Today was another in a long line of doctors appointments for me. It seems to be a never ending chain (even though today is the first time I got out of there without having to schedule another appointment).
This all got started quite innocently enough. One day the building I work in was hosting a blood drive and I felt obliged to attend (since they were nice enough to bring the blood drive to me and all). Help increase the blood supply and get some juice and a cookie… who could ask for more?
In the days of old (ok, about 10 years ago but whatever) it used to be you would go to a blood donation place, answer some questions, get a small needle stuck into your finger to test your blood and then you would donate. AIDS increased the number of questions and qualifiers for donating blood, and somewhere in the past 5 years they snuck in a blood pressure test to make sure
they wouldn’t kill you by taking some of your blood.
So, there I was ready to donate and get my juice and cookie when the blood pressure test came back with such an outrageous number I won’t even print it here so that I don’t make all of you think I’m going to keel over by climbing the front doorstep tomorrow morning. This, of course, scared the living hell out of me and prompted me to find a doctor in my healthcare book right away. The name I decided on in the book was one Dr. Alfred Berman.
Arriving at his office was an interesting experience because his lobby seems to be furnished with thrown away furniture from various dorms at UCLA (if you’ve seen dorm furniture then you know that this stuff is the dregs of the furniture world). His nurse was very nice and did my initial tests while the doctor was in with another patient. The moment he stepped out of his office I knew he was either a pure genius or total whacko. He ushered me into his office and insisted that I read his wall of degrees and other framed papers to make sure I thought he was a good doctor.
So, after the first visit I was put on blood pressure medication and life was ready to move on. In our opening discussion we also talked about his 120 Club (for getting people to our genetically encoded capacity of 120 years through proper health) and I decided it was best to set an appointment for a physical, if not for me then for my wife and family so I might be around a while longer.
A few weeks later what happened was a barage of tests that uncovered the fact that I have such phenomenaly bad cholesterol that it is either genetic or my circulatory system was manufactured by Kraft Cheese.
So, here I am, 31 years old and on four different pills. I can’t wait to see how many I’m taking when I’m 60 (God willing).
-WW