New Year, New You
Happy New Year to all my great readers!
Hope you survived the holiday family adventures and actually relaxed and enjoyed yourselves. I felt this year was easier in some ways and more difficult in others, when compared to last year. Familiarity breeds understanding, but the morphing and changing of COVID-19 and the subsequent medical protocol changes have left most of us scratching our heads for answers.
I have been on this lovely terra firma for a few decades and, medically speaking, I’ve been pretty healthy, thanks to my Russian background — my mom’s family is from Slovakia… don’t want to rile up any of my readers! Honest, I’ve never been to the Kremlin! But, if I had any medical questions in the past — kidney stones, hernia, etc. — my physician always had several options and we worked it out.
Now, however, you really get the feeling our medical profession doesn’t know any more how to cure a pandemic than the man in the moon…
As my patients come in (and now they love to come in), masks required, the stories that begin to circulate are quite interesting...
Just today, a middle-aged father came in who did not get the vaccine or booster because his physician friend told him over half of the patients admitted to the ER had received both but still were hospitalized. He came down with Covid, was terribly sick, and missed three weeks of work. (To this point, he had only missed four days since 1997.) He cured himself in two days by getting medication from a Northern Ohio apothecary that specialized in “personal” compounds. According to him, this medication can also be prescribed by Vets!
A week doesn’t go by that an “interesting” story of self-doctoring isn’t shared by a patient or an accompanying family member. It reminds me of the sign over the doorway of the bus as you step off at Zion National Park in Utah — it reads, “Your Life, Your Responsibility!”
Over this past year, I have thought of that sign many times as these self-doctoring stories come to light. I agree we don’t have many experts to look to, but I hope everyone is doing their homework with background checking on the data.
As we begin a New Year, I felt I would be remiss if I didn’t throw my two cents in and put some research and verbiage to the Number One topic last weekend. That topic would be… drum roll please… New Year’s resolutions!
As you are reading this, you have already survived the first week of 2022, but have your resolutions?
According to Google, the top New Year’s resolutions for 2022 are: lose weight, eat healthier, change diet, get fit, spend more time with family, take care of mental health, sort out finances and curb spending, travel more, and — last but not least — take up a hobby.
Interesting that this year’s resolutions are predominantly based on personal health… no wanting of a larger car or house or even winning the lottery! Maybe Covid is making us look into the mirror of immortality; and we may not like what we see with the possibility that our lives could be shorter than we may have liked or predicted just five years ago.
Many are scared by the realization that we may not be in our best physical condition to fight off a virus and that we probably reflect the fact that “we are what we eat.”
Does this mean this year’s resolutions have a good chance of succeeding?
Not according to Alyssa Flores of Kris 6 News of Corpus Christi. While this year’s resolutions are all inspiring and motivating, she states that by month two of the New Year only 46% are still successful; and that number drops precipitously as the months go on.
Miss Flores’s advice? Stay positive, try not to make large or quick changes, build on smaller changes, and finally allow for a little error or back sliding.
Good advice… nothing earth-shaking… but it pushes the point that we all know ourselves pretty well, whether we want to admit it or not. Making a resolution should be based on realistic facts, one that understands our weaknesses and plays to our strengths, not pie in the sky fantasies. I have personally been more successful by graphing and charting my goals and progress (and I’m a paper guy). With today’s modern cell phone/camera/notebook whatever else IT they have, it is easier than ever to keep track of your resolutions and your degrees of success.
I’ve also found that by including others and letting them in on your resolution goals, you can develop your own support group; and, with texting and all the social media platforms currently available, how can you fail?
In my office, I have the staff do a monthly review of new programs that we have recently implemented so that we don’t lose the excitement or focus of our original intent.
Success needs to be nurtured and planned. Trust me, it doesn’t happen by luck, and it is not random in occurrence.
You can make it happen if you truly put your mind to it, keep a positive attitude, and reward yourself often as you make your resolutions a reality.
So review your week-old resolutions with a clear head (many, I’m sure, were made under the influence and may not even be remembered by now), cross-check with a friend, and keep your health a high priority this coming year.
I’d like to close with three reflective remarks by three brilliant thinkers…
Socrates said it most succinctly in his guiding principle, “Know thyself.”
The Tao Te Ching stated, “Knowing others is intelligent, knowing yourself is true wisdom.”
And in Hamlet, William Shakespeare wrote, “This above all, to thyne own self be true.”
Play to your strengths, set realistic goals, and make 2022 the best year ever for you and your family.
Cheers to your future success in keeping resolutions,
- Dr. Pfister