The doctor’s team said to me that I need to be “ahead of the pain”. As much as I understood what that meant, given the way I’m “wired”, it is not my style to take any kind of pain medication when I am not feeling the need. However, after certain surgeries, taking pain medications at the prescribed times will mitigate the pain better than taking the doses when the pain becomes severe.  And the team was correct.

When I came home from the hospital, I was not diligent with the strategy and took the medication on the onset of the pain which was not as effective.  Nevertheless, I’m recovering nicely and that is what matters.

When I was first told about being ahead of the pain, I had an almost immediate philosophical thought of how easy that sounded. “Be ahead of the pain”, what if everything in life was so easy, to be ahead of any pain?  Physical pain, emotional pain – any pain.  I suppose if we knew what the future brings – it may just be that easy. But of course, that is not reality. 

Even though we cannot predict the future we do have opportunities to prepare for certain health situations that arise as we age.  If we knew what the next day brings, we’d prepare for it. Afterall, we take medicines to prevent the onset of illnesses that we may be subjected to based on regular testing.

Why would we not do the same for our financial health?  There is a myriad of strategies to protect assets, our income, generational wealth transfer, taxes and funding for long term care.

Instead of enduring the pain of not preparing or improper planning, lets be “ahead of the pain”.

Peter Janowsky