A while back, I wrote about how it’s easy to take the good things in life for granted. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of things that have been consistently present in one’s life since the very beginning. Case in point: one’s health.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m lucky enough to work for a company that holds a health fayre each year. These have grown over the last three years, but basically they’re a way for everyone from fitness club owners to nutrition advisors to come and ply their wares to Google‘s snack-bin pillaging hordes.
One of the perennials of the health fayre is the cholesterol check stand, which I have been to the last two years that the fayre has been running. This year, it was being offered again, so I thought I’d attend as usual and make sure that everything was still ship-shape and Bristol fashion.
Anyone who knows me will testify to the fact that I’m not exactly a healthy eater. I’m not the worst, by any means, but I could do a lot to improve my dietary intake. All too often, the stodgy gastronomic charms of the Back to Albuquerque Mexican station in the Google café (a.k.a. Charlie’s Place) is too much to resist and I find myself clocking up yet another quesadilla in evidence against me.
Apart from poor eating habits, I don’t engage in much regular exercise, either. I bike to work every day, which treats me to two bursts of respiratory exercise, lasting fifteen minutes a piece. Again, I could do a lot to improve, but I’m not the flabbiest specimen waddling along the corridors of the Plex each day.
I’ve never really thought much about my health. Apart from a bad bout of gastroenteritis when I was about eight years old, I’ve never really been floored by illness for any length of time. Indeed, I haven’t had a single day off work in over four years of working in the US, which is possibly partially thanks to the warm Californian climate. I certainly didn’t have quite such a good record back in Europe.
Anyway, the point I’m making is that I’m generally quite healthy. I’m never sick, never visit a doctor, never get a check-up; never even pop an aspirin if I get a mild headache. And, until I came to the US, I’d never had a cholesterol check, either.
As I said, the last two years I’ve had my cholesterol checked, simply because the test was available right there, for free, under my nose at my place of work. Sarah had also urged me to take the test, fearing a high result, on account of my fondness for fried food.
It’s a pin-prick test, not a proper blood test, so there’s some margin of error to be expected. It’s also not a requirement to fast beforehand. Nevertheless, the past two years, my results have been good, at around the 160 mark. For European readers, I have no idea what that translates into in terms of European measurements, as I have never had my cholesterol measured back home.
Anyway, this year, a split measurement was being offered, one which subdivided the cholesterol check into two separate measurements, one for HDL and another for LDL.
I’m no expert, but the basic premise is that you want your LDL reading to be low, preferably under 130, whilst you ideally want an HDL readin of 45 or more. That’s right: most people think that high cholesterol is bad, but apparently there are two types, good vs. bad, and you want your good cholesterol to be high.
So, I went along, my finger was pricked and the test was done. The result was that I had an LDL reading of 89, which is good, and an HDL reading of 16, which is remarkably low. My combined reading, which is more than just the sum of HDL and LDL, was 115. Then came the surprise…
The bloke who conducted the test revealed to me that, if I didn’t take immediate action in the form of radical exercise, I could expect to suffer a stroke within the next five years. He was quite serious. I was rather taken aback and spent the rest of the day feeling somewhat dazed and distracted.
I’m not actually afraid to die, but this guy really caught me on the hop. Popping down to the company café for five minutes during the work day was not something I expected to result in such a mortal revelation, but there I was, forced to suddenly comtemplate the shuffling off of this mortal coil within a not too distant timeframe. Whilst not afraid, my predicted demise seemed untimely. After all, there were so many things left unfinished. Shit, there were so many things left unstarted!
I spoke to the company doctor that afternoon (yes, we’re actually lucky enough to have an on-site doctor), who told me that my HDL reading, if true, would be the lowest she’d ever heard of. This reassured me somewhat, but she told me to go and get a real blood test done, anyway, so that I would know for sure.
What a hassle. I wasn’t even registered with a doctor. Sarah recommended hers to me, so I fished around at home for my insurance details, which I have never needed, eventually located them and contacted the insurance company with a view to registering with Sarah’s doctor, here in Mountain View.
Once that was done, I made an appointment with her and then pretty much had to put the matter out of my mind for more than a week, as that was as soon as I could get to see her. I’m not much of a worrier, though, so I slept soundly and really didn’t think about the issue much at all.
Last Thursday, the appointment came around, so I headed down to Castro Street for the blood test. The doctor told me that she, too, had not heard of an HDL reading so low, which encouraged me further. She drew blood and off I went, putting the matter out of my mind again for a few days until the results of the test came back.
Yesterday, Saturday, the doctor called me with the results. As expected, the results of the first test were proved inaccurate. My LDL was measured at 90, which was actually just one point removed from the original test, so I can’t complain about that. My HDL, however, was 38, not 16 as originally reported. This gives me a combined result of 143, which is very good.
Basically, I have fuck all to worry about. Not only am I highly unlikely to collapse and die in five years, my cholesterol levels are actually very good and I have nothing to fear at all. Of course, I could stand to increase my HDL levels a little, and the doctor recommended to me a glass of red wine each evening or a 50mg niacin supplement each day.
So, I’m not going to snuff it and might actually be able to realise a few of my goals before the lights go out. While never truly anxious, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to feeling a certain amount of relief at hearing the news. I’m not ready to log out of life’s great time-sharing system just yet.
I’m still a little pissed off at the fucker who originally bore the bad news, though. What was he thinking? According to the doctor, even if I had had an HDL level of 16, that would still not have indicated the impending doom that was conveyed to me. She described the test conductor’s comments as “outrageous”.
I’ve a good mind to lodge a complaint about him. Like I said, I’m not a born worrier, but the same news in someone else’s ear might have set them off on a spate of sleepless nights and tormented, anguished days, all for naught. Fucker!
On the positive side, being forced to contemplate the notion that my body might be preparing to rise up in mutiny against me, also inexorably led me to ruminate on the good things in my life and consider what really matters to me and what I would like to achieve during the remainder of my days on this earth.
I thought about my pet peeves, my countless marital squabbles and all of the shit I complain about with an almost daily frequency. You know what? None of it matters; none of it whatsoever. There are large issues that piss me off and that should continue to cause me consternation until I rectify them, but there’s also a wealth of minor irks that really shouldn’t raise the slightest blip on my spiritual radar. In the grand scheme of things, they simply don’t matter.
And that’s the one good thing to come out of all of this: a better perspective. Some things simply don’t matter and it’s good to be able to tell the difference between a big issue and a minor annoyance.
I think I’m a little wiser for the experience.