Tag Archives: Health

What Annoys Jeff This Week?

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Medical Experts. Watch the news long enough and you’re going to find out a few simple medical truths. Eggs are good for your or possibly bad for you. Coffee is good for your brain, but bad for your heart. Exercise keeps your cardiovascular system in tip top shape, but can damage your heart and skeletal system. Everything from radishes to ordinary tap water apparently causes cancer in mice. I think doctors are pretty good at the micro level of telling us what’s wrong with us individually, but I’m not sure they’ve got the sense God gave the common rooster when it comes to figuring anything out at the macro level. When it comes to what’s good or bad across an entire population, it doesn’t seem like they have a clue.

Jerry Sandusky. Hasn’t the news cycle moved far enough away from this that it’s not really a story anymore? Seriously, can’t a Kardashian get knocked up and spare us all from another three months of Jerry’s kid touching extravaganza?

Hopped-up Meth Heads Eating People. Zombie lore is clear on one point. The only immediately effective method of stopping a impending undead attack on your person is detaching the zombie’s head from its body. This is traditionally accomplished in one of two ways, using a shotgun or a two-handed long sword. In a pinch, a fire axe might also get the job done, but its sweet spot is much smaller than the other methods and is therefore not recommended except when other options are not available. As they did in the Wild West, the answer to the latest rash of face eating is clearly to deputize the citizenry, arm them with shotguns and long swords, and send them out to roam the streets to defend the living. At least this way, stories of the impending zombie apocalypse would reflect both sides of the ongoing battle between good and evil.

WaWa. Usually I can count on WaWa to sell me a pre-packaged salad, a bottle of water, and a bag of chips a couple of times a week. I’ve been in twice this week looking for lunch and both times their “salad chiller” was blowing hot air. Sure, lettuce and assorted other greens might stand up to that for a while, but diced ham and chicken will probably not respond quite as well. I watched a few people pick up a lukewarm salad and walk away happy enough with their decision, but there’s something about trusting glorified gas station attendants to know when a food item has gone off makes me more than a little nervous. I think I’m going to have to pass for a while. Keeping perishable items chilled doesn’t seem like it should be too much to ask.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the next installment of “From the Mailbag.”

Monday…

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It’s Monday. That means I should write something even if all I want to do is ignore this whole writing thing and vege out in front of the television. It occurs to me that writing is a lot like exercise that way. No matter how much you know you should do it, you head concocts all sorts of new and interesting reasons why you should really put it off until tomorrow. After all, tomorrow you’ll be sure to have plenty of motivation and time and energy to spare, right? You see that’s the catch. It’s always easy to start something, but seeing it through the nowhere land between the beginning and the end is something else entirely. Still, writing is way more interesting than peddling away on that damnable stationary bike I have sitting in the basement. It’s possible that I may have stumbled upon a way to keep myself motivated on these many nights I don’t feel like I can churn out another word. All I have to do is remember that my other option is spending quality time spinning my wheel and going nowhere. Maybe it’s not the most healthy kind of motivation, but on Monday night, I’ll take what I can get.

A little unwell…

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Some people go to work when their sick to prove some kind of warped sense of dedication to their employer. I’ve never really been one of those people. Hanging out the office, sneezing, wheezing, hacking, and generally spreading my ick all over the place never seemed like a particularly good idea to me. It almost feels downright irresponsible when you think about how many other people you could end up sharing your joy with in the course of a couple of hours. Under most normal circumstances I try not to be that guy, but it was unavoidable today. Even I feel a little guilty about pulling the sick leave card after being off for a week and a half. Since what I’ve got is probably not catching at this point, the better part of valor seemed to be in sucking it up and getting on with work.

My coworkers, however, were not particularly charmed by my nose-blowing, loogie hocking, and insipid mouth breathing. “Ummm… Do you think you should be here?” was more or less the question of the day. I’m pretty sure that translates into “get the hell outta here before you contaminate the whole place.” I appreciate their concern. Really. Believe me when I say if I weren’t just coming off a week’s vacation and my doctor weren’t closer to the office than to the house, I wouldn’t be here at all today. Those two factors conspire to make it worthwhile being miserable here at work for a few hours on the off chance that I can get in and see someone for some meds that might make some of this congestion go away.

As it turns out, ironically, my doctor was home sick today (like I should have been) and I got the pleasure of seeing his temporary replacement… Who appeared to be a high school sophomore wearing his father’s lab coat. Junior had a particularly difficult time understanding that the usual over the counter decongestants aren’t really putting a dent into whatever surly cold bug has taken up residence in my head. I really wasn’t asking for a cure for the common cold, just something to dry things up a bit. Apparently no such thing exists… Which means I’m left to my own devices in combining different colors until I strike on something that does the trick.

Relief…

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When someone is sick, most people feel some kind of empathy. That’s the human response. The slightly more jaded response, though, is giving a brief moment of thanks to God that the person in question is not going to be in the office today. As badly as I feel about someone being ill or suffering, that’s nothing compared to the overwhelming relief I feel at not having to deal with them for two days in a row. That’s probably more than a little wrong. It’s possibly evil. It does, however, have the virtue of being exactly how I feel about the issue. I may be a lot of things, but dishonest isn’t one of them.

Sure, if it were something life threatening I’d probably feel bad about the situation, but if someone having a head cold can give me a few moments of peace, there’s no harm in being happy about that, right?

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

No man’s land…

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I’ve spent the last week feeling somewhere between sick and well. It’s not that I really feel bad in any way I can put my finger on, but then again it’s not that I’m feeling bad enough to want to stay on the couch all day trying to recover. It’s a madding no man’s land between the two. If there’s some fall crud lurking around, I wish it would just smack me around and be done with it. As it is, mustering the enthusiasm to do much of anything is getting to be a bit of a chore. Until I figure out what it is I’ve got and convinced it with high doses of chemicals that it needs to go away, I’ll keep treating the symptoms with ridiculous amounts of caffeine administered regularly throughout the day. That course of treatment might leave some people awake half the night, but the one perk of whatever it is picking at my system is I’m practically sound asleep before my head hits the pillow. Now if I would just start waking up rested, we might just be in business.

Apparently they’re everywhere…

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Do you ever wonder if people really spend any time thinking about what they say before words come tumbling out of their mouths? I’ve known the woman sitting next to me for a grand total of 20-odd days and have already been treated to the complete and unabridged version of her medical history… and her father’s… and her mother’s… and at least one sister. Not only do I not want to hear about your colonoscopy, or your sister’s varicose veins, or your father’s chronic halitosis, but I want you to not want to tell me those things. As much as I appreciate you wanting me to feel like part of the group, there’s a level of sharing with coworkers that I’m just not going to go beyond – and you shouldn’t either. Being realistic, you’ve told me details about your family that I wouldn’t be comfortable telling people I’ve known for 20 years, let alone 20 days.

If someone could stop by and install a cone of silence on my cubicle, that would be perfect. I think it would save us all from a lot of trouble in the long run, because all that’s really going to happen is you’re going to keep telling me things that I don’t want to hear and then I’m going to be forced to post those things on the internet. And that doesn’t seem fair to either of us, really.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Anatomy of a day off…

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Anatomy of a day off…

I took the day off yesterday. Not so much because I really needed to, but a three day weekend now andthen is much appreciated. I realized that my days off aren’t exactly what most people would think of as relaxing. I was up at 5:30, which I suppose is technically sleeping in. Dropped the truck at the Toyota dealer at 7:00 for an oil change and an hour of shooting the shit with the service manager. Then it was grocery shopping and driving halfway across the county to pick up meds for the dogs. After that, it was off to my own doctor for what has become a never ending routine of follow up inspections and random pokings and proddings. An hour of that and a clean bill of health, or as clean a bill of health as I’m ever likely to get, it was back to a house in serious need of cleaning and dinner that apparently didn’t magically make itself in my absence. Follow that up with a bowl of orange sugar free jello and periodic napping and you’ve got the anatomy of pretty much any weekday when I’m not at work. I’d tell you what one of those days looks like, but that would be too depressing to contemplate on a Saturday afternoon.

As it is now, the hiring freeze is still on and I’m no closer to hitting eject on this place than I was eight months ago… But I’m still swinging for the fences. The house is a little cleaner than I was yesterday. And today’s dinner, I’m assuming, isn’t any closer to magically making itself while I’m out. The beer’s cold, the scenery is excellent, and there’s still another day between me and Monday. All things considered, I’d say I’m still doing better than average.

Losing…

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If there’s a silver lining to spending a big part of the day with a debilitating stomach ache, it’s that it has made a heroic contribution to my ongoing weight loss campaign and put me over the 50 lbs lost mark. I still can’t say that I feel any different or have magically found more energy, but really I suppose all that is secondary to the whole not dropping dead thing.

I’ve also found that I’ve reached the point in this experience where some new clothes are going to be necessary… and my viceral dislike of shopping in almost any form has me thinking that maybe adding a few pounds back may not be so bad after all. Certainly better than a forced march through the mall. There’s a fair chance that this weekend I’ll just go to go to Home Depot and buy a leather punch to keep adjusting my belt than I am to go to Macy’s for new pants. I’m considering it pain avoidance behavior.

Checked over…

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The sawbones seems to be pleased with my continued lack of being deceased. I’m a fan as well, of course. My BP is in striking distance of normal, blood glucose levels are ranging well into normal territory, and I’ve dropped somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 pounds since October. The meds probably have more to do with those first two things than I do, but I’m taking credit for the weight loss. Me and that cursed exercise bike.

Next scheduled follow-up is in April. I’m glad to dispense with our monthly meetings, though I’ll miss the excuse for taking an extra Friday off every month. Maybe by April, I’ll be looking for a doctor somewhere a little closer to the Mason-Dixon Line. That would do wonders for my health and wellbeing. A boy can dream, right?

Chow…

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Sugar free Jello is food, I suppose, if you use the broadest possible definition. Having no actual nutritional value and minimal taste, it ranks somewhere between cardboard and unflavored rice cakes on the list of things I want to eat. But there it is in the fridge. A new week, a new flavor. This week is orange. Last week was cherry. It takes most of the edge off of a nagging sweet tooth, but that’s about the only positive thing I’ll say about it.

I miss food that’s filling. I miss pasta and rice. I miss potato-based products. And lord almighty, I miss Wonder bread. Baby carrots and house salads the size of your head just don’t pack the same satisfaction of a plate of spaghetti or giant sandwich. Everything I’ve read says “there’s no reason to feel deprived” on a low carb diet… But pretty much all I’m feeling is deprived.

Meh. I’m going to bed to dream about penne and garlic bread.