Health Fears

Why do people resist going to the doctor? Cary Tennis, a writer for The Salon, who was recently diagnosed with cancer explores an ingrained reluctance to self preserve. “Last week, knowing that I had a cancer that might have been detected as much as a year earlier, I was crushed with the weight of fate and my own fear and pride and resistance. My insistence that I knew what this pain in my lower back was, was groundless, born of wish — in part a wish to avoid learning the truth but more, as I discovered, a wish to avoid doctors and hospitalization. Basically I ignored the pain in my lower back for the better part of a year. I was strangely, irrationally evasive about it. I refused to see the doctor. I told my wife I would and then I failed to do so. I was even aware, myself, that I was acting irrationally, that I was avoiding and procrastinating.”