Know Your Stats

As strange as this may or may not sound to you, it’s true, your body talks to you. Living with a chronic illness, one of the most important things you can do is listen to your body and know what it’s telling you.

When it comes to the human body, doctors are full of knowledge, and sometimes full of themselves as well. It’s up to you, however, to be an expert about your own body. After all, you have lived with it your entire life, and nobody knows your body better than you.

An important part of knowing your body is being aware of your vital information. Know what your temperature normally when you are and aren’t having a crisis. For instance, I typically run a temperature of 99.9˚ to 101˚ when in crisis. I know if it remains any higher than 101˚ for more than a couple of days I need to see my doctor. A prolonged temperature can be a sign of infection.

Being informed about where your heart rate and blood pressure normally register allow you to monitor your heart function. My blood pressure often hovers around 118 over 60. When the nurses take my blood pressure, they often ask if that’s normal for me. For most people, those numbers would be abnormally low. Because I’m informed about my vital stats, I’m able to keep an over eager nurse from socking me with the defibrillator paddles when she sees how low heart rate is.

When you’re familiar about where your hemoglobin level typically rests, you can prevent a doctor, who’s unfamiliar with your case, from treating you incorrectly. This has happened to me on occasion when I’ve visited a doctor or hospital that was unacquainted with my medical history. Upon seeing my hemoglobin was at 6.2, it was their insistence that I be admitted to receive immediate blood transfusion. Since I knew my hemoglobin at the time hovered around 6.2-6.8, I was able to avoid unnecessary blood transfusion and hospitalization.

Hopefully, from these examples, you can see how important it is to know your vital stats. If you don’t know what yours are, ask your doctor or nurse when you see him/her again. If you’re unsure what those numbers mean, have your doctor explain them to you.