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Healthy Aging: Remind your doctor, 'aging is not a disease' Sunday Jan 15, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Sharon Johnson for the Mail Tribune Once you start receiving Medicare, your appointment with your health provider is termed an “annual wellness visit.” You’re asked to update the list of prevention-related questions you were asked when you became eligible for Medicare. But you must have your own questions. And hopefully you’ve thought about them in advance and written them legibly on a piece of paper you did not leave on your kitchen counter the day of the scheduled visit. If you end up doing that, it begets its own question about recent forgetting behaviors. Preparing well for your “wellness” check-up is critically important. You will have, according to experts, “13 to 16 minutes” with your health provider. Unless you’re thoughtfully ready, you’re destined to leave it frustrated and stressed. And stress is definitely not going to add to wellness. A recent article in the AARP Bulletin (www.aarp.org/bulletin) is titled “How To Talk So Your Doctor Will Listen.” It reminds us that that doctors typically “let a patient speak for less than 23 seconds before interjecting or interrupting.“ I recall a story from a 70-something woman who used her own approach to ensure she was listened to. At the moment her doctor stepped into the examining from, this woman held fingers to her lips in a shushing manner and said, “Please do not speak. I have questions. I will limit myself to three minutes and watch the time. Don’t interrupt, please.” She advised always saying “please,” if you use this strategy, because “doctors are people too” and they want respectful, friendly connection as much as you do. Here are some other reminders, compliments of AARP, but reordered based on personal experience. The first piece of advice is possibly the most important. Do not accept “It’s just aging” as the response to any question. “Aging is not a disease.” According to a 2011 article from the Center for Bioethics and Culture, aging “makes us more vulnerable to disease but is not itself pathology.” Feel free to use that quote if you need to. One important question to plug into your repertoire, especially if you’re hearing challenged is, “Can you repeat that, please?” Even better: “Would you write that down for me?” Or, “Do you have any printed materials about that?” If you take a family member or friend with you to the appointment, which is a very good idea, clue them in advance you want them to be your scribe. Here’s another situation you must definitely consider; it’s not really a question but it could be. What if your doctor directs you to do something, such as getting regular daily exercise or eliminating desserts, and you know you’re not going to do that. Say what’s true for you. As illustration, “I know I will not walk 20 minutes every day.” Renegotiate the physician request to something that’s doable and likely to get accomplished. When my plump little mother was alive, I always went with her to her physician visits. I recall she was very proud of her renegotiation of “no desserts” to “only on Friday.” To which she later added, “a gingersnap cookie before bed every night.” But just one. — Sharon Johnson is a retired Oregon State University associate professor. Reach her at [email protected].