As a card carrying Baby Boomer I used to take my health for granted.
When it occasionally broke down, I paid the local physician to fix it.
Just like paying the local mechanic to fix the car.
It was no longer my problem - it was his.
Then someone suggested to me that I was fundamentally accountable for my own health.
Not my physician, the government, my health insurer, Chinese medicine specialist, complimentary medical practitioner, pharmacist, not even my wife!
Shock! Horror!
I’m not sure that I am ready for such a radical shift in the life’s divine order.
I mentally debated the distinction between accountability and responsibility, that I find so useful in my business coaching life, and finding no escape clause there I figured that action on my part was the next logical step.
So I set out to get the information I needed to take on the task.
My local doctor, Pharmacist and Physiotherapist were surprisingly reluctant to share their reference books with me.
In fact I was surprised how narrowly read they were in terms of the World of Health and its sub-disciplines.
So, as always, when in doubt, I headed for Google.
The Googling Universe
Consoled at last, here there was any amount of help available.
“Self Help Health” revealed 106.000 000 pages.
But the first thing I found was the suggestion that I ask Zelda for a Psychic Reading.
I couldn’t find whether this interstitial was Pharma sponsored and so I presumed that it wasn’t?
I tried “My Personal Health” and got 67,700 000 pages,
columbusregional.privatehealthnews.com/html/samplenews.asp recommended that I could ‘email my way to healthier habits.’
Typical misdiagnosis! It was my email habits that threatened my health.
I concluded that this was not where the diagnosis lay.
Remembering that the local Doctor tended to fix my broken down health with pills, I typed in “Health Pharmaceutical Products” and got 976,000 pages.
The search was narrowing.
www.healthyskepticism.org produced a mountain of articles dripping with scepticism about claims that the Pharmaceutical Industry had made about it’s products.
Obviously not a source to be trusted I sagely concluded.
Eventually www.blogcatalogue.com found 6892 products that would keep me in tip top shape.
The numbers were becoming manageable.
Then I contracted Swine Flu.
A Turn for the Worse
Actually it was just a cold, but it FELT like Swine Flu.
So off I went to the Pharmacist to get some pills.
I took a Taxi there and had a hot lemon drink at the local café while I waited for the place to open.
Now I could really feel that empowered – I am being accountable - swell of self-belief invading my body. Or, was it a temperature?
“Certainly Sir”… said the Pharmacist, “Here are your tablets, please pay at the register on your way out.”
“Hang on, Whoa there ! Just a minute my good man…….I’ve just paid for the taxi after he’d brought me here, I paid the café when I had finished my lemon drink.
I will pay for these tablets AFTER THEY DEMONSTRATE THAT THEY ARE WORKING!”
Pay for Performance – Isn’t that the new order of things? Haven’t you got it yet?
He hadn’t got it yet!
I didn’t get my tablets.
It seems that the OTC end of the Pharmaceutical Industry doesn’t get paid for performance.
I tried calling the Pharmaco’s Help Desk, but the response was less than encouraging.
An Epiphany
And so, after considerable Thoughtware, I decided that my health plan would in the future consist of avoiding all contact with the real world.
Bunkering down behind my prejudices, and refusing to admit there’s anything wrong with my health.
I was going to be accountable and responsible in my own way.
Then I realised that my plan sounded awfully like much like the same strategy that Pharma has adopted.
Solace, at last!
With such an epiphany I was clearly on the right track to a Healthy Success.
[Tomorrow’s Blog: Pharma – Taxonomists or Explorers of Social Media?]
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