The Ch-Word

I went in, convinced that I had diabetes.

My dad was diabetic: it was one of the few things that I knew about his health. In his final years, I learned that he had prostate cancer, but it was treatable.

But that's not what killed him.

He told my sisters and I that he had been hospitalized for some surgery on his heart. I've seen the scar down his chest. Apparently, he had a stint put in. It was his heart, in the end, that failed him, and he died at the age of 62.

I'll be that age in three years.

When I visited my doctor's office, in late June, I complained about a wound on the ball of my right foot that wasn't healing. A blister had broken through the tough flesh and made a berry-like growth underfoot. That growth was sensitive and was constantly bleeding.

I learned, through my physician, that coating the wound in antibiotic ointment and keeping it covered with a bandage was the worst thing for healing it. I was to give it air and keep it uncovered. And within a week, I saw a marked improvement.

To this day, I still have a scab and a callus-like buildup over the wound, but it's stopped bleeding and oozing.

I just have to be careful when I go kayaking.

At the end of the appointment, I was given orders for bloodwork. The doctor was concerned that the wound was taking so long to heal, despite my interference with the healing. She feared that I might be diabetic.

I went straight from the appointment to a nearby clinic, and within a half hour, I headed home, short a few vials of blood.

Last Friday, I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor. I was convinced that the news would be that I was diabetic. What would I do with this news? I mean, I felt fine.

Apart from my lungs, of course. They're still messed up.

While I waited in the examining room for the doctor to arrive, an assistant took my blood pressure. While the readings were normal, they were slightly elevated for me. I usually fall around 125 over 70.

The doctor started by saying that the news was "very bad." My heart sunk.

"Diabetes?" I asked.

She turned to the computer screen that showed my chart. "No, your blood-sugar levels are normal. But your cholesterol..."

I laughed. I literally laughed.

"What's so funny?" the doctor asked.

"When was the last time I had a blood test?"

She consulted my chart. "It's been more than five years."

"Exactly," I said. "I've been avoiding blood tests because I know my cholesterol is high. The last time I had blood work performed was when I had a different doctor."

When I first started going to this medical centre, I had a great doctor. She understood me. I don't make appointments unless I feel something is wrong with me, so when I went in to see her, she took my concerns seriously. When my left foot gave me problems, she investigated the possibilities and she even called me, on a Saturday afternoon, when she came up with what she thought was going on with my foot.

She was ultimately wrong in her diagnosis but she was oh, so close.

When she saw the results of my first bloodwork, she noticed that my cholesterol was high. My previous doctor, from another clinic, had prescribed me different sorts of statins to control the cholesterol. But I stopped taking the meds because

• the first drugs made my joints ache,
• the second set of meds made me feel run down, and
• the third prescription had me waking up every morning, feeling hung over and dehydrated.

I hated the side effects so I gave up taking meds, focused on my diet, and made sure I was getting enough exercise.

I told my new doctor this, and told her that I didn't want to take meds. She wasn't thrilled with this choice but she respected my decision.

When she moved to Toronto, I was heartbroken, but the medical centre quickly set me up with a new doctor. She's great too, but I didn't want to have the spiel about my bloodwork, so I always ignored the requisitions she wrote up for me.

I had gone many years without a blood test. My latest foot issue changed that. We were trying to rule out diabetes.

When I raised my concerns with my newest doctor, she still tried to convince me to go on meds. She said that the options for treating cholesterol have changed and there were drugs that had very few side effects. She put in an electronic prescription to my local pharmacy.

I haven't picked up the order and I don't really plan to. If the pharmacy calls, I'll tell them to cancel the order.

Granted, ever since my lungs have slowed me down, I haven't exercised as much as I used to. I've been on my bike only a few times. Also, because of the wound on my foot, I haven't gone for many walks and I've stopped marching in place while I'm on a video meeting for work.

I've gone kayaking almost every weekend, since late May, but that's not enough.

I've also indulged in snacks, though I gave up alcohol for the month of July.

Starting today, I'm going to get back into a healthier regime. I'm going to get back on my bike. Now that my foot is almost completely healed, I'm going to start walking again.

I'm going to work on my core, too.

DW has eliminated most snacks from the house, and I'll behave myself.

My goal, for decades, has been to live a healthier life than my dad lived. I'd like to surpass the age of 62.

Hell, I'm not planning to retire until I'm 63. I'd like to enjoy some time after then.

Eco-Friendly

Our family is moving to the next phase in doing our part to save the planet. Even if that means a little blood will be shed.

Six weeks ago, DW and I picked up our new hybrid automobile. While it's not a fully electric vehicle, it is much more fuel-efficient than any of our previous vehicles and can run about 800 kilometres or so on a single (45 L) tank of gas. And while we drove it a lot in the first week after picking it up (our CR-V was essentially left sitting in the driveway), we went more than four weeks between fillups on our second tank.

(Of course, being in self-isolation played a major role.)

After four weeks on a single tank: just under a quarter of a tank left and 121 km until empty.

When we initially ran the numbers, we'd calculated that we'll save at least $60 each month^* in fuel fillups.

Before we bought the car, we had begun reducing the amount of plastic that we've been bringing into the house. When we shop for ingredients at Bulk Barn, we bring our own plastic containers^*. At stores, we refused plastic bags. And for some products, we've stopped buying some things that come in plastic bottles. DW has bought bars of shampoo and conditioner, and we're finding that it takes so little to lather up. Instead of deodorants in plastic tubes, we have bars that seem to last longer. DW even bought glass bottles of powdered toothpaste.

Though I've always used bars of soap in the shower, DW recently gave up plastic bottles of body wash to do the same.

We used to use disposable razors, but recently both DW and I have made the shift to safety razors. This weekend, I even acquired a barber-grade brush and a tin of shaving cream. In the past, I would shave in the shower, using a bar of soap to lather my face and then using the disposable razors to remove stubble.

It's a new way to shave, for me. After my shower, I fill the sink with hot water and use my new equipment. The shave is slower-going but I get a much-closer shave. Maybe, too close: I haven't bled this much while shaving since before I had two moles removed from my face. (That's another story. Perhaps not.)

It's a small price to pay for reducing the amount of waste that plastic creates.

How about you? Have you moved away from plastic? Have you left your gas-guzzling vehicles behind? What steps have you taken to become more eco-friendly?


^*Pre-COVID living practices.

Throwback Thursday: Snorkeling in Thailand

When I pulled off my mask, I didn't expect anyone to scream out in horror.

"I'm not a monster... this is how I was born," I was tempted to say.

I felt the warm liquid running down my face, and I wiped it away, dismissively. It was only when DW pointed to the puddle of blood, on the deck of the boat, under me, that I paused. I had no idea how the mess got there.

"When you took your mask off," DW explained, "a fountain of blood shot out of your nose."

I had felt nothing.

We had been snorkeling off Krabi, near Chicken Island, named after the shape of the skyrocketing limestone, like a neck, and a bulb on top, like a head with a beak. At one point, I had been following a group of rainbow fish, my flippers propelling me lower, to maybe three or four metres, and I remember feeling my ears pop from the pressure, but it was no worse than what I've experienced high above the clouds, in an airplane.

The suction of my mask was strong, but to me, that was good. No seawater seeped inside, stinging my eyes. But when I pulled it off my face, the pressure was released and the blood shot out in one violent burst.

One tablespoon: maybe two.

Enough to make a stranger shriek.

This photo was from that day, after I washed away the blood, after we moved away from Chicken Island and on to where we pulled onto another island, for lunch.

No further blood was shed on that trip.