“Every time I do an Internet search for my symptoms, it says I have cancer,” moaned Spectre. “What symptoms?” asked Sprite. “Running nose,” sighed Spectre. “Is that it?” asked Sprite. “It’s been running for four days,” grumbled Spectre. “How do I stop my nose running?” “Have you tried tripping it up?” asked Yuffie. ~ Enjoy…
“For, with a ship’s gear, as well as a sailor’s wardrobe, fine weather must be improved to get ready for the bad to come.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor’s Life at Sea
Call me “somewhat concerned” with my deterioration during and after naval service. Thirty years ago, I was prescribed steroids for some medical issues. Twenty years ago, my appendix ruptured at the start of the Labor Day weekend holiday. I was recuperating for a month. I started to put on weight (happily-married weight) ten years ago. And three years ago, after getting too obsessed with cycling exercise, using clipless pedals I fell and broke my wrist in three places. A year ago, I self-diagnosed that an annual or semi-annual trip to the ER ( for ten years) was due to a food allergy to capsaicin. Now that I have sworn off the spicy food or food containing bell peppers I ate for more than 30 years I am not poisoning myself.
This year I seem to have been crushed by flu and colds. First year in three that I didn’t get a flu vaccine. Congestion and nasal drip that chokes me at night will persist for a month, then off for a month or two and then come back just to be annoying. With some of the crazy medical issues I’ve encountered over my life, I don’t understand how I don’t have anemia like my late mother ( and low blood pressure) Nor do I have high blood pressure or a brain tumor like my late father (in his twenties). Instead, I find myself obsessed with breathing.
I always associated breathing problems with asthma, chain-smokers, or the people who live in horribly polluted environments. I visited Samsun, Turkey one winter while in the Navy, and the coal smoke was literally down to waist-level height by the port . (And they were chain smokers as well.) I only in the last couple years started smoking the occasional cigar figuring that after age 50, would take twenty or thirty years to harm me. I probably now have only smoked a half dozen cigars in six months. In the next six months I will quit entirely. I am very aware that my more sedentary life outside of the Navy renders me more susceptible to ills. An article I read online tells me a healthier diet and exercise will counter the phlegm that is making breathing at night a chore.
Of course, I may have to cough up a lung or two exercising in my deteriorated state, to get healthier.
My mother had outpatient cataract surgery on Thursday. It’s amazing the possible upgrades, replacements, enhancements and other medical procedures which can be done these days – even into our old age. But, assuming that healthcare is going universal in the US sometime soon, I can only imagine the complexity of the bureaucracy which will be introduced. From the number and variety of questions that the eye clinic’s intake specialist pleasantly fired off at my mother, I would have thought it was her first visit to that clinic, that she had not paid sums in addition to her insurance, and that computers histories were not instantly available on each patient. If this encounter was any clue, we may hope for longer lifespans, if only to complete the forms and actually be treated by a doctor. Until such time as the system gets hopelessly bogged down, my mother will be able to read and understand, if not be as enthusiastic in filling out forms and questionaires – as long as the administrators realize that she may require their attention by critiquing and circling the questionaires omnipresent grammatical and spelling errors.
Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories 