I know I know the title is not that great...actually none of the blog posts this year have been feel good pump you up blog posts lol but trust me I am in a much happier place than I was last year at the start of the year and the posts are just to stir conversation and get you thinking....Sooooo this past weekend after church D and I had lunch with one of our dear friends lady E...We had a blast of a time laughter, great food, great convo it was awesome...so the discussion shifted to a girl who was found dead in her dorm room at one of the colleges last weekend.So they said we will be awaiting the postmortem results and of course in the hush hush that was, everything has been swept under the rug - however there are reports that it may have been suicide.So lady E says "you know what I do not even want to know how she died I only want to remain with good memories of her." Which granted is a fair statement to make of course no one wants to know the details. I however I feel its about time such discussions are brought to the table before its a little to late.Yes I know you may be wondering hallo what is there to talk about with something so wrong so painful so unnaterable in a public setting (even in a private blog its hard for me to type out the word suicide) and maybe this is just the public health person that I am trying to prevent disease instead of cure disease which is all public health is about. I think the importance of having this discussion especially with Africans is because just like HIV AIDS in the 90s was stigmatized and oh my goodness once you heard so and so died of AIDS everyone kind of turned the other way.Even as recently as two years I have an aunt who passed away because for one she refused to believe that she had contracted the HIV virus and hence refused to take her ARV medication.Needles to say she was gone less than three years after she contracted AIDS.So my thing is we as the 21st century generation we need to start having conversations on matters that were and maybe still are considered taboos in our society because needles to say they are affecting people we know and we cannot continue to to turn a blind eye...My uncle it took almost two years before we all knew he had colon cancer -and this was when he was almost gone- I used to think "cancer is a disease of the Western world - of those bad people living in UK and America" I remember thinking as a little girl.But cancer is real and alive in Africa as it is in the US. Sooo back to the topic of the day suicide..I remember in my mental health class in college we had a whole topic on suicide and a couple of things that stood out for me was that no suicide will happen in isolation - there is always that one person who has been told either in passing or directly.The proffesor I remember said if someone tells you they are thinking of committing suicide the first thing you want to ask them is do they have a plan?Secondly before someone commits suicide they will always try reach out to someone...Third there are a couple of warning signs - from increased depression, lack of interest in things that previously brought pleasure (anhedonia) etc etc...So with all this in mind it begs the question why sweep things under the rug - yes right now its so painful for the family to even think and of course there is the guilt trip Oh my goodness if I had listened more spent more time reached out etc etc so probably right now the discussion would not be so great but somewhere down the road and even in regular social circles we need to be able to reach across the table to our neighbor who may be hurting.So thats my little spill for the day - I just felt its necessary to put this out here for as long as such discussions keep being avoided we will see more and more people fall victim to our own ignorance - for lack of a better word here.If you or a family member has / had breast cancer start doing breast self exams, if a family member has Alzheimers dont ignore early warning signs - the forgetfulness, if you are sexually active make sure you know your partners status,diabetes, if you can afford have a blood pressure monitor in the house and check your blood pressure regularly - high blood pressure is a silent killer its the only one disease secondary to AIDS with no immediate signs and symptoms - your pressure could be in the 200s and you look fit as a fiddle for months on end until you start crashing all of a sudden, if your a man over fifty make sure you go have your prostate checked for PSA - an antigen that tests for prostate cancer. I am so passionate on public health matters - I grew up knowing I wanted to go to med school at some point but over the course of my college career and after I find more passion (and its less costly) in trying to prevent instead of cure so public health seems to be my passion project well...for now...lol
No comments:
Post a Comment