new valve at age fifty-five. After my initial shock, confusion, and anger about needing heart surgery for this birth defect, I decided to be as assertive as possible to deal with my life threatening situation.
My first step was to use Google to research the best hospitals in the US for heart surgery. Cleveland Clinic consistently came up as number one or two, along with the Mayo Clinic. After checking with my insurance company and making sure that my surgery would be covered, I chose Cleveland Clinic.
I didn’t realize that such a prestigious facility would be available to me. So, it goes to show, it pays to ask! By the way, Cleveland Clinic takes Medicare and Medicaid patients. I’ll discuss my experiences at Cleveland Clinic in another blog. But I made the right choice to literally go the extra mile from Chicago to the Cleveland Clinic for my surgery.
The major point of this blog entry is to not be a victim, no matter if your health issue is self inflicted or a circumstance that was out of your control. Explore your options. Google, Chat GPT, Grok, friends, professionals, the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and medlineplus.gov, are good sources for researching health information such as treatments, medical care providers, and facilities.
So, don’t take your situation lying down. Your health outcomes may be more in your control than you think!