The Fear of the Truth

We always say health is wealth, but sometimes, there are certain things people do that just makes you wonder if they truly care, even just a little bit, about their health.

_{photo by Mufid Majnun}

For the past year or so, I've been very observant about my health, I have made it a priority to ensure than I at least go for medical check ups every now and then..although I must confess that I don't go as often as I would like to, but I try the little I can, especially seeing how expensive these things can be.

But I try, and to me that's all that matters. But you see, I have a friend who barely has enough money to provide daily meals for himself, not to talk of paying for medical check ups, but due to the fact that this person is my friend, I had made a promise to myself that someday in the nearest future (possibly during my next appointment at the lab), I would take him along and pay for both of us to be checked.

I had made this promise because unlike me, who isn't showing any signs of any form of illness, this friend of mine would occasionally complain about blood coming out of his mouth early in the morning. That wasn't the only thing but the bottomline of everything was that I knew that he knew that he wasn't well and had to get himself checked up.

Tell me why last week, another mutual friend of ours had come visit, and he told us that he just came back from the lab where he went to run some test to see if he has any STI or not, and that while running that test, he had thought of my friend who obviously has something wrong with him, and he had come to offer that friend of mine the money he would need to go get himself checked up.

So basically, he was telling my friend to go get dressed, so that we all could accompany him to the lab for him to run the test. When I heard this, I got excited because I knew he didn't have to wait for me to gather the money anymore to run the test..but to my greatest surprise, this friend has refused to take the offer.

At first we had thought he was shy because we had volunteered to accompany him, so we had told him that he could go alone, run the tests and come back, but still yet he had refused. I was not only surprised, I was shocked too and all I could mutter out of my mouth was why??

And although he didn't give me any real reasons why, what I understood from the little things he said was that he was scared of running the tests because he was scared of what the doctors would find out. Almost like he was choosing to live his life in peace not knowing if something was wrong with him, than for him to find out and start to worried.

It was a very stupid reason but there was nothing I could do to convince him after I had tried talking to him for more than fifteen minutes. At the end of the day, he didn't go for the test and that other friend of ours had no choice but to return home with his money.

It was a shocking experience.