When Things Go Wrong

Sort of a long story, but I do have a weight loss point which I'll get to at the end!

I've had my current car for a year now, he's my friend, my trusted companion. (Yes, my cars are males, and I give them names. His name is Barlow.) I've never had a problem with him before - it's a 98 Toyota Camry but in excellent condition, with a 4-year old batter (as I recently learned.)

My house has a drive around drive-way - flat at the top where you park it, but with a slight incline as you drive down about 20 feet or so to where the road is. For various reasons I'd had the car parked nose down on that incline for a few hours - something I've never done before.

So I went out to start the car, and the engine made the noise it normally makes before it starts, but then it dies. That had never happened before - even a couple of months ago when the temp was 10 degrees it started right up without hesitation.

It was also 40 degrees outside, so my problem wasn't a cold engine. I thought, well, I must have taken my foot off the gas too soon. So I started her up again, meantime letting the car roll down the incline. It still wouldn't start.

So I applied the brakes, and I had no brakes. No power = no brakes, in a car with power steering and power brakes (not to mention power windows) if you have no power you're SOL.

So I jammed down as hard as I could on the brakes, and it came to a stop, though I'm not sure if it came to a halt because I was on level ground or because the brakes work - albeit verrrrrrrrrrrrry slowly - when there's no power.

I checked my lights - they weren't on, and it didn't look like a car door had been left open, but in any event, I figured it was the battery so I called a friend of mine to come give me a jump. He came and hooked up the jumper cables, then being a man he figured it had better be he who tried to start my car. So he gets in and starts the engine, and it doesn't catch, and he says, "It doesn't sound like the battery."

"What is it?" I ask, and he says he doesn't know, but it doesn't sound like the battery. But he gives it another minute (he's got his car engine running)(then tries it again and it starts right up. He says, "maybe it was because you had the nose pointing down on an incline, although I don't see how that can be it. But it wasn't the battery.)

So I continue driving on my errand, but now I am really nervous. The more so because I'd never realized before that if the power of your car goes out, you have no brakes. (I'd known you'd be unable to roll down your windows, but I didn't realize brakes - your lifeline - would also go out or be rendered only 10% effective.)

The fact that I didn't - and don't - know exactly what's wrong has me nervous. I always drive defensively anyway, but I was constantly looking around, thinking of permutations. "If my car dies here...I'll steer in that direction. If my car dies here...is that car behind me going to run into me? Damn tailgater."

My trust in poor Barlow has been destroyed. I feel...betrayed. It's one thing if he'd had a 20 year old battery that I'd neglected, or if I'd neglected his oil and transmission fluid, etc. But to take such good care of him as I do, and for the battery or something to let me down like that...

It's going to take a while before I trust him again.

You will ask....why don't I take him to a service station to be thoroughly checked over? Well, there my distrust of service stations come in to play. I know nothing abut cars except the bare minimum, anything they tell me I have to believe. And on at least two occasions I brought Barlow in for a "check up" and was told, "oh, we have to fix this, this and this." The first time it happened, I was fine with it. But the second time it happened, only two months after the first time (the first time was a checkup to get a new license plate - in Virginia they test out your car and you can't get new license plates unless it passes this test) and at the same service station, where I'd simply taken it for an oil change and they told me I had this major problem - I was a bit curious as to why they hadn't found it two months ago when they'd done the license-plate check, since in those two months I'd barely driven it over a hundred miles.

Bottom line, I don't trust the service stations, and I hate to pay an exorbitant sum for them to look at Barlow and tell me there's nothing wrong with him.

It was just the battery on start up, after all. And since it's spring moving in to summer, if the battery does die when I'm parked somewhere and I have to call someone to come get me, it won't be a hardship. (I don't really think Barlow will die while I'm driving him - that was just my nervousness today. But it's far more likely that if anything does happen, it will be that I won't be able to start the car again.)

Okay, now we get to the point of this post.

A lot of people don't go to doctors when they think they may have a problem. For some its because they can't afford it, but for most it's because they don't trust doctors. How many times have people gone in for an operation on one thing, only to find that a doctor has removed a different organ entirely, or left a sponge or something in that causes damage, or that the patient has an adverse reaction to anasthesia or something and dies!

Nevertheless, despite your distrust of doctors, you must go to them when circumstances demand it.

My car can't tell me what's wrong - he has no voice. I can assume that it was just some fluke of the battery, but I don't really know and my car can't tell me.

With people, it's different, especially if you've been keeping a journal for any length of time in which you record your emotions and feelings before and aftr eating and exercising, and so on. You have documented proof that you can bring to your doctor to show that things have changed and that something is wrong, and they'll have a lot of info to go on to help their diagnosis, more so than if you just go in and try to rely on your memory to tell your doctor your symptoms.

I've got over my initial nervousness about the car - I'm 100% sure that if poor Barlow does let me down again, it will be when I'm parked in a parking lot somewhere nad I won't be able to get him started again. If the car had died while I'd actually been driving - well then believe me I'd take him into a service station immediately and have him checked out, trust or not! You can't drive a car that has a tendency to die in the middle of the road!

With the human body, it's different. You might have a sudden ache and pain that you don't think is anything, maybe you "tweaked" a muscle. So you don't go to a doctor for several weeks. But since it never gets better, well, you simply must go! And hopefully in the interim while you've been waiting to feel better, you've been tracking down everything about this "tweak" - just in case it isn't a tweak, so that you have knowledge of what's going on in your body.

I end these types of posts as I always have, with my story about my mother. 20 years ago, she was diagnosed with high blood pressure. She was given pills, and she took one or two before she decided that she didn't like how they made her feel. Rather than going back to the doctor to explain her probelm and asking if she'd get used to them or if she should have a different type of medication, she just stopped taking her pills.

Her body was ravaged by high blood pressure for 20 years. The "silent killer." As you might expect, a few years ago she had congestive heart failure. That lasted untreated longer than it should have done, because my mom is terrified of doctors too. The water that her heart could no longer expel normally was actually coming out of her skin (in various eruptions, not all over) because it couldn't get out any other way. But it was only when she just didn't have the energy to get out of bed that she asked my dad to make her some coffee. (They had separate bedrooms) that my dad decided something was terribly wrong and called an ambulance. She was in the hospital for 4 days as they pumped out all the extra water and got her on some medication, and now she has to take 10 pills a day instead of just one!

Your body and your health are your own responsibility. Read up on health and diseases and so on - there are plenty of layperson's texts out there that are easily understandable.

Knowledge is power - and you must know yourself - both your mental processes and your physical processes - to maintain your physical and mental health.