You’ll know yourself as a parent that life gets so relentlessly busy at times, and it’s so easy to push your own life admin straight to the bottom of the pile. When you’re juggling work, the house, and keeping everyone else functioning, your own appointments often go completely ignored. You probably know exactly when the car is due its MOT but cant remember the last time you saw a doctor for a routine check. But there are a few health appointments you really shouldn’t skip.
Cancer screenings
These usually arrive as a letter in the post, and it’s incredibly tempting to leave it sitting on the kitchen counter gathering dust because you’re just too busy to deal with it right now. These checks are tailored to your age, gender and specific risk factors. Cervical screenings, for example, arent exactly anyone’s idea of a fun Tuesday afternoon, and it’s so common to put them off because the clinic times are inconvenient or you just dont want the hassle. The same goes for bowel screening kits or mammograms when you reach that age bracket. If you get an invite, or if a close relative had a history that puts you at a higher risk, just get it booked in. Spending twenty minutes dealing with a bit of mild awkwardness in a clinic room is a small price to pay for catching something before it becomes a real problem.
The Dentist
We all know we should be sitting in the dentists chair every six to twelve months, but unless you’re in actual agony, it easily drops off the radar. Waiting until a tooth actually hurts is a massive mistake though. That tiny twinge you feel when you bite into a Twix or drink an ice cold drink might just need a tiny filling right now. If you go ahead and inore it for another year because you dont fancy paying the dental fees, there’s a very good chance it could end up with an emergency root canal that ruins your entire weekend (these things ALWAYS happen at inconvenient times!) and costs ten times as much. Even just keeping up with the hygienist to scrape the plaque off helps stop any gum issues.
Opticians and audiologists
These are much more of an “as and when needed” situation, but we’re all actually terrible at noticing our own gradual decline. You might just assume you’re getting brutal headaches by 4pm because you stare at a screen all day, but actually your prescription has changed (or you need glasses for the first time in your life) and you’re squinting away without even realising it. If your telly is up full blast and you can’t for the life of you hear a conversation at the same time the washing machine is running then it’s possibly the start of a problem! You might be nervous about the idea of getting support with your hearing, but modern Unitron hearing aids and other brands and models like this are so discreet. Most healthy adults should go to the audiologist every two to three years just to check in and make sure everything is looking ok, if you’ve never been then going once will at least give you a baseline to test against later as you get older.
A penny for your thoughts?