I got physical today
Many of you already know that I was diagnosed with diabetes back in January of 2011. I got the diagnosis, saw the doctor, got all the consultations I needed, and went on to live a healthier lifestyle.
No, I didn’t. I did for the first 4 months, after which I pretty much abandoned the entire process, and I’ve spent the year since then ignoring it completely.
I don’t know why I suddenly decided to stop ignoring it. Maybe it’s the history of cancer on my mother’s side of the family, which is where I think I got my diabetes as well. That and the fact that I’m not getting any younger, much as I would like. I’ve been waiting to start getting younger ever since I turned 30, and just between you and me, I’m starting to think it may not happen.
As I may or may not have written in the last entry (I don’t read them any more than you do) I’m now 45 years old, and it’s time I started taking care of myself, at least so I can see 46. To that end, I scheduled a full physical for this morning. I asked for the entire workup: a current A1C to test my blood-sugar levels, because I haven’t had one since April of 2011, and I’m supposed to get them every three months; a cholesterol check; blood pressure; a general looking over, and finally, my first prostate check.
You’ll be glad to know I don’t plan on going into detail about any of this. Suffice to say; except for being overweight, a diabetic, and a smoker, I basically have a clean bill of health. I got some new prescriptions to help me deal with the diabetes, and my frequent heartburn, and one other for my cholesterol. I also got a tetanus shot, and a pneumonia shot, both extremely necessary for diabetics. I’ve gone down 12 pounds so far since my last exam in January 0f 2011, and my blood-sugar level only went up .2 from a year ago April. So apparently, as little as I’ve been doing so far to control my diabetes, I haven’t done myself any harm. My blood pressure is within normal range, which was a surprise since mine has always been high. All in all, it appears that I’ve done okay so far; I just need to step it up and do a lot better.
Then came the moment I was dreading. The doctor asked if there was anything else I need to be checked. I stuttered and stammered my way nervously into asking if I should get my prostate checked.
He said no.
After my initial burst of relief at not having to go through the experience, the doctor explained to me that he doesn’t perform any examinations in that particular anatomical region, and in fact, more and more doctors these days are being advised from higher up not to do so any more. He explained that it’s a very invasive procedure (like that wasn’t obvious) and that it actually does more harm than good, so it’s being phased out of the medical community. He also explained that since next to nothing is being done to cure prostate cancer as of late, it was pointless to put anybody through the test, since there isn’t a lot to be done about it anyway, and how can a doctor convince a patient to have his prostate cancer treated when most people are too nervous to have the exam done in the first place?
I don’t know how much of that is true or not, but he’s fully qualified at what he does, and since he advised against the exam, I’m taking him at his word.
I’m in good health, some things notwithstanding, and now it’s time for me to get to work and get myself into even better health. The time is now.
Or maybe next week Thursday?
Nervous. Very nervous
The title of this blog, both here and at its former home on Blogger has always been “My Mid-Life Crisis.” I’ve used the title for six years as a bit of a joke. I always used to tell people, “Yeah, mine started when I was about 12 or so.” Well, now I’m 45, and I think it’s settling in for a while. In an earlier entry on this page, “Talk me down from the ledge, please,” I wrote about my fear of aging. This time it goes a little deeper than that.
I am getting older, there’s no denying that. The problem is that with aging, there come other problems. Back in January of 2011, I was diagnosed with diabetes. Not a harsh case of it, but diabetes nonetheless. I determined that since I had such a low case, I was going to do everything and anything I could to battle it; exercise, eat healthier, monitor my blood sugar regularly, take my prescribed meds, etc. I did all that, too.
For the first 4 months or so.
The first thing to go was the meds. They had a rather, uh, inconvenient side effect to which I simply could not build up any resistance whatsoever. To put it gently, I stopped taking the diabetes meds when I sat down at a certain point and realized that I had spent more on diarrhea meds than I had on the diabetes meds. I tried cutting down my dosage, to no avail. I eventually stopped taking the meds.
Actually, the healthier eating was probably the first to go. I don’t remember when it ended, but I’ve been eating the same crap I’ve always eaten all my life. I drink fully-sugar-loaded pop all the time, and I guess the only healthy thing I consume anymore is tons of water.
Aside from walking with Bella at the park or around the neighborhood on occasion, the exercise thing never did get off the ground. As a result, both Bella and I have put on weight over the past year. I think that’s what got me started back thinking about this; it’s not fair for her to become unhealthy just because I haven’t given a hoot about my own health.
I haven’t had a physical of any kind since 2003. I had one doctor’s appointment when I was first diagnosed with the diabetes, and I never followed up on it. I haven’t been checking my blood-sugar levels, and I haven’t been doing the blood workup procedure that I’m supposed to be doing since April of 2011. That’s supposed to be done every 3 months.
I resist going to doctors, because I’ve always felt that staying away from doctors keeps you healthy. Going to doctors enables them to find things that are wrong with you, and I’ve always felt that I was better off never knowing anything. After all, the last time I made a decision to look after my health was when I decided to take a diabetes prevention class, only to end up being diagnosed with it. That in itself backed up my theory, at least in my own mind.
I don’t need any of you to tell me that I’m only fooling myself. I know that very well, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it lately. As I stated in an earlier paragraph, I’m 45 now, and I’m not going to get any younger, ever. It’s time for me to pull my head out of my ass and start treating myself better, health-wise.
I’ve scheduled a physical for next Wednesday. I’m going to ask for the full workup. Blood work, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood-sugar monitoring, and (gulp) even the dreaded prostate check. I’ll tell you right now, I’m absolutely terrified. I already have diabetes; I’m scared of what else they might find. I hope they find nothing else except the obvious, that I’m overweight and need to quit smoking.
I’m in fairly good health, all things considered; I rarely if ever get sick and I haven’t yet developed any complications from the diabetes. The thing is, I need to take steps to make sure I stay in good health. I don’t want to eventually have to start giving myself shots of insulin. I don’t want to eventually get my toes, then my feet, and then my legs amputated. I want to keep all the parts I have, and keep them in working order for as long as I possibly can. With that in mind, much as I hate it, I simply have to start doing all these things.
Stay tuned.
Let’s do the time warp. Again??
Last night was a typical Tuesday night at work. Everything went smoothly. I finished everything up around 2200, and then headed for my weekly foray to Poncho & Lefty’s where I meet up with my friend Dave. For the uninitiated out there, Poncho & Lefty’s is a local Mexican restaurant and bar that we have frequented for a couple of decades now, ever since it was still under its former moniker of T.Juan’s. But, that’s not important right now.
I arrived to find Dave already set up at one end of the bar, and Nancy was doing her normal Tuesday night bartending gig, which is one of the reasons we do this weekly even on Tuesdays. Nancy set my usual Pepsi-Cola in front of me, I took my first sip, and began helping myself to the basket of chips and dish of salsa that were present when suddenly my phone rang.
That may not be an unusual occurrence for most of you out there, but it was for me. My phone NEVER rings, and certainly not when I’m out in public. I looked at it in confusion, and the caller-ID function alerted me to the fact that it was one of my coworkers, yet another unusual circumstance in an already bizarre event.
To make a long part of a longer story somewhat shorter, my coworker was having car trouble, and her husband was out of town; could I come and get her and give her a ride home? Sure, just give me a couple of minutes, and I’ll be on my way.
I took a couple of minutes to finish my Pepsi, and tell Dave and Nancy what was up; give them the 411, explain the sitch, tell ‘em wassup, however you care to phrase it, and I was off.
I found where my coworker was located at the time; we got her young son and his car seat sealed up in the back seat of Victor, and we were off. Off to Pequot Lakes.
It was a pleasant enough drive, except for the fact that I was driving a section of highway that I hadn’t driven at night since 2008. A vague, unsettling feeling washed over me as I drove. It wasn’t the possibility of hitting a deer, although that was very upfront in my mind. I kept a careful watch all over the road as we drove, and thankfully, no deer appeared on the journey up, or the journey back, so deer do not figure into this story.
Faithful readers of this blog at my former site, http://crisis-soundtrack.blogspot.com will undoubtedly remember 2008 as my own personal year of hell when I was driving a paper route in the middle of the night, six days a week, all over the very territory through which I traveled last night. All of my misadventures were well chronicled that year on a daily basis, and all can still be found at the above mentioned site in the archive sections for 2007 and 2008.
I got my coworker and her son home, and began the trip back down to Baxter, all the while scanning for deer and recognizing different roads that I was passing. There’s a road where I had to deliver to 17 houses, then I had to backtrack out of it, and go to that road over there and deliver another 30, and after that I went to that road. . .etc. I hated that paper route. I am not a person to use the word “hate” casually, because I feel that to use it for everything I dislike would take away its impact. So, I save the word “hate” for the few things in life that I truly despise, like the paper route. To be honest, there are so few things that I actually “hate,” I do believe that the paper route actually holds the Number One spot on the specific list.
I made it back down to Baxter with no deer encounters, and only a mild case of post-traumatic-paper-route stress. The entire incident took just a little over an hour, and then I was back at Poncho’s, relating bits of this tale to the still-present Dave and Nancy.
The pros of this tale far outweigh the cons. I got to help somebody out of a small jam, which can always make you feel good, and I got some gas for Victor out of it as an unexpected bonus. The only bad part was reliving the memories of the worst job I’ve ever had, and even that was minimal. Everybody in this tale made it home safe and sound, at least as I am aware of at the time of this writing.
Extra bonus: I got 791 words out of it.
Religiousity
I came to the realization this morning that I haven’t written anything for this page since February. What’s more, I realized that it’s been even longer since I’ve seriously pissed anybody off, so I decided to take care of both situations at the same time. This one could get a bit dicey, folks.
Let me preface this by informing all of you that I have nothing against faith, or spirituality, or anybody else’s right to worship a deity of their choice, or not worship, according to their own beliefs. This is an opinion piece, namely my personal opinion. That doesn’t necessarily make me right, and it doesn’t necessarily make me wrong. Everybody has every right to disagree with me on any part of this, but please consider that agreeing OR disagreeing with me doesn’t necessarily make you right or wrong, either. That said, let’s dive in.
I always try to avoid discussing two things with people: politics, and religion. In my experience, people who tend to discuss either on a regular basis tend to be completely insane about their choices in the matters. They are right; and anybody who disagrees with them is wrong. I have problems with this.
I have nothing against religion in general. I consider myself an agnostic, for probably several reasons, the least of which is that I simply don’t see a personal need to engage in the practice of worship. I don’t mind if other people choose to do so.
However, after giving the matter a bit of thought over the past few weeks, I’ve come to the realization that religion should really be a private matter. I don’t mean that it should be kept a secret, or hidden. By private, I mean a person’s religion should consist solely of what that individual chooses to believe. A large part of it does consist of that, but I think we should go a step further. Organized religions are my specific problem.
Organized religions, in my experience, tend to tell a person what he or she believes, and that person swallows it completely. Churches tell you “We believe this, and that, and anybody who doesn’t believe specifically as we do is wrong, and will be punished for it.” This isn’t right. A person shouldn’t be condemned just because their brand of faith is different from yours. I am amazed that so much of “organized” religion seems to be predicated in hypocrisy. “Jesus tells us to love the sinner and hate the sin; Jesus taught compassion and forgiveness. By the way, if you don’t follow His teachings, you are going straight to hell.” I can’t subscribe to this brand of idiocy, myself.
As I stated above, a person’s faith should be just that: what that person specifically believes, and nothing more. We don’t need a specific organization to define our beliefs for us, and I can’t understand why so many of us do anymore. This is the 21st century, and I think a lot of these concepts are outdated now. I’d love to see a time somewhere in the future where everybody can adapt to these principles, but if it does happen, I sincerely doubt that it’ll happen in my lifetime.
A certain class of music
I’ve had the old iPod on “Shuffle” for the past several nights here at work, and for whatever reason, it’s been concentrating heavily on songs from the 1980s, when I was in high school. One song in particular played tonight, and it made me remember an incident from senior year.
A typical tradition for a high school graduating class is to think of and vote for various items to represent your class in the yearbook. Class flowers, colors, mottos, and songs are the most often used. My class, the C-I Class of 1985, was no exception.
For the life of me, I have absolutely no recollection of how the specific nominations came about for our choices of flower, color, or motto. The main part of all this that sticks out in my head is the fact that our class ended up without a song to represent us.
I remember at our 20-year reunion held in 2005, and again at our 25-year reunion, held in 2010, that a few people here and there raised the question about these things. Nobody could seem to remember what our class song was. There is a specific reason for that.
Anybody who looks at our senior yearbook will notice that there is no class song listed. This probably leads to the confusion about “what is the song?’ But the simple fact of the matter is that there is no song listed because we don’t have one.
Class songs generally are chosen for themes of memories, reminiscing, and other similar things. An example would be a graduating class prior to ours who had chosen “The Best of Times” by Styx. See, it’s that kind of thing that usually gets considered when these things are voted upon.
Our class, at least a silent majority of us, could not seem to grasp this concept. And by “majority,” I simply mean the number of people who did the voting for one particular song.
Their choice? “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” by Twisted Sister.
Yeah.
I really do not think that this song was voted to be our class song out of any real sense of rebellion, or as a means of creating anarchy, or whatever. I’m pretty sure it was voted as our song simply because it was a popular song at the time, and people knew that it would help remind them of high school.
It just never got through to many people that it was an inappropriate song for such an occasion. We ended up voting a second time, and perhaps even a third, I’m not sure, but this song kept emerging as the winner. It was then decided between the class officers and the school administration that the matter would be dropped.
For that reason, the Crosby-Ironton Class of 1985 does not have a class song. I wonder if any of our class out there in the world secretly consider this to be our class song, albeit unofficially?
Work, work, and more work
I just realized that it’s been a while since I’ve done this. That just goes to show how exciting my life has been these past few weeks.
My employers at Essentia Health recently completed construction on the new clinic out in Baxter. It’s been open for two weeks now, and I still haven’t bothered going to see it or take a tour. For a while we’ve all been wondering about how our jobs were going to be affected by the new clinic, since several of our departments have moved out of here to take up permanent residence over there, leaving us with a bunch of unused hallways and examination rooms and all that. We’ve been a bit worried, thinking that once everything was caught up between the new clinics and new patterns became routine, that it might mean less work for us over here, leading to either decreased hours, or a possible layoff or two. Today we were informed that the opposite is actually true. They hired a new person to join us here, which gives hints that we’re going to be fairly busy here for a while. At least it seems that way. I can’t see them laying anybody off as long as they’re hiring new people.
I’ve just finished my week here at work, and now I’m sitting here in this nice quiet building all by myself except for whoever that guy is that comes in to clean the dialysis department.
Other than that, nothing is really going on in my life. I’m currently waiting on my tax refund to arrive so that I can get Internet set back up at home and not have to sit here at work pounding out these little messes o’ words after everybody else leaves. Y’know, I think that this is the third or fourth year in a row that I’ve been without internet at this time of year. Something always happens in either November or December that makes me lose it, and it’s always a few months into the new year before I get it back.
I think that’s about it for now. I’ve got a few things I plan to write about here, but those are for another time. Right now I need to get out of here, do some grocery shopping to get me through the weekend, and head home to Bella. Have a great weekend everybody.
2012 – Same stuff; different year
We’re now half a month into 2012, and it would seem that winter has finally decided to join us here in Minnesota. A bit of snowfall and cooler temps yesterday led way to warmer temps and melting snow today. Go figure.
It’s now been roughly 4 months since I abandoned the setup over at Blogger to move here to WordPress. I’ve collected all of my former blog onto my pc at home and put it in book form as a souvenir for myself, and I am now faced with a difficult decision.
I need to decide whether or not to delete it from the Internet and Blogger altogether.
I never visit the old site anymore, and I’m certain that nobody else does either, so there’s no real reason to leave it up anymore. On the other hand, preserving the pages there could give me some handy material to refer to when writing entries for this page. On another hand, I have all of its entries saved on my home pc so I can refer to them any time I want. So far that’s what? Three hands?
Blogger does give me a couple of options when it comes to deleting the old page. 1, I can restore it within 90 days of deletion if I change my mind. 2, I can download the entire thing, and quite possibly integrate all of its content into this page. This second option intrigues me. I am now torn between importing my old content here so I have one complete blog, or just saying screw it and deleting the Blogger page altogether. I do like the thought of having it all together here, but at the same time I don’t really see any advantage or point to doing it.
This is going to take some thought.
2011 – The year that’s about to was
‘Tis the wee early hours of the last day of the year. I’m listening to the Classic Rewind station on Sirius XM radio, Bella is sleeping on my lap, and I am still a bit too keyed up to sleep, so I decided to follow the example that I set on the old blog site and do a Year in Review entry.
Truth to tell, there’s not a heck of a lot to review. I’d have to say that the biggest news is the fact that I have been employed for a little over two years straight. The previous record is held by my former job at First Choice Food & Beverage Solutions, where I worked for 2 1/2 years. The all-time record is still my nine years at Target. I have a pretty good job now, and while it is not the most exciting job in the world, it keeps me out of trouble.
As you already know, I closed down my old blog at Blogger and started it over again here at WordPress. I like this new site a lot better.
The highlight of this past year fell on December 4th, when I went to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas concert for the first time since 2008. I did get to see them once in 2010, but that was in the spring, and a completely different show. The Christmas concert was and is a lot better.
My only real resolution for the new year is to give my house a very thorough top to bottom cleaning. I’ll let you know in which month I finally accomplish this. Any other resolutions are a bit more personal to me and I’m not going to list them here or in any other public forum.
That’s pretty much it for 2011. Hopefully, 2012 will give me more to write about. I hope that all of you have an incredible New Year and an awesome 2012.
Try to see my point
Anybody who knows me knows that I do not like politics. I don’t like discussing politics, I don’t like reading about politics, and I don’t like hearing most people’s political views. I’ve written about this a few other times on my previous blog. Ironically, those were the posts that got the least attention. That was always a surprise to me, considering how much other people love arguing politics.
Most of the people in my friends list on Facebook seem to be political experts, Republicans and Democrats alike. I have a question for those people. If you know so much about what needs to be done to run this country properly, why the hell don’t you run for office?
Next year, 2012, is a Presidential election year. I am not looking forward to it. I pay just enough attention to politics in the news to keep myself informed. The way things are going, I have a feeling that I may want to spend as little time as possible visiting my various social networking outlets. Either that, or I may find myself deleting a lot of people from my contact lists, or at the very least, unsubscribing to their comments for the year.
An example of this is something that happened yesterday on Facebook. One person in my contact list who happens to be a hard-core Democrat made a post about something with which I have always disagreed. I’m not going to get into what it was right now because that is not what I am here to discuss at this time. I replied to his post, and he basically missed the point of what I was saying, choosing instead to fixate on the small part of my comment with which he agreed. I have never seen this kind of behavior from a Democrat. In my personal experience, this type of douchenozzle behavior has usually been the sole province of Republicans, leading me to now believe that Democrats aren’t always as open-minded as they would have us think they are.
Don’t get me wrong. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I consider myself an Independent. I agree with either side on certain topics, and I also disagree with both sides on other topics. My point on this is that I can see all sides of the discussion. I may not agree with all sides, but I don’t automatically dismiss somebody else’s opinion just because I don’t happen to agree with it. That’s what the person on Facebook did yesterday. He made a grandiose political statement, and at the same time he completely disregarded any opposing views and declared that he would not tolerate any of those views.
To me, this kind of behavior is completely unacceptable, and it is almost exclusively found in political discussion, which is why I dislike politics so much. For several hours yesterday, I contemplated deleting this man from my list of Facebook contacts. As of this writing, I still have not completely made up my mind about it.
Something I’ve written in other blog posts about politics bears repetition here: People tend to misinterpret our right to freedom of speech. They think it applies only to them, and to those who agree with them. They also think that it requires people to listen to their point of view and accept it as gospel. I can’t stand this.
Everybody needs to understand that the right to freedom of speech also means that I not only have the right to speak my mind, but I also have the right to not have your opinions forced upon me, just as you have the right not to have my opinions forced upon you. People need to know when to shut the hell up once in a while. Freedom of speech does not mean that you are required to foist all your thoughts upon everybody else every time you open your mouth.
As I said, I have not yet decided whether or not to delete this person. As it stands, I am definitely going to unsubscribe to his posts for the time being so that they do not show up in my timeline and I won’t have to risk reading them. I’m kind of sorry to do this because I genuinely like the guy, but for the time being, it’s the best way for me to handle it.
In closing, let me state this: From now on, anybody who makes what I consider to be an exceptionally radical political statement, whether it be on Facebook or anywhere else, regardless of your political affiliation, you can expect me to unsubscribe to you, if not delete you altogether. Yes, you are entitled to voice your opinions. However, you do need to realize that I do not have to care about those opinions, any more than you need to care about mine. Whether you believe it or not, we all have the same rights in this regard. I am simply tired of the fascist manner in which people feel they need to express their political opinions, and I absolutely refuse to put up with it any longer. My silence does not give consent.
