Bam! (Or, Turning 50... So Far)

I actually don't care much about birthdays, at least not my own.  I mean, it's not like you turn a certain age and BAM! your life changes.  Well, ok that might be true for certain ages (16, 18, 21 immediately come to mind) but I'm long past those.  I do like celebrating birthdays though, mainly for the excuse to get together with my friends and family.

This year I turned the big 5-0.  It was so big, there were parties and other events on 2 consecutive weekends.  I really have to pat myself on the back: I could not have chosen a better family or set of friends.  I was pleasantly surprised when my family decided to come up from San Diego, especially because of my dad.  He got rid of the travelling bug long ago after 20 years in the Navy, and since he's getting up there he doesn't get around very well on his own.

(a little reminder to myself: write more about the circumstances surrounding all the parties, and more about the parents...)

Not long after turning 50, I woke up one day with what felt like a sprained ankle.  I just thought that maybe I slept in a funny position and cut off the circulation.  But it got worse and worse over the next few days, and strangely had moved from the ankle down to the heel.  I even worked the next week from home just to stay off of it.  Finally, I went to go see a doctor.  (If you know me, you'd know that's a big deal.)  The diagnosis was tendonitis of the achilles.  (It turns out that the treatment I had been giving for what I thought was a sprain, soaking my feet in hot water to increase the circulation, was exactly wrong for treating tendonitis, which needed to be iced.)  The next week, after the ice, my foot felt great.  Then the week following, I woke up one day and it was bad, so bad that I couldn't put any weight on it.  That followup doctor visit became more extensive-- walk around on crutches, get my blood/urine/stool analyzed.  (Blood tests have always been a bit traumatic for me, but it actually wasn't so bad this time.  Urine test, no big deal: just piss in a cup.  Stool test is kinda weird-- you float a piece of paper in the bowl, dump on that, "swab" the feces.  Just thought you'd like to know, in case you ever wondered.)

Within a few days, the test results were in, and in This Modern Age, were available online.  Most of the numbers looked ok to me, but what do I know.  In the next doctor visit, she did the interpretation.  The ankle issue is likely gout.  (Gout?  Didn't they eradicate that in the era of sulfa drugs?)  So here's the BAM! part:

• cholesterol's too high
• blood pressure's too high
• BMI is in the "morbidly obese" category
• borderline diabetic
• pre-osteoporosis
  

Yeesh.  It all comes down to this: adjust the diet, get more exercise, and lose weight.  It's not like I didn't see it coming.  And it's not like my good friends and family hadn't mentioned it.  I'd always used a combination of denial ("I don't want to see a doctor because I don't want to hear what he's going to tell me") and a lot of faith in my body's ability to deal with the crud I was feeding it.  Despite not being a trained medical professional, I've always been able to figure out on my own what my body needed, and how to get well when I got sick.  I'd always thought, I know I'm going to have to eat more sensibly at some point, but until then I'm going to eat what I want and enjoy it with no guilt.  (I'm generally a guilt-free person, which probably makes me a not-very-good Catholic...)

The doctor has scared me to life (which isn't to be confused with being scarred for life).

• reduce portions
  
• cut down on sweets
• cut down on salt intake
• cut down on red meat (this is the tough one for me)
• brown rice instead of white rice
• whole wheat bread instead of white bread
• eat more fruits and vegetables
• reduce milk from 2% down to 0% (this one's going to be tough, too)
• avoid fried and otherwise processed foods
  
• aerobic exercise 3-4 times a week, 30 minutes of elevated heartrate
  

I'm working on it, making small strides.  Fortunately, I'm not so far gone that I need to do anything particularly drastic.  I've been prescribed hypertension medicine, and am taking Vitamin D supplements, which hopefully are temporary until I get the weight down-- the weight is the key to everything.  It is obviously directly related to the cholesterol and the BMI, but it's also affecting the my body's ability to break down the uric acid (gout) and metabolize the Vitamin D in the milk (osteoporosis).

The journey begins.