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Number one thing (number two)

May 20, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

Image by Brooke Lark on UnsplashSomething that surprised me greatly on our arrival in British Columbia back in 2015 was the discovery that the province had a considerable shortage of GPs… doctors! For the first year and some I had to resort to visiting drop-in clinics to get repeat prescriptions for the hypertension medication to which I referred in my last post.

Fortunately a new clinic opened in Sidney and I was finally able to land myself on the books of an excellent physician who has the added benefit of being a relatively young man – who should thus (barring unfortunate incidents) see me out.

The good thing about young doctors is that they tend to be keen and thorough. That is also, of course, the problem with them… discovering things that one wishes they had not.

Several years back now my new doctor determined – in the course of my annual checkup – that I now had stage one chronic kidney disease. There is, apparently, nothing really to be done about this and it makes no practical difference – as long as it doesn’t develop into a higher stage (which I gather from the Doc that it may never do. Fingers crossed!) How did I get it? Apparently is is a common side-effect of hypertension!

Now – this year the doc had a new treat for me. I now have early signs of fatty liver disease. What?! How did I get that? Well – apparently if one is not overweight (which I wasn’t) and doesn’t have a drink problem (don’t even go there) then it is quite likely to be a side effect of – you’ve guessed it – hypertension.

Thanks, mum and dad!

So – what is to be done? Well – diet apparently – for which I have been referred to a nutritionist. According to him I need to be on a low-carb, low-sugar, preferably plant-based diet… and I should abstain from the demon booze!! Well – I can be pretty dogged if it leads to staying healthy for as long as possible and I don’t mind making some sacrifices, but there are limits…

So – out goes bread, white rice, all manner of sugary treats (including cakes and jams etc), too much red meat, processed foods… ice cream! All that sort of thing. In comes more fruit, salads and vegetables, lean and white meats, fish, pulses and no end of less fun things (like seeds… bleuch!!).

On the alcohol front, until this started I was in the habit of taking one drink a day with my evening meal, the which I had done ever since I left home back in the 1970s. Now I only drink on occasion – maybe one or two times a month (boo!).

Is it working – I hear you ask? Too soon to tell, though blood tests next month will give a clearer picture.

It is having one big effect, though: I have lost a fair bit of weight. Having clocked in at around 13 stone (182lb) for as long as I can remember, in the three or so months since this started my weight has dropped to a tad below 12 stone (168lb). As a result  I have had to purchase several new pairs of jeans, my waist having dropped from an optimistic 34” back to a guaranteed 32”. I really can’t remember when I was last this size, but it was certainly back in the 80s (or even earlier).

Oh well! I will of course keep the gentle reader up-dated as things progress.

 

 

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Number one thing (number one)

May 16, 2021 in Life as we know it | Permalink

“Broccoli is not as bad as people make out. It might give you wind, but I’d prefer to have wind and have good health. Health is the number one thing on the planet. However, I am quite partial to rum and raisin ice cream.”

Chris Eubank Sr.

I recently found myself looking back over the archives to this online journal. It had occurred to me that – in what is getting on for a decade now that I have been posting to it – I have made very little reference to health – to mine or to anyone else’s.

Whereas I would once have maintained that this was because I have been blessed with an excellent constitution (which is certainly true to a point) I might possibly also have admitted that this is one of those subjects that chaps in general tend to avoid, probably because of the fear that talking about such potentially unpleasant topics could well result in something being raked up that they would prefer not to know about.

Either way – with the advancing of the years it really is time that I addressed some of this stuff. Here goes…

I inherited many characteristics from my parents: most of them positive (and for that, many thanks). There is, however, something else that they passed on to me that is rather more of a pain. That something is hypertension (high blood pressure)!

I don’t recall if they ever discussed the fact that they both suffered the condition. It was the sort of thing that was not much talked about by their generation. I’m not even sure that I knew they were on medication for it – until such time as I was myself diagnosed with it.

This came about as my fiftieth birthday approached. I was working at the time at a very well-known posh boys’ school in the UK and fell into conversation with my doctor (who was both one of the School doctors and a local GP) at a cocktail party at the School (as one does)! Regular readers will know that I don’t normally use real names on this blog but in this case I will make an exception – because the doctor was genuinely called ‘Doc Holliday’!

Anyway – I asked what a chap should do to check on his health at that time of life and he promised to give me a detailed going-over – the which he duly did. This uncovered the hypertension and we discovered (after an extensive round of blood tests, electro-cardiograms, heart echoes and an MRI scan at the Royal Brompton) that the most likely cause was inheritance.

The good doctor advised me as to the probability of my suffering some heart-related incident within a decade should I choose not take regular medication – and not caring for the odds I duly signed up. This all took place not that far short of two decades ago now and things have trundled along in the meantime without further incident – until relatively recently.

Unfortunately that proved not to be the end of things – though for the rest of the tale the gentle reader will need to come back for the second part of the story in the next post.

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