I've been requesting and keeping copies of many if not most of my lab results for years, even one from 1974, as well as mammogram and pap smear results, and once in a while I'll request a copy of chart notes. I also try to keep a business card of each medical professional I've seen and one copy of the literature that comes with each prescription I get. How sick is that? Ahem....
I've been told by docs in the last five years that I'm fairly healthy, even though I have a coupla very interesting issues. I take lots of supplements, eat pretty good and healthy except when I am in denial, laugh as much and often as possible, can still bend and touch the floor, do a ragged cartwheel, walk a bit, hike sometimes, ride a bike sometimes, pretzel myself when and if I do yoga (no down dogs, though), lug around big bags of potting soil, compost and hay bales, move my own mid-size furniture, and try and wrestle with my teenage grandsons. I can no longer pin them down and have to beg them to "Go easy!" when we do wrestle. They think it's hilarious...
I carry a hard copy folded up in my wallet of a summary of my medical info that I created and maintain because I get really tired of filling in the same old stuff on medical forms - current medicines and supplements, strengths and how many and when; allergies and other issues; current medical diagnoses; family history; surgery history...etc etc ad nauseum - so that when I register at a new doc's and come to all those related blanks, I just write "see attached" and ask to have a copy made for my file. Most of the intake people love it, but once in a while some stickler office will make me fill in the blanks, which makes my normally very good blood pressure go up.
It's not like I didn't have anything better to do when I started this archive of my body. I don't know what compelled me, maybe because I've moved a lot and this is my way of feeling grounded. And maybe this info will help if and when my body is parted out. My driver's license marks me as a donor...I vaguely remember saying something to my family about that decision. Think about it...when us donors die, what do the doctors, hospitals, med students, professors, scientists and researchers have except a body they know little or nothing about as it quietly spreads open under their sharp scalpels, revealing an unknown story and a lot of speculation...? Yeah, sometimes they know a lot, but I think a lot less than what they find when they open us up. I'm an info freak, I believe body archives are a good thing.
It also gives me a picture of the way my body has progressed over the years, and helps me make some fairly certain assumptions about my own health. I think we are mass programmed to not trust ourselves, our capabilities, our relationship with our body (and mind and spirit), and our intuition, which has created a whole lot of "sheeple." For instance, I can tell looking at my Body Archive that the "high cholesterol" indication on labs goes back for years and years and is really fairly normal for me. My Mom says she has the same thing.
I'm hoping some medico will read and study all this paperwork that I've held onto and dragged around in my adult life during multiple moves. I also hope they are studying Western and Eastern/alternative medicines, too.
I want the end value of my obsession and creation of a Body Archive to be beneficial to one or more other bodies. All I ask is that when they're done, burn what's left (make damn sure I'm dead first) and fling half of it into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the Big Island and put a wee bit in a sealed glass vial for whoever wants it. Then put the other half in a biodegradable container, add soil and other nutrients, and plant a tree. Please.
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