How do you convince loved ones to mind their health?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am worried about my mother, and I don’t know how to convince her of my concern and its legitimacy without having her shut me out.

Background: My mother is anti-preventative medicine. She does not get regular check ups. She seldom took me for check-ups beyond the typical new baby well exams and required vaccinations. Fortunately I was a healthy kid by nature.
She is of the mindset that one does not seek out medical attention unless one has a sucking chest wound. For example, a few years back (the last time that I’m aware she’s seen any type of doctor) she had a fever of 104 for a week before finally going to the emergency room to have a raging kidney infection diagnosed.

In her opinion, most people making medical complaints are hypchondriacs. Like her mother, who moaned and complained about her shortness of breath for years after the third or fourth heart attack. (she died of pulmonary fibrosis) Or her sister, who was always going on about her asthma. (she died from it a couple years back)

I am a good daughter and nag my mother yearly that her last mamogram was about 10 years ago and her sister has breast cancer, and shouldn’t she probably schedule one because I love her so?
No dice.

Earlier this month I went away with her for the weekend to an outdoor festival. I noticed that my normally energetic mother tired very easily. She put it down to the natural lack of energey inherent in being 52. I noticed she tended to breathe very shallowly and rapidly, even when resting. But then she’s got allergies (never had them before, but they’ve developed in the past year or two) and it was peak allergy season in Maryland.
At one point we were in a large, crowded exhibit hall and she freaked out because she couldn’t breathe and practically ran from the building. (completely uncharacteristic, but she was really stuffed up from the allergies)
She mentioned in passing that sometimes when she travels (she flies to a different city each week for work) her feet and ankles puff up and it takes a whole day for the swelling to go down.
She also bragged that she managed, with much eating of healthy breakfasts and rich restaurant food, to get her weight back up from below 105lbs back to 114. (she’s 5’ 3" and has been about 110 - 113 all my life)

The whole weekend left me with a niggling unrest in the back of my mind.
Then this weekend we were camping, and the shortness of breath was still all too obvious. She got panicky yesterday, and was in a great hurry to get back home to filtered air, citing her allergies.

I should also mention that she’s been a smoker for 35years.

So I’m worried that she’s got COPD. (thanks, Dr. Google) Perhaps emphysema, like her father (he’s sitting around a nursing home on oxygen while alzheimer’s eats his brain). I’m not looking for medical advice. I’m looking for daughter advice - I want her to see a doctor, and I can’t make her. I could share my worries with her, and she will poo-poo them as secondary to her allergies. Or her travel schedule. Or the phase of the moon for all I know. Because she is invicible. Lung disease is something that happens to other people.
I could tell my dad. But while he is slightly better with the preventative health maintenance (and by slightly I mean he gets his twice yearly teeth cleanings and he had a sebaceous cyst removed 20 years ago), he tends to be of the opinion that he can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do. And he’s right.
But she needs to see a doctor.

Advice? Opinions? What worked for you? I know this is a common enough problem thanks to all the comments in the media about wives having to nag their husbands to the doctor. (mine goes religiously, seeing as he’s a cancer survivor)
Nagging doesn’t seem to work with my mom, which is ironic since it was her favorite tool of persuasion during my formative years.

2

I have no advice for you but will be checking this thread frequently. You see I have a dear friend who is 26, college-educated, very smart and who has asthma as well as IBS. She won’t take responsibility for her own health and has told friends to make her go to the doctor’s if she’s having breathing issues.

I’ve given up, the last time she complained about her breathing issues (today), I asked her if she’d made a doctor’s appointment. She had not, so I shrugged and said someday she would be a grown up. She thought I was kidding, but I assure you I was not.

3

My birthday is on the 21st of June and for my birthday present I am going to ask my parents to quit smoking. I am hoping that the fact that this is a big enough deal to me to bypass physical gifts in exchange for healthier parents will be motivation enough for them to make the change. Unfortunately people are stubborn and life long patterns are hard to change so there is no guarentee either way. You might offer to pay for it if she will go or tell her you want her to go and if it ends up being nothing like she thinks it is you will take her out for a big steak dinner or something to make up for making her pursue “unnecessary” medical care.

4

I’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t. You might have some luck getting the person to do one concrete thing like schedule a physical, but sustained healthy behavior is something that has to be motivated from within. You would think a severe loss of quality of life would be a good motivator, but it doesn’t seem to work that way, at least in the case of my parents.

5

That’s my goal - I’d be happy with her just getting a physical. It would really amaze me if she did, though.
I’ve long since given up all hope of getting her to quit smoking. Only she can decide to do that.
I’m just hoping that if this is COPD that she can get medical attention that will maintain her quality of life such that she’s not stuck on oxygen like her father. (okay, secretly I hope it will also scare her into quitting)

If I say nothing with the assumption that she won’t listen to me, and three or six or sixteen years from now she is diagnosed, I will feel bad about my silence. If, by some amazing quirk of the universe, she goes for a check-up and finds out it’s really nothing, I will gladly eat crow.

6

i understand completely. my family and i had to sit around and watch my mom “poo-poo” any suggestion that her heart or lungs were in any distress. she finally agreed that she needed to go to hospital, if she hadn’t she would have died that day. as it was she died 9 days later.

the irony is that she finally got the really cool boot things i was telling her about for 2 years. 5 days before her death. her feet finally looked normal instead of like she had her feet bound for all her life. swollen, misshappen, and purple. she did not get to see them.

“oh, they are getting better i don’t need to see a doctor. i just need more house-hold appliances so i don’t have to stand on them. they hurt all the time you know…” sure, couldn’t be the fact that your circulatory system is not working properly and blood is pooling in them.

there is nothing you can do unless you can take them to court and have them declared incompetent. it is their life and death. i couldn’t do anything until she was in hospital. by then it was way too late. it was a major source of fireworks for 4 years.

hang in there. it is really difficult and you have us here to rant to. do whatever is best for you and your health.

7

My dad smoked since he was 13 up until about 5 years ago. He’s 72 now. He was diagnosed with emphysema and still having trouble quitting. I tried to explain to him what my mom’s pictured life is versus what it would be if he continued to smoke. That is, right now they are taking care of my 96 year old grandmother.

The clincher for him I beleive was that I reminded him that my mother wanted to spend her declining years comfortably with him – not caring for her own mother by herself after his medical care cleans out everything he’s worked for to make them comfortable.

8

I think part of it is cultural. My mother wouldn’t have taken me to the doctor as a child except for serious illness or injury. She herself never goes even when she really should. My mother’s cousin recently spent three weeks vomiting and with diarrhea before going to the hospital and finding out she had pierced her colon and was septic. Fortunately for her, she’s expected to recover (a miracle given the prognosis the doctors gave her). My wife is always on me to get to the doctor. Her mother is a head nurse at a hospital back in DC and my wife is a medical interpretor at a Chicago hospital so she’s all about the value of modern medicine. She told her Russian interpretor about my family and she responded “The Polish only go to the doctor to find out what killed them”.

On the other hand, almost all of my medical trips have been a colossal waste of money. The few times something has happened where I finally agreed to go to the hospital, the result was a shrug from the doctors and a large hospital bill. I spent a week with crippling stomach cramps before going to have blood drawn and tubes stuck down my throat and everything else. They had no clue what was wrong with me and charged me a few thousand for the experience. Money well spent, huh? I could have had no idea and and extra couple grand if I just stayed home. At this point, I’ve told my wife that I’m not returning to the hospital unless there’s a piece of me physically detached which needs to be sewn back on. At least then maybe I’ll get my money’s worth.

For all that, I’ll be making an appointment for a physical soon just because the wife is on me about it constantly and it’ll make her feel better about it.

9

You suck it up and let the subject go. She’s not going to change, you can’t make her change, and bringing it up only uses energy you could devote to something else. I know, easy to say and hard to practice. Still, what other option do you have?