Dialogue: A generation that will never say die

By SANDY BURGHAM

Last week I was an early trialist of a new medical process, which gives an accurate indicator of the likelihood of having an unexpected heart attack.

While I thought this was what cholesterol checks were for, this new thing is not only more detailed but far more sexy, featuring swish premises, handsome doctors, free chocolate biscuits and a high-tech futuristic device that speaks to you as it scans the amount of calcium in your arteries.

When I got the all-clear I was as excited as the little girl who ran though the dentist surgery, crying, "Mummy, Mummy, he didn't have to drill!" I promptly celebrated with a meal high in cholesterol washed down with many glasses of wine. I also loosened up on my already relaxed exercise routine.

Did I think I was a poor heart risk? Not particularly, but I now can simply add this to a list of preventive health (or preventive death) measures such as regular mammograms when I am over 40 and cervical smears, which all women do regularly, as a way of kung-fuing away nasties on the road to long life.

If mathematicians were offering a service to rate the probability of being run over by a bus as another way of narrowing our chances of popping our clogs too soon, I can imagine subscribing to this, too.

You see, these days you neither have to grow old gracefully nor accept that unexpected health problems will be inevitable.

Once we lived in small villages where the leading light in the community was the local GP, who seemed to know everything. But life has changed and the generation of baby boomers has both inbred cynicism and a self-empowerment mantra that drives them to wrestle back control of their own health.

Boomers are the first generation not to take death lying down. They can fix the external symptoms of the final journey with a few quiet nips and tucks and can monitor the internal signs of failing health with various screening techniques. It's all part of their driving need to control their own destiny.

So while rumour has it that this new calcium-scoring technique has been snubbed by certain quarters of the medical profession, whatever their reasons for this they will not be able to shut the floodgates once baby boomers get to know of yet another way to monitor their own health.

Health regimens are becoming less about what a doctor thinks is good for us and more about what our own personal philosophy is.

Women in particular search the internet for answers, challenge and query theories and health practices of the medical profession.

Menopause marks the big mid-life question of to HRT or not to HRT.

And on a smaller scale, questioning the need for antibiotics is no longer the habit only of sandalled, alternative-health hippies. Health becomes an ideological weighing-up of one's values and an exploration of whether we have the courage to go against the grain.

The fact is, so unprepared are we to die that when the chips are down we will take matters into our own hands and try anything. While alternative cancer clinics can be dismissed as quackery by many of the Western world's media profession, last-chance punters with simply nothing to lose will flock to them.

There are thousands of variations of natural remedies to promote vitality and long life and we rattle around, having ingested our own concoction, which changes depending on what urban myth is being peddled: bee pollen, dong quai, manuka honey, vinegar - we'll give anything a go and spend hundreds of dollars on the latest panacea, all the while closely scrutinising ourselves for any hint of marginal improvement.

I have heard that the vast majority of health costs are incurred in the last month of life. Thus I propose an ageing strategy by which, after we have all spent many years scanning, monitoring, nipping and cutting, we nominate a self-imposed cut-off point - a time in the future when it's simply too late to do anything about death, which will be surely inevitable.

While we might be able to stretch our existences out an extra few months by living a quiet life, we could alternatively once again embrace life with gusto, spending all our money on junk food, social smoking and booze like we did in our youth.

This would ensure we not only die laughing but save the community and ourselves thousands of dollars in the process.