Good Monday Morning,
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. My husband and I are gearing up to drop my step-son off at college this week. I can’t believe it seriously. I will be worrying about everything for him. But I am trying to have a little faith in his new adventure.
Worries are apart of life. I wish they weren’t but I am trying to learn to master my mind and not let silly things worry me. That’s another reason why I wanted to share this article that I found on Real Simple.
It’s called “Do You Need to Worry about these 12 Health Symptoms”? I wanted to share a few from the list that I know that I worried about at some point or another.
1) Okay, chronic headaches. Yes, I am one of the idiots that thought, “well could this be a brain tumor”? Stupid right? Well the doctor from the article said this…
“Headaches alone don’t make me look for a brain tumor,” says neurologist MaryAnn Mays, a staff physician at the Headache Center at the Cleveland Clinic. A brain tumor would typically involve symptoms such as sudden muscle weakness, headaches that wake you from sleep, numbness, personality changes, lack of coordination, vomiting, and changes in vision, hearing, and speech.
2) Breast pain
Of course, I think it’s breast cancer which is horrible. But the oncologist said this…
“Breast pain, in isolation, is almost never cancer,” says oncologist Richard Elledge, an associate professor of medicine at the Breast Center at the Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston. “You don’t need to worry,” he says, “unless you have symptoms, such as new lumps, that don’t come and go with menstruation; changes in the color or some other appearance of the skin over the breasts; or bloody discharge from the nipples.”
Whew…..
3) Chest pain
I couldn’t tell you how many times I have called my doctor about this in the past. But the cardiologist said this…
Heart attacks are relatively rare in people under the age of 45. The average age among women for a first heart attack is 70. Because getting treatment within one hour of a heart attack increases the survival rate, experts say not to ignore intense chest pain that lasts for more than five minutes. “I’ve had female patients as young as 32 have heart attacks,” says cardiologist Richard Stein, the director of preventive cardiology at Beth Israel Medical Center, in New York City. If the pain lasts for more than five minutes, call 911.
and lastly
4) A New Mole, Pigmented Skin Growth or Spot
Since my mother in law found skin cancer on her about 2 years ago, I have been on high alert ever since. But what the dermatologist says is…
A harmless mole, a seborrheic keratosis (a wartlike growth common in people over 40), or an age spot. Skin is constantly changing, in part due to sun exposure. Many changes are harmless, but “if you’re over 30, take new moles seriously,” says Deborah Sarnoff, M.D., a professor of dermatology at the New York University School of Medicine. Do monthly self-exams and get a skin-cancer check from a dermatologist every three years if you’re between the ages of 20 and 40 and annually after age 40. The ABCDE warning signs for skin cancer are a mole or a spot that is asymmetrical, has an irregular border, is unevenly colored (or has patches of red, white, or blue), has a diameter wider than a quarter-inch, or seems to be evolving.
photo credit: Sepideh Doost
Well, this article sure did calm some of my nerves down. I hope it did the same for you. Please finished reading the rest of the article. There are more facts and reality checks that we all need.
Thanks for reading!
(article from Real Simple.com)
