He Thought He Knew Better

He skipped the check-up. We buried him in May.


He used to laugh at labels.
Low-sodium. Heart-smart. Gluten-free.
Said it all tasted like cardboard.
Said real men ate what they wanted.
He quoted his own metabolism like scripture.
“Ate steak at midnight. Still woke up fine.”

Fine. That was the word he clung to, even as the swelling started.

I watched him lose himself.
The trousers that once fit, no longer did.
The simple act of using the toilet became a battleground.
His breath got shorter,
his skin lost colour — and will.

He told me health was a lifestyle.
He told me he was fine.
He said he would fix it in time.

First it was the ankles.
Puffed like bread dough, shoes tight by noon.
Then it was the breath —
gone after stairs, then conversations, then standing.

We joked about it at first.
He did, mostly.
Called it “just the weather” or “old lungs acting up.”
But the weather passed. His breath didn’t.

The decline wasn’t sudden.
It was incremental.
A quiet mutiny of the body creeping in like rust.
A slow, relentless corrosion.
The surrender hidden beneath stubbornness.

The kind of slow undoing you only recognise in hindsight —
when the old trousers don’t fit,
when the sleep leaves you tired,
when the toilet becomes a battleground.

He hated hospitals.
Said they made people sicker.
Sat in waiting rooms like a soldier in enemy territory.
Told doctors they didn’t know what they were talking about.
Told nurses to speak louder.
Told himself — always — that he’d be fine.

We call health a lifestyle.
But it’s really a clock.
And time?
Time is no friend to the unprepared.

The medications piled up.
Some he took. Others he didn’t.
The truth was, he couldn’t accept that the damage was self-inflicted.
That the salt mattered. That the soda counted.
That skipping water for years wasn’t a harmless quirk,
but a quiet act of sabotage.

He refused to hear the warnings.
He denied the ache.
Ignored the swelling shadow beneath his ribs.

I watched him drift further,
a reluctant witness to his own undoing.

I watched the dialysis strip him of hours.
Watched his meals get smaller, his breath get shorter,
his skin lose colour — and will.
Even the morphine looked weary.

Nothing helped. Not really.
The doctors stopped promising.
The machines just hummed.

And still —
he never said he was wrong.

I think about that.
How the body will scream what the mouth refuses to admit.

He thought he was in control.
But he wasn’t even steering.
Just drifting, until the road ran out.

This — all of this — was preventable.
That’s the part I can’t forget.

It didn’t take catastrophe.
Just carelessness. Ego. Denial.
A thousand tiny choices. A thousand ignored signs.

By the time he wanted to turn around,
his body had already gone.

I tell myself he didn’t know.
But maybe he did.
Maybe knowing and acting are different things.
Maybe the first thing to go isn’t the body —
it’s the willingness to listen.

He waited too long.
Most of us do.

Until one day, it doesn’t leave.
That’s when you understand:
It wasn’t sudden.
It was earned.            

–––

These stories aren’t rare.
They’re just rarely told early enough.
Most decline begins in silence —
a skipped check-up, a cough you dismiss, a breath you pretend is fine.

He didn’t need saving.
Just a warning sooner.

––– Pause Here –––

If this feels familiar, you’re not alone.
Most illness doesn’t start with a bang.
It starts when silence becomes habit.

Lingzhi isn’t a miracle.
It’s a habit.
A quiet, daily way to care for the body —
before silence becomes suffering.

Lingzhi is a traditional food taken to support general well-being. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. For personalised advice, please consult a qualified healthcare practitioner.

#SubHealthStories #HealthIsAHabit #HappyHealthyLingzhi

                                                                   

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