Sometimes Knowing Too Much Can Be Scary

I was listening to NPR about a breast cancer gene that a family found out they inherited. They spent a lot of money and stressful waits by the phone to find out if the gene was past on to them and from them to their daughters. It was heartbreaking and hard to listen to. So I turned it off.

So of course I started thinking about health screening as a whole. And how sometimes to much information isn't a good thing. This family was pretty frantic and even had periods of depression due to the unknown of their health screenings. I started to think about how health screening for your family doesn't have to be all doom and gloom.

I think if you make it mandatory that annually or whatever schedule your doctor suggested, it will become routine. I think about how I go for mammograms and pap smears and it's typically a non-stressful appointment. It's health screening and should be treated as such, a way to warn your self in advance so you can take preventive measures or treat problems. Needless to say the NPR story on health screening had me thinking a lot about my own health and how I can take control by using health screening for preventive care.