The Point of Prevention

And May the Fourth be With You!

I’ve never seen Star Wars and know next to nothing about the franchise, but Star Wars Day is significant for me because my grandmother died on May 4th.

Every time I’ve heard “May the Fourth be with you,” over the past eight years, I’ve thought back to the rainy Autumn morning when I got pulled out of history class to meet my Mum outside the front of school.

I don’t remember if we talked at all on the drive to the hospice care center, but I do remember shaking my head and staying put in the hallway when my Dad asked if I wanted to see her. I had said goodbye the last time I’d seen her alive—she’d been unconscious for days at that point, lulled away from us by doses of pain medication that increased as imperceptibly as a rising tide and hopefully staved off some suffering. I’d kissed her forehead and told her I loved her before leaving the stuffy room that smelled like disinfectant mixed with the scents of twenty different candles.

I didn’t see any reason to say goodbye again, because this time I couldn’t convince myself that she’d heard me. Plus, my mild phobia of dead things (which was likely spurred by Nana herself when she made me help her scrape dead penguins off the beach as a kid) does extend to people.

I loved my Nana deeply, and I wish I’d had the chance to build a relationship with her as an adult. I’d been on the cusp of adulthood when she died, and to be fair, she’d talked with me as though I were an adult since I started stringing sentences together. But now that I’m actually an adult, I have questions about her life and the hopes she’d had for it.

The most frustrating thing about my lingering questions is that she should still be here to answer them. For the past couple of May the Fourths, I’ve reflected on how easily her death could have been avoided and how what happened to her has steered me toward public health and health policy. This year, I thought I’d re-share The Point of Prevention, an essay I wrote for a student literary magazine that describes her story and how it has shaped my career path.

One of the main things I learned from my grandmother’s experience with the health system was the importance of screening tests. So before you carry on with your Star Wars Day, I wanted to end with a quick prompt to think about whether there’s a screening test you’ve been meaning to get (here’s a list of screening tests for common cancers, but this list is non-exhaustive and doesn’t include screening tests for other diseases—it’s best to check in with a health professional to see which tests you might need).

Maybe you’ve reached the age window during which a preventive test is recommended. For example, if you have a cervix and recently turned 25 in Aotearoa, it’s recommended that you start getting pap tests* (for US readers, the recommended age for starting cervical cancer screening is 21). Or maybe you’ve had some symptoms and have been thinking about going to get something checked out. Either way, this is your sign to look into making that appointment.

Thanks for reading, and May the Fourth be with you!

*The recommended age for starting cervical cancer screening in Aotearoa was raised from 20 to 25 in 2019—if you got your first test before 25, you can still get tested at the intervals under the screening guidelines.