Tag Archives: Health

Flat out thinking…

Posted on by

There are always stories circulating about people who retire with thousands of hours of sick leave on the books. That’s good for them. 3000 hours of sick leave gives you a hell of a lot of credit towards your total years of service. As great as that sounds, I know I’m not going to be one of those people. I’m not an iron man. I don’t play hurt when I can avoid it and I don’t go in when I’m hacking up a lung. For one thing, I know that I don’t bring my A-game when I’m sick or hurt and for another it only seems decent not to wander in and infect everyone else with whatever crud I happen to have come down with. This week has been an object lesson in the former; a great primer for why I avoid playing hurt.

It really boils down to a matter of concentration and focus. When part of my brain is focused on just how damned uncomfortable I am, I’m not doing my best work. Chances are, I’m not even doing good work. I’ll probably never get nominated for employee of the quarter with that attitude, but it is what it is. One of the key lessons I’ve learned on the job is if you don’t look out for yourself, there’s no one else going to take the time to look out for you either. Long story short, yesterday’s post talked about the inevitable guilt that goes along with the sick day. I had plenty of time after writing that post to put some real thought into it – since laying flat on the floor isn’t good for much else than giving you time to think. It’s safe to say that after really reflecting on the last decade, I’m utterly cured of whatever misguided guilt I was feeling for staying put and taking care of me.

The job is happy enough to chew you up and grind you down. It’s your job to do whatever it takes to make sure that doesn’t happen. Here endeth the lesson.

Intolerance…

Posted on by

(c) The MCLA Beacon

(c) The MCLA Beacon

After a childhood filled with downright crippling stomach troubles, I was officially diagnosed with lactose intolerance when I was in elementary school. With that knowledge, as long as I popped a couple of Lactaid tablets before eating anything my stomach was happy to tackle anything thrown at it. I had a little blue case filled with the things and self-medicated with wild abandon. Fortunately, this was the 1980s, so a kid carrying around an unmarked container of pills didn’t raise any eyebrows. All was right with the world.

As I got older, the effects of my intolerance decreased to the point where I could generally suck down a milkshake or a block of cheese without suffering any ill effects. These days, I can usually eat whatever I want and walk away just fine. I’ve miraculously been 99% cured. The problem was (and is) that being “mostly” cured means that every once in a while – that pesky 1% of the time – I’m suddenly not cured at all.

So without going too far into the gory details, I re-learned last night that from time to time, I still have a price to pay for enjoying dairy. It took into the small hours of the morning, but I’m finally feeling like balance has been restored… which means I’ll spend the rest of the day sitting quietly and trying to avoid doing anything that might tempt my system to go back out of whack. If I’m feeling exceptionally adventurous, lunch might even be a piece of dry toast or a couple of saltines. Yeah, I feel better already.

Stationary hell…

Posted on by

I know a few of you out there are all gung ho about your exercise routines. You run marathons, lift six times your body weight, and participate in all manner of physical exertion. More than a few of you have commented about how the effort leaves you feeling energized and wanting to go harder and do more. See, right there is where you lose me. I’ve tried a lot of it over the years – free weights and machines, walking, jogging (aka my feeble attempt at breaking into a run), stair climbing, resistance training, etcetera and so on. Where these activities leave you feeling energized, they leave me feeling tired, achy, sweaty, and generally like there are a dozen other things I could have spent that hour doing that would have left me feeling more productive for the day. It’s not that I reject the obvious benefits of these activities so much as it is that I find them mostly dull, tedious, and often painful. Hard as it might be to believe, that’s not the exact recipe for keeping me interested in something.

However, my semi-annual visit coming up in January to my Teutonic doctor and he’s going to ask the inevitable question about doing a minimum of 30-45 minutes of cardio a day. I won’t lie to him, because lying to your doctor is just bad policy, so with the impending visit in mind, I’m back on the wagon. And by wagon, I mean the cursed stationary bicycle that lives in the basement and for the last three months has served as an improvised laundry drying station. So at least when he asks, I can tell him with a straight face that yes, I’m doing the requisite number of minutes per day. I’ll leave off the bit about hating every minute of it since I’m fairly certain that’s not medically relevant.

I envy you people who find your exercise regimen personally fulfilling. For me it feels an awful lot like three hours a week that I’ll never get back.

Gone fishin’…

Posted on by

I’m up early even by my standards on a Sunday morning. Despite the mad dash to get the day started, I made sure I left plenty of time to dig through the archive and find your selection of five for Sunday. This week’s posts hail from August and September 2008 – a bit of time when I was really starting to question who I was professionally and when my feet stopped working. Yeah, that last bit probably sounds worse than it really is, but still it was damned unpleasant.

And with that, I’ll wish you a happy Sunday. There are places to go and people to see. If anyone needs me, I’m gone fishin’.

What Annoys Jeff this Week? (The Centennial Edition)

Posted on by

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the 100th installment of What Annoys Jeff this Week. With nearly two years of weekly annoyances under my belt, the only thing I can say from the writer’s perspective is that despite living in a universe that seems personally intent on agitating the shit out of me, I always look forward to Thursdays. They’re the day I get to compact many of the small issues into one great big ball of pissed off and launch it out into the world. It may not be classy, but it’s cathartic.

I thought about working up something special for this auspicious occasion, but decided quickly that the best tribute would be letting it out the same way I do every Thursday – a simple list and brief description of the week’s three most pressing annoyances.

1. Technology. Honestly, I don’t know who I would be if I weren’t wrapped in the warm electromagnetic cocoon of modern technology. That’s also the problem. In a week that’s been a near constant battle with my laptop, with my wireless router, and my internet provider just to stay connected, I wonder if perhaps I’ve put a bit too much reliance on the network. Yeah, that’s really not so much a question as a statement of fact. Still, I’m pretty sure what I’m really looking for is a system that works flawlessly all the time and not a way to disengage myself from it… because the only thing more annoying than having every bite of universal data at your fingertips is not having it when you want it. Stupid double edged sword.

2. Insurance. I got a notice this week that my prescription drug plan cost is going up about $40 a month. The cost of my general insurance plan is jumping this year too, but that’s not what annoys me, really. After all, the insurance premiums and out of pocket costs are basically just the price I pay to avoid being dead. As far as I’m concerned, not being dead is basically worth every penny I need to pay. Quite frankly, I don’t want healthcare in the country to be “average”. I want to nation’s best hospitals and corporations to dump money hand over fist into developing innovative treatments and medical equipment. Like it or not, 300+ million people can’t all get the best care on the planet, but over time the ideas they pioneer at the best hospitals can develop into common practice across the country. That’s good for everyone. Until then, if I want to drive myself eyeball deep into debt to get treatment at Hopkins, Sloan-Kettering, or the Mayo Clinic, that’s my decision because at least for now I’m the one paying the bill. When someone else foots the bill and tries to be all things to all people, we inevitably end up with a mediocre “standard level of service,” and I like being alive entirely too much to let any government entity of company decide what treatment checks off the box that says “good enough.”

3. Chicks. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but love for you ladies out there. You’re soft and curvy and smell nice. I love the way you walk and the way you talk… but after 35 years I still have no ability to understand the way you think. Although I am an accomplished man with many skills and talents, the ability to read minds is one that, thus far, I haven’t mastered. I’ll keep working on it, but in the meantime I’d consider it a personal favor if you could just go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind rather than letting me speculate wildly on my own. Trust me, left to my own devices my mind can conjure notions that are generously described as “bleak.” And that tends to be a situation other than good for everyone involved.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Semantics. Listening to the news over the last few days, I’ve been surprised (shocked and appalled), to hear the talking heads from the party of fiscal responsibility saying that even if the debt ceiling is not raised, the US Government won’t technically be in “default” as long as it continues to pay the interest and principle on the existing national debt. And while it’s true that in that sense, the government won’t default on its sovereign debt, it would absolutely default on a host of other payments – to include veteran’s benefits, Social Security, salaries, and contracts for goods and services. I’m the first to admit that words and their meaning are important, but to say that the government will not be in a state of de facto default if the debt ceiling is not raised is a little like making a differentiation between dying of dysentery and dying of the dehydration caused by having dysentery. Either way you shit yourself to death, the rest is just semantics.

2. Obamacare. I’ve never pretended to be a fan of this first step in the headlong rush towards nationalized healthcare. While having access to affordable medical care is definitely a good thing, I’ve always been of the opinion having the federal government step into the fray adds nothing more than unnecessary layers of bureaucracy between a person and their doctor. Despite the best efforts of the right wing nutjobs, we’ve got it now, so c’est la vie. What really annoys me more than having this program foisted on the taxpayer is the fact that they had three years to design a website and couldn’t manage to do that correctly. If I were launching the capstone initiative of my administration, you can be damned sure I’d make sure it worked properly before it saw the light of day. The fact that the average guy with a “Websites for Dummies” book, a DSL line, and rented space on a server can set up and host their own website and my kindly old Uncle Sam can’t does not fill me with an abundance of confidence when it comes to letting him help me make decisions about my health. I’m screwing that one up just fine on my own, thank you very much.

3. Sports talk. I don’t know quite how to phrase this other than being blunt. If you come at me talking about last night’s baseball game or this weekend’s football lineup, you’re going to be met with a blank stare and a fairly blunt, “I don’t follow sports.” Then I’m going to disengage from the conversation. I’ve tried being a good trooper and faking my way through these conversations, feigning an interest, but I think I’m over that now. If you want to have a conversation about technology, science, history, current events, or occasionally the foibles of pop culture icons, I’m your huckleberry. You want to talk batting average and passing yards, you’ll need to look elsewhere. In this one, small segment of life, I’m just tired of pretending to care which group of millionaires are better than which other group of millionaires.

September blahs…

Posted on by

It seems that late september back in ’07 was the tip of the iceberg in my ongoing mission of living a better life through the liberal use of the medical arts and sciences. Join me, won’t you, as memory lane leads everywhere from a Memphis emergency room with a presumed heart attack to a run down office in a rough part of town where they do drug screening for Uncle Sam. Maybe it isn’t the most exciting topic I’ve ever nailed to the door around here, but I think it’s pretty damned funny… especially in hindsight.

We’ll be making our way into October next week, so enjoy what’s left of September 2007 now. And don’t forget to comment if you’ve ever had a heart attack that turned out to be just a really bad case of gas. Happy Sunday!

That special time of year…

Posted on by

It’s the special time of year when the pollen count starts to reach into the stratosphere. I know this because for the last week my eyes have been itchy, I’ve been sneezing my damned fool head off, and the back of my throat has felt like I’ve been playing a game of swallow the razor blade. Between Claritin and ibuprofen, I’m holding it at bay, buy I really do wish it would be a regular case of sick so it could hit, be unpleasant for a few days, and then go the hell away until next time.

Like many of the bad things over the last half decade or so, I mostly blame Memphis. I didn’t have any allergies as an adult until I moved to the south and experienced spring with a new mix of flora and fauna. Apparently while my system learning how to deal with that, it was simultaneously forgetting how to handle the plants of my native land. On the bright side, by June I should be just fine. Super.

Mark that up as reason #6,273 why I never need to leave the Mid-Atlantic ever, ever again.

Sitting quietly…

Posted on by

Today I’m learning a hard lesson in sitting quietly. As good as you think I’d be at it, truth is I’m not good at it at all. In fact after about 12 hours of it, I’m pretty much at a loss for what else one can do when sitting around is pretty much the only thing to do. So far I read, wrote, read some more, did some editing, drank a pot of coffee, talked to the dogs, watched the Republican convention and hurricane coverage on television, yelled at the television, read through major newspaper websites from two continents, heated a bowl of soup, and the plopped back down in my chair so I could put my foot up. This is not the life of leisure I dreamed of.

I suppose the good news is that I didn’t break the damned ankle when it twisted. The bad news, according to the shopping center doctor I saw last night, is that I “sprained the hell out of it.” Im pretty sure that’s some kind of complicated medical term for this is going to hurt like a mother for the next couple of days. I like to think that it’ll be settled down enough tomorrow to do something more than sit here twiddling my thumbs, but if my last gimping trip to the kitchen for more water is any indication, I’m not overly optimistic. I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it, I guess. In the meantime, if anyone needs me, I’ll be sitting here quietly. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, there’s a good chance I’ll have beaten myself unconscious will my laptop just to have something different to do.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Parking Lot Etiquette. You might know that I’m a creature of habit. I’ve even parked in the same spot just about every word day for the last 14 months. Or I did until wild haired old biddy with a hooptie started parking in my spot. I like to think I’ve shown admirable self control in not dropping the truck into 4-lo and pushing her beat to hell Buick out of the way. And then I remember that normal people would probably just shrug it off and find a different spot instead of developing intricate plans to show up earlier each day until they discover when the biddy in question arrives so they can start showing up a few minutes ahead of her to get their coveted parking spot. Not that I would ever do that, of course.

2. Science. I’m not all that old and so far I can remember eggs being good, then bad, then good again, then bad again, then good, and currently they’re apparently “as bad as smoking.” Seriously, science, is this really something worth studying repeatedly and changing our collective minds about every couple of years? People have been eating eggs for pretty much as long as there have been people. As a species, we like eggs and we’re probably going to keep eating them indefinitely into the future… So instead of telling us how bad (or good) eggs are, how about getting busy doing something productive like developing a more effective drugs to counteract the effects of the eggs that we all know we’re going to eat regardless of how “bad” we know they are for us?

3. Things that are Self-Explanatory. The older I get, the more I realize that almost nothing is actually self-explanatory… especially concepts that are so easy a caged monkey can be taught how to do them with the right combination of banana slides and electroshock. I guess that’s not surprising, really. The older I get, the fewer expectations I tend to have about people and how they behave as a group. Still, if you’re well into advanced middle age and I need to write a memo explaining that you should always remember to answer the question someone asks you instead of giving them everything other than the answer, something has gone horrifically wrong with civilization as a whole and we are probably doomed.

And since the week can’t be completely full of annoyances, if you’re at all curious about what doesn’t annoy Jeff this week, that would be the fact that it’s a three day weekend. Those make me happy.