Bad news, part two

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It’s hard, having to tell the same story over and over again. I knew at the outset, when I was diagnosed with cancer (a whole entire week ago!), that I didn’t want to keep it a secret. People (especially people you know and care about) need to know when you’re sick, and they also need to know that cancer isn’t necessarily always a death sentence. (Also, I knew people would gossip, and, since I’m gay, I assumed they’d assume this had something to do with AIDS, and I wanted to give them the correct information, just in case.)

I understand a little better now, however, why some people keep this kind of information a secret.

It’s very tiring to tell people every day how you’re doing. It’s also very time-consuming. I appreciate the consideration, but – my goodness! One day is much like the day after. If I was okay yesterday, probably I’m still relatively okay today. If I was miserable yesterday, well, probably you’d be doing yourself a favor not to ask me how I’m doing today.

And we’ve barely begun this process yet!

My friend Cathleen suggested a code system: putting up something on my office door that would tell people how I’m feeling. This made me think of these faces:

I may resort to something like this in a month or two, when I’m in treatment and am feeling tired and hopeless.

But for now I can tell you with my own words how I feel.

I feel okay. I have a little pain in my throat – nothing more than a mild soreness – where the tumor is located. I’m depressed, of course, and I’m trying very hard not to project too far ahead.

I’ve decided that every day without serious discomfort is a good day.

So today is a good day.

Thank Buddha / Allah / Jehovah / whomever you prefer.

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Bad news

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I wrote a while ago about the lump in my throat.

Well, guess what? It turned out to be serious after all.

I will be starting various kinds of treatment soon: radiation almost certainly, and probably also chemotherapy.

It’s only been a few days, and already Partner and I have been through a whirlwind of emotions. You probably know Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages? We’ve done them all three times over, in two days: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

I hate this, kids.

I have an indicator on the wall of my office that indicates I’ll be retiring in the year 2040, and I point it out to new employees, just to show them that I’m not going anywhere.

I hope that I’m telling them the truth.

I am going to try very hard to beat this, kids. I already have four doctors – a GP, an ENT, an oncologist, and a hematologist. And heaven knows what I’ll go through, between radiation and chemotherapy and the illness itself.

Heaven only knows.

I know only a few of you personally, but (just so you know): I love you all very much.

(I’m trying to be pragmatic.)

Let’s get on with this silly treatment stuff (over the next six months or so), and then let’s get on with normal life again.

For my sake, and for Partner’s sake, most of all.

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Scaling back

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I joined the local health club in 2008, when it first opened. I had never belonged to a health club before. I discovered quickly that I enjoyed it; I liked the feeling of trying to be healthy, and I liked watching cute guys work out in front of the big mirror on the fitness floor.

 

 

Now, almost four years later, at $55/month, I’m still there.

 

 

I know that’s expensive. But it keeps me anchored there: if I were paying less (WorkOut World charges $10/month!), I wouldn’t go very often, and wouldn’t be very motivated. At a much higher price, I am only too anxious to make good use of my purchase.

 

 

I experimented with everything in the place, at first. I tried the circuit machines, but they were too heavy for me (even at very light poundages), and I felt like a wimp. I tried freeweights: same thing. I took some sessions with a trainer, but he was silly and vain and spent most of our time together talking about how wonderful he was.

 

 

After a year or so, after much experimentation, I started doing just the treadmill: half an hour, at 4.7 miles per hour, at a 15% elevation. If I set the treadmill for my weight (around 160 pounds) and age (around 55 years old), it comes out to around 500 calories, which is perfect for me.

 

 

For three years I’ve kept this up. For the past year or two, I’ve done it maybe five or six times a week.

 

 

But lately – with the kidney stones, and my advancing age – I found it a little laborious.

 

 

So, a few weeks ago, I experimented with the settings. I find that I can still burn 500 calories at 4.0 miles per hour, at an elevation of 15%, in approximately 32.5 minutes.

 

 

I don’t sweat as much. My heart rate, which used to go up to 140 or 150, now stays at a more age-appropriate 130. I’m only slightly more bored, because I’m on the machine slightly longer. (I’m usually there in the evening, during “Jeopardy!” / “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” so I manage to keep myself amused.)

 

 

But I am slowing down. Noticeably.

 

 

Back when I started in 2008/9, I was proud of the fact that I could get my heart rate up to a dangerous 155/minute.

 

 

I am not so much proud of this anymore. I think getting my heart rate up to 130 or so is quite sufficient.

 

 

(Oh I am getting old.)

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My ophthalmologist is a jerk

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My eyesight turned bad when I was about nine years old. I’ve worn glasses ever since, and go for regular checkups.

 

 

Luckily, the Rhode Island Eye Institute is a block and a half away from our apartment.  The day before my last appointment, I received a telephone reminder from a robotic assistant, who told me blurrily that I had an appointment on Wednesday with a Doctor – Newberg? Newsome? Nugent?

 

 

I couldn’t remember.  I’ve had at least three different doctors since going there; the first one retired, the second one moved away.  When I checked in, I tried “Nugent,” as that seemed the trendiest, what with Ted Nugent in the news and all.  The receptionist looked up at me wearily.  “Newman?” she said.

 

 

“Sure,” I said.  “Why not?”

 

 

First came the assistant.  Eye drops.  “Is this better – or this?  Number one – or number two?”  I’ve been doing this since I was nine years old.  I know the drill.  I hate the drops, but I can deal with the glaucoma test and the blazing lights they shine into my eyeballs.  I’m tougher than I look.

 

 

Then, after an interminable wait (to allow the drops to take effect), in walks Doctor Newton: younger than me, blondish, goofy-looking, very sure of himself.  He looks into my eyeballs.  Optic nerve blah blah blah. Cornea blah blah blah. There’s some pitting of the retina that might (if I live long enough) be serious, but not to worry: surgery can fix it. 

 

 

Lovely.

 

 

I decide to ask a question.  “I’ve been wearing bifocals for a while,” I said.  “Do I really need them?”

 

 

He starts to giggle. “You probably don’t realize that you’re using both lenses,” he said.  “That’s a good thing.”

 

 

At first I’m relieved.  Then I notice that he’s still laughing at my silly question, and glancing back at his assistant to make sure she notices what a silly thing I’ve said.

 

 

And I suddenly realize that my ophthalmologist is a jerk. 

 

 

I have pretty much decided I will never visit Doctor Nerdburger again.  There are lots of ophthalmologists in the world.

 

 

I wonder if Ted Nugent is available?

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Contagion: the reality show

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Partner and I go to the movies a lot. We see most of the blockbusters, as we both like bright objects and fast cars and big cute action heroes. 

 

 

We did not, however, see “Contagion.”

 

 

Normally I love an end-of-the-world movie.  In this case, however, with the gasping and the groaning and the blood gushing out of people’s eyeballs, I gave it a pass.  I have just become too delicate for that kind of thing.

 

 

The gimmick of the movie, apparently, is that the deadly disease is spread from person to person, often while travelling.  Just a casual touch or cough or sneeze is enough to give you the Creeping Death.

 

 

I don’t need to see that.

 

 

I already saw it on the flights Partner and I took to Orlando and back.

 

 

What can I tell you?  It is like being trapped on Level Five of the Center for Disease Control.  There was a woman sitting in front of us who, from the sound of it, was coughing up chunks of lung.  There was a plump young woman from Maine with a desperate fear of flying sitting right next to me, heaving and sobbing and generally throwing fluids in all directions.  There was a little girl who, I swear, kept wiping her nose on my sleeve when I wasn’t looking.

 

 

Partner came down with a head cold while we were in Orlando, but he thinks he got it from a co-worker before the trip.  So far I’m okay (apart from the occasional heart attack, naturally), but who knows what I might come down with, after all that exposure?

 

 

My eyeballs could start gushing blood at any moment.

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American fatness

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There are lots of foreign tourists in Disney World and at Universal – an amazing number, actually.  I noticed this trip that they’re starting to put both Spanish and Portuguese on the signs; I assume this is for Brazilian tourists.   There are Brits and Dutch everywhere, and Chinese and Japanese and Koreans.  (There was a Dutch group at our hotel, and I know it’s horrible and bigoted of me, but when I see a skinny Dutchman light a cigarette and hold it between two fingers while surveying the room, I can only think of every villain in every World War II movie I’ve ever seen.) 

 

 

But here’s the thing: most of the foreign tourists are not overweight.  Some of the Brits and Brazilians are rugby-player stocky, but they are almost never fat.

 

 

For real honest-to-God fat, you really need to go American.

 

 

My dear lord!  When you’re walking in a group of Americans, it’s like a herd of mastodons.  The bellies!  The butts!  What do they eat?  How much do they eat?  Are they aware that they look like circus freaks?

 

 

Then you notice the people on scooters.  For grandmas and grandpas, and for the handicapped, scooters are great.  But then you see these mammoth sacks of flesh driving their little scooters down the main drag, presumably just because walking is just such a hassle, and you want to knock them over.

 

 

Naturally there are a lot of Southern tourists in Florida.  A lot of the men look like football coaches or ex-players: you know, tall, sunglasses, sort of brawny.  But there always seems to be that gigantic belly in front, which sort of ruins the jock image.

 

 

And then there are the wives. 

 

 

Also (and most sadly of all) there are the children.  There was a Minnesota family near us at the airport gate in Orlando, with two small very active boys.  And both of them had adorable little pot-bellies sticking out in front.  And, judging from the looks of Grandpa and Dad sitting nearby, those adorable little pot-bellies aren’t going away any time soon.

 

 

Honestly, folks: why are we doing this?  I tell you that this is not normal.  We need to reassess our national diet and our national approach toward nutrition, but immediately.

 

 

And, while you're reassessing, pass me them there Cheez Doodles.

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Mindfulness of cancer

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I recently saw this on Facebook:

 

 

“Okay ladies, it's that time of year again, it's breast cancer awareness month. So we all remember last years game of writing your bra color as your status? Well this year it's slightly different. You need to write your shoe size (just the number) followed by the word 'inches' and then sad face. Remember last year so many people took part it made national news and, the constant updating of status reminded everyone why we're doing this and helped raise awareness. Do NOT tell any males what the status's mean, keep them guessing And please copy and paste (in a message ) this to all your female friends to see if we can make a bigger fuss this year than last year................... “

 

 

 

My family has cancer on both sides. Dad's family was mostly lung cancer – just the smokers, but still, it hit Dad and my uncles in their 50s and 60s, and it was very nasty, and it killed them. Mom's family contributed a horribly twisted gene that manifests in aggressive ovarian cancer: my sister Susan died of it in 1995, Mom in 1999, my sister Darlene in 2005, and (youngest of all) my niece Kimberly in 2009, at the age of 40. Kim knew she carried the bad gene and had her ovaries removed as a preventive measure, but somehow the cancer grew anyway. She left two daughters, both of whom are at risk.

 

 

I need no reminding about cancer.

 

 

Awareness programs like the above are worthwhile if they get even a little good work done, and I don't doubt the seriousness and sincerity of the people who participate.  But sometimes the nature of the programs has little to do with the nature of the problem itself, or the search for a solution. (I'm thinking of things like wearing pins and red bows for cancer and AIDS, or changing your Facebook photo to a cartoon character to show your opposition to child abuse. Do you need to show your opposition to these things? Are you afraid that someone might think you're pro-AIDS or pro-breast cancer?  And, yes, I'm a lemming, I wear them too.)

 

 

Here are some excellent things to do and places to visit:

 

 

The Gilda Radner Foundation, which began fighting ovarian cancer, and has branched out wonderfully.

 

 

For those of you in Rhode Island: The Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Foundation.

 

 

Hospice, for those who need it. (Mom and Susan both used Hospice, and it is amazing how much they helped.)

 

 

Here's hoping for a cure.

 

 

Or a whole passel of cures.

 

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Unmentionables

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At a certain age we lose our self-consciousness about our bodies.  Just yesterday I was having a quiet conversation with the driver of our campus shuttle-bus as we were trundling between campus locations; I don't know how we got on the subject, but for some reason he mentioned that he has a colonoscopy scheduled for next week.  "I think I'm gonna cancel it," he said.  "Who cares?  I'm seventy-three. What's the worst that could happen?"

I tsked.  "You never know what's in there."

He shrugged.  "Who cares what's in there?"

All at once I realized that the girl sitting across the aisle from me - probably a medical student - was staring at both of us with complete incredulity.  

Just because two old men were having a casual conversation about having themselves probed!

I have had for the past few months a stubborn little inflamed patch on one of my fingernails. The doctor confirmed that it was - ew - fungus. “It usually goes away by itself,” he said. “And the medications don't work all that well. And it doesn't usually spread from finger to finger, so I wouldn't worry about it.”

But it's not terribly attractive.

I'd seen a number of ads on TV for various products, and thought I'd try one, so I went trooping off to CVS.

While there, I realized that lately I've been having, um, tummy trouble. The tummy-trouble aisle is quite extensive, and has just about everything you can think of: pills, gadgets, drops – um – other things . . .

I made my selections and took them up to the cheerful smiling girl at the cash register, who knows me by sight because I go there frequently.

And she looked down at my fungus medication, and my tummy-trouble apparatus, and -

I give her credit for professionalism: not once did she flinch. She bagged my items very quickly, however, as if she wanted them out of her sight, and me too.

But her smile never wavered.

She is a tough little cookie.

Thank goodness she didn't have to call for a price check on anything,

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Dancing Elliptical Man

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The other evening, Partner and I were at the health club in early afternoon.  The place was pretty much deserted.

 

 

Except for one particular man on the elliptical machine.

 

 

I'd never seen him before. He was short and stocky – not fat, exactly – but certainly he had a few extra ounces around his middle.

 

 

But, oh my darlings, he was dancing.

 

 

You know how the elliptical machine has those stupid ski-pole things you're supposed to hang onto? He was ignoring them entirely. He was waving his arms in the air like he just didn't care. I caught a little bit of twist, and maybe some mambo, and some strange arms-over-the head thing that I think Barbara Eden used to do on “I Dream of Jeannie.”

 

 

You couldn't help but stare. I couldn't help but stare. He caught my eye very briefly, and grinned to himself, and just kept doing it.

 

 

Everyone else in the place was reacting to it too; the old guy on the next treadmill looked at me with comic consternation, and I saw a guy on a stationary bike shaking his head and doing a snarky macho chuckle.

 

 

But you know what? After a few minutes, I came to admire Dancing Elliptical Man.

 

 

Part of the problem with hard-to-do things is that they're embarrassing. You have to defeat your embarrassment and just go for it. As Maude says in “Harold and Maude”: “You can't let the world judge you too much.” It's certainly a factor in learning a language; I knew a Iowan couple in Morocco who had a terrible time learning French and Arabic because (they admitted to me) they both felt stupid making those strange noises!

 

 

Dancing Elliptical Man had found his inner Paula Abdul. It was actually fun to watch him; he really seemed to be enjoying himself. He was channeling his inner jazzercize, and it was inspiring.

 

 

Well, but:

 

 

I mentioned this to Noah, my student assistant, a varsity football player who is approximately the size of a Cadillac Escalade. Noah looked grim. “He was just showing off,” he said. “He wanted you to look at him. He gets a thrill out of it.”

 

 

Aha.

 

 

Noah spends maybe eighteen hours a day working out, so he has seen a lot more of this kind of thing than I have.  He is also very smart.  So: I trust his judgment on these gymnasium issues.

 

 

So maybe now I am not so impressed with Dancing Elliptical Man.

 

 

But I enjoyed the show.

 

 

And isn't that what going to the health club is all about?

 

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Stop eating so much sugar and fat!

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We crave fat. When we eat it, our bodies produce something called endocannabinoids, which resemble the active ingredient in marijuana. And that makes you want to eat more fat.

 

 

We were born to be hunter-gatherers, as my student/assistant Noah reminded me the other day. (He's taking pre-med classes, and is also a varsity football player, so he knows his stuff.) The closer we keep to the Original Human Diet – complex carbohydrates, proteins – the more naturally our body responds to them.  (Noah claims he eats nothing but oatmeal and brown rice and chicken.  I have seen him eat chocolate, however.  Hmm.)  With unlimited access to fat and sugar . . . well, unpleasant things happen, like obesity, and diabetes, and fatty liver. We were not intended to have quite this much sucrose in a given day. As for fat – well, it was pretty scarce back on the savanna when our ancestors were chasing gazelles. Grandma and Grandpa Australopithecus gobbled it all up as soon as they found it, and their bodies taught them to crave more.

 

 

And we, their descendents, still crave it.

 

 

My Polish grandmother used to eat lard on bread. “Lard is rich people's food,” my mother said.

 

 

Yikes.

 

 

I've never gone quite that far, but I recall buying a dozen Dunkin' Donuts in one of those big pink-and-orange boxes, and eating all twelve while on the phone. (This was back in my plump-and-pleasant days, naturally.)

 

 

Nowadays I'm skinny and agile, and if any gazelles come past, I will lope after them and run them down.

 

 

Anyway: eat less fat. And sugar. They'll kill you.

 

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North African food

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When I first arrived in Morocco in 1984, the Peace Corps nurse spoke to us about health issues. “You won't need to worry about the food,” she said. “Believe me. You will eat well.”

 

 

She wasn't kidding. In Morocco and Tunisia, we ate spectacularly. Bread and cheese and fish from the corner store were always fresh and delicious. Fruit and vegetables were always local and beautiful. Local places always had roasted kebabs and fresh bread. Tajine, and couscous, and salade mechouia, and brik, and chakchouka. Harira, the magnificently thick aromatic soup with which one breaks one's Ramadan fast.

 

 

There was also the wacky stuff. I have written elsewhere of my adventures with kamounia, a dish which can be made with just about any organ meat (usually liver or kidneys, but which, one memorable day, came with a sheep testicle riding on top). Ojja, the delicious Tunisian dish with tomatoes and hot peppers and eggs and sheep's brains. Osbene, the North African version of haggis: guts and vegetables, stuffed into guts, then baked.

 

 

(There are gray areas, of course. There is a Tunisian dish called meloukhia, prepared with meat and olive oil and dried powdered jute leaves. It ends up looking like chunks of sponge rubber marinated in motor oil. It smells like death. And some people love it.)

 

 

One day in 1986, a friend with US Embassy commissary privileges bought us a whole bunch of food – American food! packaged and boxed and canned! - and we had a feast.

 

 

And we were all sick for three days. Utterly miserable.

 

 

After several years of pure food, we'd eaten (in a single meal) huge doses of preservatives, and additives, and pesticides, and hormones, and chemicals.

 

 

Kids: you think foreigners eat strange things? Read the side of your Cap'n Crunch box sometime. The entire periodic table is in there.

 

 

And now I've gone and made myself hungry for guts and brains.

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P90X

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As you know by now, when I go to the health club, I rely on the local beefy boys for inspiration. Nothing gets my motor racing like the big boys in the fitness pit, huffin' and pressin' and curlin' and sweatin' and generally trying to outmuscle one another. It is sheer joy to me, like air and water and sunshine.

 

 

Sometimes, however, on a slow day, when most of the patrons are (like me) slow and feeble and elderly, I have to rely on my treadmill TV for inspiration.

 

 

Have you seen the infomercial for something called P90X? It is some sort of exercise program which appears to involve jumping up and down, pushups, and clapping your hands. It is extreme. It is guaranteed to turn you into Johnny Weissmuller (or at least Elmo Lincoln) in ninety days.

 

 

I like the transformation stories on these infomercials. They always start with an athletic guy (there are a few women in the mix, but the marketers concentrate on the men here, and I think they know what they're doing) telling his story, wearing only a few scraps of clothing; then we see pictures of him fat or skinny or unwell; then we see him jumping and bouncing and doing his P90X routine; then we return to the vivid reality of his sculpted new body. All these guys are adorable, and very pleased with themselves. I would just like to munch them all up.

 

 

As for the actual exercise routine: I have my doubts. I'm sure it's a perfectly valid program – anything that involved that much jumping and hopping would probably make you healthier – but ninety days? Dubious at best.

 

 

This, of course, is a bow to our results-obsessed culture. Remember when Bart Simpson took up the guitar, then quickly gave it up? “I wasn't good at it right away, so I quit.” And Homer approved of this, saying: “If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing.”

 

 

But wait! I recently saw an ad for Shaun T's Insanity sixty-day fitness program – with guaranteed results!

 

 

And last week, on the Cape, I saw a commercial for a thirty-day program!

 

 

Eh. I'll wait for the ten-minute version. I'm a very busy girl.

 

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Representative Anthony Weiner

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Folklore tells us that Alexander the Great grew tired of being lectured by his resident schoolmaster, Aristotle, on how sex was a waste of time. One evening Alexander sent a prostitute into Aristotle's room, just to see what would happen.  He waited a while, and opened the door to find the prostitute riding the naked Aristotle around the room like a donkey.

 

 

Moral: sex makes smart people do stupid things.

 

 

I wrote a few months ago about Republican Representative Christopher Lee and his funny shirtless frolics with a camera and a mirror. Now we have Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, also playing “Candid Photography Click Click Nudge Nudge Say No More.”

 

 

When it's a Republican, I hoot and whistle, I know. I can't help it. When it's a Democrat – Weiner, or John Edwards, or Bill Clinton, or Ted Kennedy – I just squirm uneasily. And I get all forgiving and moral. Does it make them bad lawmakers? Does it matter who they have sex with? Or whether they use cigars when they do it? Or whether they pay off their mistresses with campaign funds?

 

 

Well, um, yes, I think that last one does matter, now that I think about it.

 

 

All professions have their share of jerks. Jerks are sometimes actually good at their jobs; in some professions, it's probably actually an asset. Rahm Emanuel comes to mind. By all accounts a horrible person; a very effective politician, however.

 

 

I think the thing that bothers me most about the Weiner story is the attitude he's been displaying lately. He's not contrite; he's angry and hostile. Angry at being found out? Probably. Angry with himself for not being more discreet? Possibly.

 

 

Bitchin' bod, though.

 

 

Who knew?

 

 

The Congressional weight room must have a dynamite conditioning program.

 

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Sleep medication

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Apollonia was all haggard and red-eyed the other day. “Up late casting evil spells?” I said.

 

 

She swatted at me, then slumped into herself and sighed. “I was reading in bed,” she said. “I finished one book. Then I couldn't sleep.”

 

 

“You overexcited yourself,” I said. “Last night I was reading 'A History of the Monks of Syria.' I conked out almost immediately. Did you know Saint Euphronius lived in a treetrunk?”

 

 

“Anyway,” Apollonia said, disregarding me, “I had another – um – story I wanted to read on my iPad, so I read that. [Editor's note: no doubt some piece of trashy “Twilight” fan fiction. And, by “read,” she probably meant “write.”] Then I was really awake. Then I started thinking about work. Then I looked at the clock, and it was 2:00 am. So -”

 

 

“Three words, babe,” I said. “Am. Bi. En. I take it. Everyone takes it. Take a ride on the big green butterfly, babe.”

 

 

“Pills,” she said with alarm.

 

 

“Pills,” I said mockingly. “Better living through chemistry. Enter the new millennium, grandma.”

 

 

For decades, like poor Apollonia, I used to lie awake and stare at the ceiling. Every noise kept me awake. Reading in bed helped a little, but not much. If the room was too warm, or too cold, or too stuffy, or too drafty, I couldn't sleep. For a while in the 1990s I had an apartment with old-fashioned steam radiators that went KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK all night, and believe me, that will keep you awake.

 

 

Then I discovered the Big Green Butterfly. (Oh, wait, I just remembered.  That's Lunesta, not Ambien. But let's go with the image anyway. It's so pretty.)

 

 

God bless my general practitioner, skinny little Doctor M., who first prescribed Ambien for me.

 

 

Some people report “sleep-eating” when they take Ambien: they go into a somnambulistic trance, go to the kitchen, eat everything in sight, go back to bed, and wake up to a sink full of dirty dishes. I have never had this happen. (So far as I know.)

 

 

It does blank out your memory, though. Partner tells me that, when I take it, I have entire conversations with him which I forget by morning. (Partner also takes rides on the Green Butterfly, however, so he has been known to say odd things before bedtime himself.)

 

 

Bedtime's drawing near as I write this.

 

 

Hear that fluttering? The pretty butterfly is entering our airspace.

 

 

Nighty-night.

 

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Sugar is not your friend

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There was an article in the Times recently about sugar being a toxin. (I'll link to it here, but the Times now has its Gottverdammt “paywall” in place, so you may or may not be able to access the link. Sorry.)

 

 

Yes, you heard me. Sugar is a toxin.

 

 

The article actually explained this, in terms that a semi-educated blockhead like me could understand.

 

 

In short: not all carbohydrates are metabolized in the same way.

 

 

Your body wants glucose for energy. It gets a lot of glucose from metabolizing starch from food like potatoes, and grains, and other plant foods. Starches are basically long chains of glucose molecules. Yum! your body says, and takes the starch apart into its constituent glucose molecules. It has lots of ways of doing this; even saliva does it, a little. Since (up to very recently in human history) most of our glucose intake was in the form of starch, our bodies have evolved very neatly to perform this task.

 

 

Sugars are a little different. Sucrose – table sugar – is a double molecule: one molecule of glucose, one of a different sugar called fructose, linked together. Glucose is an all-purpose molecule, and can be metabolized pretty much anywhere in your body. Fructose can only be processed in one place: the liver.

 

 

And here our troubles begin.

 

 

Sucrose is half fructose, as I said. And I'm sure you've heard of “high fructose corn syrup” (HFCS), which is cheap to make, and is actually sweeter than regular sugar. Well, now let's say you have a nice Snickers bar. Right away you're flooding your system with a burst of glucose, which sends your poor pancreas into conniptions, so it sends out a lot of insulin to help regulate the glucose metabolism process. And then, of course, there's all that fructose heading for your liver for processing.

 

 

If this goes on too much, it leads to a condition called “fatty liver.”

 

 

Also – delightful! - with so much insulin washing around in your system all the time, your body's cells can become what's called “insulin-resistant.” Your pancreas pours out insulin all the time, but it's not accomplishing what it's supposed to do.

 

 

Related conditions: obesity, obviously. “Metabolic syndrome,” a risk factor in heart disease and diabetes. And, more recently, a very distinct link to some kinds of cancer.

 

 

Sigh.

 

 

Solution: eat less sweet stuff. Mostly plants, as Michael Pollan says.

 

 

No problem, baby. I love sweet potatoes and black beans.

 

 

You can just call me Mister Health.

 

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Brain medicine

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I have taken various kinds of psychoactive medication over the past ten years. (I'm kind of, um, tense. And I have what are charitably called “moods.”)

 

 

I like my current medication. I am much calmer now, and much less likely to freak out over stupid things. I'm still irritated by idiots, but I'm not infuriated by them quite so much.

 

 

But – and here's the funny thing – I find that my memory (which used to be, frankly, amazing) is not so amazing anymore. (I read recently that my medication is prescribed for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which makes sense; the medication seems to take the urgency away from everyday situations, and makes everything fuzzy around the edges.)

 

 

But I am calmer now. And, as I said to someone recently, if this is how normal people feel most of the time, I'm sorry I missed out on it for so long.

 

 

I do miss the sharpness and focus I used to have. But I don't miss the nervousness and tension and depression and obsession over details.

 

 

Partly, I know, it's just the passage of time. I'm in my mid-fifties, and my brain is getting mushy, like a soft-boiled egg. My fuzziness and loss of memory may just as well be the progressive degeneration of my brain tissue.

 

 

Who knows?

 

 

Anyway, I'm not going to obsess about it.

 

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Smoking

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Both my parents smoked. My father smoked almost right up to the time he died of lung cancer. My mother quit in the 1960s, but she had a ferocious Sen-Sen / Life Savers habit for the rest of her life.

 

 

As a kid I used to sit in the front seat of the car, between my father in the driver's seat and my mother on the other side. They both blew smoke in my face. I stared straight ahead into the overflowing ashtray and the cigarette lighter (both of which sort of fascinated me).

 

 

Despite all this, I never had any desire to smoke, until my boss and his wife took me to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park back in the early 1980s. Someone outside the park was giving away free packs of Lucky Strikes (get it? strike? baseball?). I took a pack home with me and put it in a drawer.  I smoked one finally, but I didn't much care for it. Then I tried some of those noxious “Black & Mild” cigarillos that taste like the tobacco equivalent of flavored vodka.

 

 

Obviously, as you can tell, it was preying on my mind.

 

 

Soon after, in the Peace Corps, I discovered that everyone in North Africa smoked all the time.

 

I was up to two packs a day in no time. In Morocco, I smoked Koutoubia cigarettes. When I moved to Tunisia, I discovered Vingt-Mars cigarettes. Also Cristal. Also Koaqib, which tasted great, but made me cough like a TB patient. (I found out later they had snuff in them, which evidently liquefies when you smoke it, and oozes through your lungs like asphalt.)

 

 

And why?  Because it was calming.  Because it was a little moment of relaxation during the day.  Because the smoke was strangely soothing.  

 

 

I came back to the USA in 1987, still smoking two packs a day (now Benson & Hedges 100s Lights). This went on for another ten years.

 

 

Did I mention that my father died of lung cancer? Also my uncle Claude? Also a couple of other relatives?

 

 

I knew I stank of smoke. I knew that I was a fire hazard. I didn't much care. (Smokers don't really care. It's a strange state of mind.) But I'd made a promise to myself: I'd quit by the time I was forty.

 

 

In 1998, my forty-first year, I actually quit.

 

 

Even now, thirteen years later, I still dream about it. The dreams are strange: I find myself lighting a cigarette, and thinking: Oh no! If I smoke I'm hooked again! And I do, and I'm very disappointed with myself.

 

 

How very peculiar addiction is.

 

 

But I have a vivid memory of leaving the house on a lovely warm Tunis morning, and feeling the fresh air in my face, and lighting the first cigarette of the day.

 

 

And it was wonderful.

 

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Nutty for neti

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A neti pot is a little teapot you use to snort salt water up your nose. “Cougar Town” featured them recently; one of the characters tried to use one, aspirated all the water, and ended up in the emergency room. He referred to it later in the episode as “the Indian death pot.”

 

 

Mine is a little white plastic Aladdin's lamp. I mix up a little salt and bicarb with warm water, and I lean forward over the sink, and breathe through my mouth (this is very important), and stick the spout up my nostril, and pour.

 

 

I can feel the warm salt water tracing its mystic journey through my sinuses. Then it comes out the other nostril, which is a little gross, but – hey, kids, Circle of Life.

 

 

Then I repeat, using the other nostril.

 

 

It's supposed to be excellent for sinus infections and such. The Times recently published an article citing medical evidence that the technique is sound.

 

 

(Also, it feels amazing. You are actually cleaning the inside of your head. You can practically feel the negative energy draining away into the sink.)

 

 

So far I have not been able to con Partner into trying it. He thinks I am trying to do away with him, a la “Cougar Town.” But I've found that many of my acquaintances are secret neti users. My friend Sylvia warned me that sometimes the water builds up in your sinuses, and if you should lean forward during (let's say) an important meeting, water might start gushing out of your nose.

 

 

I mentioned this to another acquaintance, a Brown University policeman. He looked startled. “That actually happened to me during a morning briefing,” he said. “It was pretty embarrassing.”

 

 

This hasn't happened to me yet.

 

 

But I'm sure it will.

 

And it will be awesome.

 

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The health club: an observer's guide

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I go to the health club almost every day. It's only about two blocks from our apartment, so I really have no excuse. Partner likes to ride the stationary bike. I prefer the treadmill; it's dull and repetitive, like me.

 

And I love the floor show.

 

 

First, there's the staff:

 

• The earnest girl at the front desk who scans my key card and wishes me a good workout!

• The managers, who wear very tight shirts, and have interesting tattoos. (I think Manager Mike's tattoo says “Charlotte” – his girlfriend’s name? – but the tattoo is very ornate and runs all the way up his arm, so it may be part of a much more complex sentiment, like “Charlotte Rae was a member of the supporting cast on ‘The Facts of Life.’”)

• The trainers. Our favorite is Sean, who's tall and has an interesting hairstyle and big shoulders and a cute little smile. Our second favorite is Robot #1, who is very tall, very big, very young, very loud, a regular Li'l Abner type. Our third favorite is Robot #2, who is just like #1 except a little older, a little shorter, a little broader, a little more brooding. He leans on the exercise equipment with a kind of Marlon Brando moodiness. (There used to be another one, a gigantic furniture mover with a perpetual sneer, who had a name tattooed from his collarbone to his jaw. I called him “Zipperneck.” I didn't like him.)

  
  

 

Then there are the members:

 

 

• The scrawny (young / old). I am in this group, naturally.

• The formerly fit. These mostly look like former gym teachers. They grimace a lot when they work out, as they are putting out one hundred and ten percent effort! They sport casts and crutches a lot. You don't suppose they hurt themselves working out too strenuously, do you?

• The college boys. These wear T-shirts featuring beer, or computers, or both.

• Creeps and nimrods. Some are dessicated-looking, like praying mantises. Others have huge arms and skinny legs, or vice versa. Sometimes they do sparring moves while they're on the treadmill. Sometimes they do creative workouts involving jumpropes and kung-fu moves and shopping carts. Sometimes they crawl along the back wall of the workout area. (I'm not making these up.) Partner and I scowl at them when they come too close.

• Cuties. These vary from visit to visit. My current favorite is a big lean guy with a face like an intelligent chimpanzee.  He works out very intently with dumbbells for a while, then does jumping jacks while watching himself in the mirror. I just want to put him in my pocket and take him home.

• Women. I suppose there must be some. I don't really notice.

 

 

The foregoing may seem to indicate that I pay too much attention to my surroundings when I really should be concentrating on my healthy activity.

 

 

But listen: when you're trudging along on a treadmill, or pedaling a stationary bike, you need all the distraction you can get.

 

 

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Fiber: a beginner's guide

 

 

Partner and I are both over fifty, and you know what your doctor tells you to do once you're fifty.  It involves fasting for a day beforehand, and not eating red food, and – ahem.

 

 

Our test results have been okay so far.   I had some small abnormalities a few years ago, but they weren't serious enough to merit special attention.  But it's been around five years, and I have my yearly physical in a few weeks, so I have a feeling I know what will be happening again soon. 

 

 

If I have learned anything through all of this, it is to eat more fiber.

 

 

A man of my age and weight needs about 25 grams of fiber a day.  A paperclip, or a raisin, weighs a gram.  So if I eat twenty-five paperclips worth of fiber a day, I will be fine, and the inside of my colon will be as clean and delicate as a baby's skin.

 

 

This is easier said than done.

 

 

Here's the fiber lowdown:

 

 

•                  Foods that you think might be full of fiber are not full of fiber.  Most cereals.  White bread.  A surprising number of vegetables.

•                  On the other hand, beans have a lot of fiber: red beans, black beans, kidney beans, Roman beans, cannellini beans.  Also chickpeas.  Also lentils.  Prepare to be very gassy.

•                  Peas are remarkably high in fiber.  In fact, anything with a skin is rich in fiber.  Each cute little pea has a little skin around it.  See?

•                  Pasta is made from hard wheat, and so is full of fiber.  Marinara sauce is made from whole tomatoes, and is also full of fiber.  No wonder Italians are so vibrant.  It’s the fiber!

•                  You can actually buy Double Fiber bread.  It tastes just like regular bread, and it blasts through you like an Atlas missile.  It's terrifying.

 

 

This is what we do for health.

 

 

It's worth it.