Coffee heat rising

Health care

Another Bullet Dodged…Maybe?

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So, about a week ago I’m driving down Feeder Street a little after dark, and I see these weird flickering lights, sorta thumbnail-paring shaped, in the far right periphery of my right eye.

At first I think it’s headlights reflecting on some part of my glasses.

Wrong.

Then I think holy sh!t. Within a couple of minutes, though, the phenomenon dissipates. I’m wildly busy and don’t have any time to think about it and besides there’s not a thing I can do about it after doctor’s office hours anyway.

Next morning I’m heading out at the earliest crack of dawn for the weekly SBA meeting and the same damn thing happens. Only…uhm…there are no headlights at that moment.

When I get back from the morning’s junketing, I hit the Hypochondriac’s Treasure chest and and learn that flashing lights, especially when coupled with new eye floaters, are a sign of a retinal tear (serious) or retinal detachment (blindness!). Either occasions surgery, one more drastic than the other.

The weekend arrives and yea verily so does a new crop of floaters. And a headache.

Call Young Dr. Kildare’s office; get his partner, who’s on call. “Eek!” quoth she (not in so many words: think a doctorly “eek”), “you need to go to the emergency room.”

Ahhh shit. I hate the ER. But if this phenomenon weren’t alarming enough, a worried doctor saying “go to the emergency room!” will make it downright terrifying.

Amazingly, I get in and out of the Mayo’s ER in less than an hour. The doc on duty can’t see any obvious signs of a retinal tear or detachment; thinks it’s another optical migraine (ooooh no it’s not, I think, but refrain from saying so). He says I need to make an appointment with a specialist.

Monday the Mayo’s underlings are on the phone, trying to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist for me. Moi, not desiring to make yet another trip halfway to freaking Payson, I have already found a doc in town who will take Medicare assignment, very good. Make an appointment. Get in with him today.

He and his staff go to elaborate lengths to examine the suspect eye. After 90 minutes of eye dilating and examination, he delivers the good news: absolutely, positively, I do not have a torn or detaching retina. This interesting experience is yet another of the many entertaining events of advancing age.

He, who is even more advanced in age than I am, reports that he had the same darned thing happen to him a couple of years ago. And of course it happened on a weekend. He being the real deal — an actual living, breathing ophthalmologist — was petrified, understanding what this could mean. He betook himself to his office and was waiting with his eyes already dilated, early on Monday morning, for his partner to show up. The two docs came to the same conclusion in his case: old age creepin’ up, nothing much to worry about. Yet.

Then the bad news: he thinks I might have the start (maybe…maybe not) of macular degeneration. He recommends that I run out and start swallowing multivitamins and a special antioxidant snake oil concocted by Bausch & Lomb (which, we might add, paid to sponsor the study claiming this miracle supplement delays the advance of dry macular degeneration).

Delightful.

At least I’m not in any immediate danger of going blind, assuming I don’t accidentally stab myself in the eye with a fork while scarfing down a lamb chop. But…

Macular degeneration?

Not. Good.

I look up this study and find that the one published in 2010, the one sponsored by B&L, was a shade problematic and, even if you buy the results, proved rather little. A newer study, published in 2013, showed some benefit, maybe. However, the ingredients of the magical concoction of antioxidants pose some risks, not the least of them significantly enhanced chances of developing lung cancer if you have ever smoked (both my parents were very heavy smokers, and so I spent the first 16 years of my life inhaling the equivalent of several cigarettes a day in second-hand smoke). Neither study included people with “maybe” early symptoms: subjects were all people with intermediate to advanced age-related macular degeneration.

So. There we are: I’m not going blind, but maybe someday I will be going blind.

Here. Take these pills!

The State of Your Health: Is It Your Employer’s Business?

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Today at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon, we heard a panel discussion on employee wellness programs, presented by folks who have a vested interest therein: mostly directors of such projects.

It was interesting, particularly as an effort to persuade corporate leadership that employees’ health bears, in ways obvious and subtle, on the bottom line. And the discussion pushed one of my buttons.

Among the strategies the panel presented is a program in which workers are coaxed, by way of a $15/month bonus added to the paycheck, into submitting to tests to determine whether they’ve been smoking tobacco. There are similar thrusts in these programs having to do with diabetes prevention and control, obesity control, and the like. But this one exemplifies most perfectly, to my mind, what is wrong with such Big Mommy schemes. Videlicet:

What you choose to do about your health maintenance is none of your employer’s business.

Your health care is between you and your doctor, not between you and your doctor and your department manager and HR.

While I personally do not smoke, chew, or snort tobacco — and no offense, dear nicotine-loving friends, but I fear people who do are a little stupid — the stuff is a legal product available freely all over the country. There’s no law against smoking tobacco. And your employer has absolutely no business telling you that you can’t engage in a lawful activity on your own time, outside of the plant.

And your employer has even less business (we’re in the negative numbers now!) demanding that you submit to a test to confirm your word that you do not smoke. It’s an unwarranted and unacceptable intrusion into your private life.

Whence this anxiety to insert a whole new level of nosiness into our private lives?

The almighty dollar, that’s whence. The hype generated around the so-called “obesity epidemic,” which was recognized as hooey when it first arose and which some inquiring minds still question, represents a vast money-making opportunity. As in billions and trillions of dollars. The very folks who, over today’s lunch, regaled us with the glories of in-house “wellness” programs themselves stand to profit. Whether they work as wage slaves for companies that institute the programs or whether they own businesses contracting to companies to run such programs, they’ll profit.

If we’re all being bribed — or ordered — to take tobacco tests, what will be next?

Alcohol use is one hell of a lot more detrimental to productivity than puffing tobacco on your own time. It really would make more sense to test people, regularly, to determine how many cocktails or glasses of wine they had with dinner the night before.

Sugar: Exceptionally bad for you. Will we all be required to take blood glucose tests on Monday before we sit down to work?

Salt: Worse yet! You don’t even have to be fat for salt to drive up your blood pressure. How’s about we add a blood sodium level while we’re drawing blood for those glucose tests? No more hot dogs and potato chips at those Sunday afternoon football games for you, pal!

Folks. We have got to get a grip on this kind or exploitation. And somehow, someday Americans really need to come back to a basic fact of pre-Facebook, pre-Google, pre-Big Brother life: what’s your business is your business. And no one has any right to demand to poke their corporate nose into it.

Eine Kleine Stress Reduction Trick…

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Uhm… D’you ever wonder where on earth your common sense went? Does common sense take vacations in the South Pacific? If so, is it possible for us to join it now and again? Preferably beside the gentle waves on an unspoiled white-sand beach?

So the blood pressure has now dropped, pretty consistently, into the “normal” range. Figures are pretty much the same now, all the time: 125/73 this morning; 127/77 after dinner last night. Not bad, for an old bat pushin’ 70. Years, that is, not millimeters.

Whence, you ask, this miraculous change?

Whence, indeed: from the coffee pot. As far from it as one can get.

I happen to favor very high-test black coffee: the best espresso beans I can get my hands on, fresh-ground and brewed in a French press. As you might imagine, this substance will raise the hair on a normal human’s head. Moi — it just wakes me up and gets me going, a desirable result in my book.

It’s not like I drink this stuff all day long: imbibulation is normally confined to about 16 ounces first thing in the morning. It is enough, however, to bring on a monumental withdrawal headache if I quit cold turkey. One time after I quit, the headache lasted a full week. That was fun.

Welp, the other day I was contemplating the return of the accursed palpitations and the painfully evident link between the palps and the elevated BP numbers. Got palps? Got systolic pressure upwards of 150. Don’t got palps? Systolic is down in the mid 130s. Hm. Exploring the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest for clues to this phenomenon, I realized that most sites discussing control of blood pressure mention caffeine and alcohol as culprits…naturally, my two favorite self-medicating prescriptions.

One site indicated that you need to go on quite the little binge for booze to push up your numbers; I don’t do that — presently I have a shot of whiskey a day, liberally watered down.

But then I recalled that spates of palpable heartbeats and light-headedness are nothing new. When I was in my 30s, a stretch of these moments visited. Once I was on assignment for Arizona Highways in southern Arizona when such an intense episode occurred that I really thought was was going to pass out. So did the people around me. It went away, though.

At that time, the connection between the amount of coffee I was drinking (in those days it was a lot more!) and the unpleasant chest sensations dawned on me. Quit drinking coffee for a few weeks, and all the irregular heartbeats and vertigo disappeared. Presto-changeo!

Like diets, though, coffee fasts do not last forever. I love coffee. I live for coffee. And so inevitably, every time I would go on a coffee-asceticism jag, sooner or later I’d take up the habit again.

And over time, I forgot about the coffee/palps connection. In fact, it takes quite a long time for enough caffeine to build up in the system for me to notice anything that looks vaguely symptomatic. Takes even longer when you’re only drinking it once a day.

So, not paying much attention, I’ve been consuming two cups of coffee so thick you can stand a spoon up in it every day for years now. Week or so ago, I decided to knock it off for awhile, just to see what would happen. And lo! After about three days of caffeine detox, the BP measures went down and stayed down. They’re pretty  much the same now, all well in the normal range.

Dang…who’d’ve thunk it?

If you have stress attacks or “palpitations” (sensation of your heart racing, skipping a beat, or thumping), you might want to try kicking all sources of caffeine, including soda pop. This gives you a roaring headache for a day or two (or more, depending on how much you habitually consume). You can ameliorate that, though, with a cup or two of green or white tea, both of which contain smaller amounts of caffeine than coffee and soda. Use the tea to ease yourself off the drug over the course of two to five days and then quit drinking that, too.

Hey. Nothin’ ventured, nothin’ gained. And it’s free.

QUESTION. AUTHORITY.

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Hot dayum!

I’m back from New CardioDoc, an “authority” picked from that bazaar of authorities in all genres, Angie’s List. Wanted a second opinion to original CardioDoc, who aggressively insists that I need to be on a drug that makes me sick and puts me and everyone around me at risk when I’m behind the driver’s wheel.

Old CardioDoc, having viewed what happens to my blood pressure when I suffer a stress attack in his goddamn office, refused to brook any questions and would not even listen to me when I tried to point out that if I fall and break a hip, I’m here alone in the house and could very well die on the floor before anyone notices and that the vertigo caused by his favored medicament was making it dangerous for me to drive my car. Neither would he take the slightest bit of notice of the fact that overall my average BP is in the normal range, even when one adds in the occasional spike engendered by this or that moment of hysteria.

So before I agreed to return to gulping down a med that does quite the number on me, I decided to pick another quack, any quack, and see what he thought. On Angie’s List, one cardiologist (count him, 1) was both highly recommended and within reasonable driving distance. Made an appointment with him.

Today, with vast trepidation, I slinked into his office, bearing a list of five questions and seven months’ worth of BP figures.

I happen to have, neatly registered in Excel, blood pressure figures going back to June 1. This is how I know what the averages look like. The anxiety-induced spikes are indeed alarming…but most of the time, when I’m not worrying about identity fraud or scared shitless from being in a goddamn doctor’s office, the figures average about 128/79. Not bad for an old bat.

You cannot imagine, especially if you’re a young pup, what it means to someone in my generation to question a doctor. Especially for a woman to question a doctor. Especially a male doctor. Here I was not only questioning a doctor, but questioning a freaking high-powered male specialist.

Sorry, but I just was not buying what CardioDoc1 said: he was telling me things that directly contradict what credible sources say; he was refusing to listen to me when I described the side effects of the crap he’d put me on; and he was blatantly trying to frighten me by way of manipulating me. I hate that kind of thing. All of those kinds of things.

But I was equally scared shitless of going to a new cardiologist and telling him I suspect his colleague is full of beans. So I’ve been racking my hot little brain for weeks trying to come up with a humble, tactful, boot-licking way to ask this new guy to give me a straight story.

And as you might imagine, I had myself mightily worked up by the time New Cardiodoc came wandering into his examining room. Blood pressure was through the stratosphere. However. I had the figures.

He actually believed that anxiety sends one’s blood pressure skyward. And he believed that was what was happening this morning. After he reviewed the figures I’d printed up, with their averages, he announced that he did not believe I need treatment with medication at this time.

Thank you, God!!!

It’s three hours later and I’m only just coming back down to earth. If I took the BP now, it would probably be pretty close to normal. From his office I went by the financial guy’s office to deal with the current stage of the Identity Fraud aftermath. And from there to Whole Paycheck, there to purchase one slice each of two exotic yuppie pizzas and a four-pack of Guinness. Figured I deserved it.

Pizza and two cans of stout ingested, I’m feeling a bit better. Have already had a mile-and-a-half walk today but think I’ll invite the dog out for another stroll by way of burning off some more nervous energy.

That was soooo hard! Soooo scary!!!! And sooooooo goddamn difficult!

But I did it. I questioned authority and came away with a sane answer.

122 Unread Messages…

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Ugh! MacMail reports that 122 unread e-mail messages reside on the server. Actually, only about 30 of those are significant. But then there’s all the stuff sitting on the Canvas server, from 20 students in one course and 30 in the other.

Ugh, ugh, ugh!!!!!

Sitting in front of the computer causes physical pain. Not sitting in front of it alleviates said pain. Day before yesterday and yesterday I managed to avoid the desktop. What little, absolutely unavoidably necessary work that got done happened on the laptop, in a relatively low-pain chair — hence 122+ unanswered e-mails — and by yesterday afternoon the back and hip didn’t hurt too much.

This subjective discovery, it develops, is objectively true: one study showed just 90 minutes of sitting in front of a computer induced hypersensitivity to pain in deep tissues. Ninety minutes, eh? I’ve been known to sit mesmerized in front of this thing for eleven hours straight, getting up only briefly to grab a few bites to eat and go to the bathroom.

That tends to confirm my growing suspicion that if I’m  ever going to get over this — unlikely, after two years of unremitting pain — I’ve got to get away from the computer.

How exactly to accomplish such a thing baffles me. I make my living on the computer. Really: at this age I can’t be depending solely on Social Security and drawdowns from savings to live…that will pretty much ensure that I run out of money before I die.

On the other hand, I suppose, one could accelerate that latter proposition. There’s hardly any point in living when you’re in agony all the time. And another 15 or 20 years in the present state strikes one as less than desirable.

Oh well.

At the end of the semester, I think I’m going to engineer a two-week break from blogging, writing, editing, indexing, bookkeeping, and anything else that requires extended periods of sitting and staring at a screen. I’ll probably resurrect a dozen “best of Funny” posts to keep the blog alive.

If anyone would like to contribute the occasional guest post, that would be welcome.

Is Sugar Toxic?

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Raw_sugar_closeupThe other day I had a weird experience — a bizarre reaction to ordinary table sugar. You know, in these ramblings I’ve often taken up the “sugar is toxic” hue and cry, but in a half-humorous way. Of course, I don’t believe sugar is poisonous. Or…didn’t, anyway. But now I wonder.

One of the choir members is THE most awesome cook, and best of all, she likes to cook. She brings in the most splendid, delicious baked goods you can imagine. Last Sunday we sang at an early service and so showed up for rehearsal at what feels, to some of us, like the crack of dawn. She kindly brought in a whole breakfast with a gorgeous egg dish and two beautiful baked sweets.

Well, I can’t eat unadulterated eggs, unfortunately. But there was simply noooooooo way to resist tasting the other goodies. So I had one-half of a small square of this astonishing coffeecake she’d brought.

Delicious beyond description.

And very, very, very, very sweet. As I was noshing on it, a thought crossed my feeble mind: This is more sugar than i’ve eaten ALL SUMMER.

Hm. Add another pound to tomorrow’s weigh-in…

About 15 minutes later, up in the choir loft, I started to get a bellyache. Didn’t think much of it, except to be mildly annoyed because the gut issues have completely gone away since the aftermath of the Prednisone episode finally died down.

Then a few minutes later, when we had to jump up to sing an anthem, WHACK! The minute I stood up I got a dizzy spell that was so bad I damn near fell over. Literally: the only reason I didn’t hit the floor was that I was jammed between two people on either side of me and a row of chair backs in front.

And, just to gild that lily, flicking heart palpitations.

Think of that. I haven’t had those since I started the diet.

Which is to say, since I quit eating refined sugar.

Before I determined to lose 25 pounds, I thought nothing of eating whatever sugary thing I pleased. And you can be sure I always enjoyed my co-religionist’s baking, with gusto! And ice cream. And cookies. And chocolate. And strawberries smothered in crunchy demerara sugar and heavy cream…

Then while we were standing there singing, a headache came on. It passed by the time the service ended. But the stomach continued upset, and I felt awful when I got home.

Decided that a dose of something with a lot of protein in it might help, and so whipped up a tasty xergis soup, which is mostly yogurt. Tellingly, that actually did help. After lunch, things healthish had gone back to normal.

Cardiodoc said that daily exercise would take care of the heart palps. And so it seemed. I haven’t had a spell of those in months…coincidentally, not in the three months since I started the weight-loss project.

But what if the explanation were not so much instituting the daily stroll but simply that I stopped eating refined sugar? Those two things happened at the same time.

The two food categories I quit eating were a) anything containing refined sugar, high-fructose corn sugar, or anything else whose name ends in -ose; and b) breads, potatoes, rice, and other high-starch items. It did occur to me that the coffeecake contained plenty of wheat flour, too — possibly I’ve developed the wildly stylish gluten sensitivity? But then realized not: the other day I had several slices from a baguette I served to La Maya — white bread. No ill effect.

No. I think the ill effect here came from eating enough sugar to choke an elephant, crammed into one little black hole of bakery. And doing so after having spent a quarter of a year abstaining from the stuff.

On this diet, I have indeed been eating a lot of sugar, in the form of fructose, because I eat two or three varieties of fruit every day. But none of it has been refined sugar. That was the first time in three months I’d consumed the kind of sugar that comes in a package — which is to say, chances are my body was no longer accustomed to coping with it.

If Sunday morning’s episode indeed was caused by scarfing down a megadose of sugar, it’s highly suggestive.

Can we say something that brings on a dizzy spell, heart palpitations, a headache, and stomach upset is toxic? In a world where you can be sued for libeling a food, probably not.

But we certainly can have our private suspicions, can’t we?

Image: Raw sugar. Editor at Large. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.