Tag: Health

  • Lost Night of Sleep

    We had a rough night of sleep. More like, we had a rough night of not sleeping.

    I’m a night owl, and if I had my choice, I would stay a night owl forever! But, I’m not twenty-four anymore, and as I have more things to live for, and as get closer to my death and further from my birth, I am starting to take my health more seriously. In that regard, I am trying to get more sleep to help regulate my body, or whatever it is that my doctor told me I needed to do to lose weight, and live for a long time.

    I have been making progress. I got one of those health apps on my phone, and I have noticed that I am moving from five hours of sleep, to very closely to getting six hours of sleep. The goal is seven, and if one day comes and I get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, I might actually be dead.

    Then last night, we had a rough one.

    My daughter normally is a great sleeper. Like, she’s out in five minutes after hitting the pillow. In fact, she’s always been like that, even as a baby. We had very few nights where she was cranky and wouldn’t sleep. It was a blessing that we were very grateful to receive. Yet, last night wasn’t her night.

    See, she had a test this morning at school, and even though she’s an A+ student and on top of all her school work, tests do make her very anxious. So, before bed, we talked about her feelings, what she was nervous about, what she hoped would happen. All the normal steps we take when she has a very important day in the morning. And after we put her to bed, she was back up in about ten minutes. We did the same thing again, and talked through all of her feelings, making sure she knew we were here to support her no matter what happened, and also building up her confidence for taking the test.

    She was down for about an hour, and then she got up again, but this time she was sleep walking. This is also a normal reaction that she has when there is a big day ahead of her. Usually, we can gently get her back into bed. But last night, she was up three more times, and with each occurrence, she was angrier and angrier. And each time, we remained calm, got her back into bed, and tried to sooth her to sleep. The final episode was at 1am, and I have to be up at 5:30 to get our family going.

    And she was tired this morning when I got her up, but she had no memory of the night before. She remembers getting up the first time, but nothing else. I don’t believe that the kid is trying to deceive me, I don’t think she was lying. I know that the best thing to do in these situations is not to draw too much attention to the night before, and make her feel guilty. It happened, and we are all okay, and we are all here to support each other.

    On the way to school this morning, she was bubbly, and said she was ready for her test. Then we ran into a friend, and the two of them talked Percy Jackson books, and summer camps. I guess she’s okay; I mean, I won’t know till after school. She seems okay, but sometimes that isn’t always the truth.

  • Working Out Together

    Who does this? I’m not judging; just wondering if I know any friends, couples actually, who go and workout together? I see this couple activity depicted in tv and movies, and there sure does seem to be a great number of people on social media presenting videos of them and their significant other lifting weights, running, or drinking protein shakes together. They seem to be enjoying each other’s company. Now and then, at the gym or in the park, I will see a couple running together, so I know it happens.

    The reason I ask is that the wife and I might start working out together. OR to be more accurate, both of us will be in the gym at the same time. See, I run and the wife does yoga. Recently, after a back issue, her doctor suggested that she might want to start lifting some weights. She does have a membership to the gym I go to, a perk of her job, so she thought that we should go together on the same day… you know, to help motivate each other.

    I’m not opposed to this idea. I just never saw us as a workout couple on our life BINGO card. When this happens at the gym, she’ll go to her weight machine, and I’ll head to the treadmill. After thirty minutes, we’ll leave together. Maybe we’ll talk about “gains” but I doubt it.

    And I would say that this is the unexpected path that middle-aged life is taking us on. I still hate working out, but I at least know that working out 30 minutes a day, five days a week, can have a huge positive impact on your health. So, I’m not stupid. It’s just not my favorite thing to do. Call it an “eating your vegetable” problem – I know it’s good for me.

    I never really thought about what being middle aged would be like, because I never really thought that I’d be middle aged. Not that I would die young or anything like that; I just never thought about being bald, with a little tummy pudge, worrying about retirement and the cost of college for the kid. Thinking about my life with the wife, I just assumed we’d get older, but look the same, and drink and smoke, eat food we want to eat, never change, and and stay up late every night.

    Didn’t turn out that way. I’m not unhappy about the way things worked out; most of it is pretty great. But now I have things in my life that I want to spend as much time with as possible, and though it’s like fighting the tide, if I can snatch some extra time, I will.

    So, we’re going to the gym together.

  • Going to the Doctor

    This morning, my wife had a small procedure done to relieve the back pain she’s been experiencing for the last two months. I escorted her to the doctor’s office for the shot, and I did absolutely nothing, other than be her support spouse, helping her relax and be calm. Hopefully, the pain will go on its way, and she can start to return to the life style she is used to.

    And as I sat outside of the exam room, reading and waiting for my wife the emerge in a better state, it became apparent to me that we had entered a new stage in our lives together; accompanying each other to the doctor.

    Outside of when my wife was pregnant, as I wanted to be there for all of those appointments and experience the sonograms and updates on our child’s in utero development, we did involve the other with our health appointments. Before, going to see the doctor had been a solo experience; a chore to be done and not meant to burden the other partner because nothing bad was going to happen – it was all routine.

    Now, we are in the age of being nervous of what might happen, or I need help getting home after, or I need you there when I find out the result.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Slipping on Ice, How’s Your Colon?, and Call Your Mom

    (Look for the silver lining)

    I had to do the Alt Side Parking dance this morning. You know, move the car out of the way for the street sweeper. Also, if you didn’t hear, we had a real snow storm on Tuesday. Though most of it’s gone, what’s left is the snow that melted and then refroze. So there are patches of ice everywhere. And as I was walking to my car this morning, I stepped on a patch. I lost my balance for a second but was able to catch myself and stop from falling. To do this, I had the yelp in a frightened manner and wave my arms around. The point here is that I didn’t fall though I might have looked silly. And I know this because a guy driving by rolled down his window to yell, “We all saw you almost bite it!” New Yorkers will never miss an opportunity to bust someone’s balls. Ahh.. it was funny. I laughed it off and the guy wishes me a good morning.

    I have now reached the age where friends are not only starting to post pictures about their pets and kids, but also on how they have to go get colonoscopies. I mean, when you reach a certain age, you should get it checked out, so I don’t view this as oversharing. More like Gen-X is ready to take on cancer.

    She’d like to hear from you.

  • The Cardiologist

    When it comes to my overall health, like how healthy am I, I would say I’m okay. I’ve made no excuses for having not taken my health seriously for the past couple of years. Covid didn’t help, but I have put on twenty pounds over the past four years. The weight isn’t really the issue, it’s the fact that I stopped making my health a priority. Since last year, I have been making a more concerted effort. Though I mess up often, I still try to improve things, and I’m at it again.

    Part of my motivation to get back in a healthy place is my daughter, and wife. Not only do I want to be alive with them as along as possible, but I also want to set a healthy example for the kid. The other part is that when my older brother was my age, he had a stint put in after he noticed some pain in his jaw while working out. He immediately saw his doctor, and ended up getting that stint as he had a serious blockage in an artery. Then a few months later, the same thing happened to my father; working out, then jaw pain, but he ended up having a bypass. All of this was almost ten years ago, but I learned the lesson- pay attention to the warning signs.

    You see where I’m going here – I got jaw pain. This was about two weeks ago, and I was sitting on the couch, so my thought wasn’t heart attack, but that I needed to see the dentist. Then it went away, and would come back, and go away again. But the pain never showed up when I would work out. I again chalked it up to a dental problem.

    Then this weekend, we were taking our Christmas decoration boxes to storage, which meant I was running up and down the stairs in our walk up building, and I just couldn’t catch my breath. I knew I had let myself go a little, so being out of breath was expected, but I felt that I could catch up. And then I got a little jaw pain.

    It did pass, but I’m not stupid. I told my wife what was happening and made an appointment to see the cardiologist. I would see him Monday afternoon.

    And that started the long wait until I saw the doctor. I’m a high functioning neurotic person, so that was like one of the worse things that could happen to me. Luckily, the kid was off of school for MLK Day, so she distracted me. But in the back of my head, that thought of being told that I was moments from death, that I needed surgery NOW! was clearly fighting to get in the driver’s seat of my conciseness. It wasn’t that I thought I was going to die, but more like something would be found that would change everything.

    But I went, nervous as I was. I have a feeling that the cardiologist’s office sees a great number of middle aged men that are too nervous at being there. I kept trying to remind myself that everything that would happen, would all be things that would help me start to feel better. I said that to myself as I lay on the table, staring up at the ceiling as the technician ran a cardiogram on me. I was listening to hear if the technician made any sound that would signify that they saw something negative and detrimental from the results. I bet they all take a class about how not to have a tell in front of patients, because the tech gave nothing away.

    When the doctor came in, he asked me for my story. I tried to keep it to the point, just facts no flourishes; jaw pain a few weeks ago and thought it was a tooth ache, did a physical task of running up and down stairs which caused jaw pain and shortness of breath, brother and father had jaw pain which lead to the discovery of their heart issues, out of an abundance of caution and the family history I am here to make sure there are no issues with me. He asked me follow up questions, but I got a feeling that he didn’t believe that I had a heart issue. Now, he did tell me I did the right thing to come in and check it out, and he wanted me to get an echocardiogram, which he would send that technician in to do next.

    And I waited. I did bring a book, so I didn’t waste the time, but still, I waited for awhile. Then a new technician came in to tell me that they were still waiting for approval from my insurance to get the echocardiogram. I didn’t ask this, but my first thought was what if the insurance company says no to the test? It made me rather annoyed, as why does the insurance company get to decide what I need rather than me or my doctor, but that’s an angry blog for another day. When the tech returned, she had said excitedly, “You’re Approved!” which was nice to hear, but still left me feeling like I was at the mercy of a corporation.

    When the test was being run, and the wand was placed on my heart, I again tried to gage off the technician if she was seeing something awful. Just like the last technician, they had a good poker face. Then the doctor popped in. He leaned over the tech’s shoulder looking at the screen and said, “Everything looks okay. We’ll schedule you for a stress test, and I’ll talk to you then.” and he was gone. The echocardiogram went on for like another fifteen minutes, but in essence I was done.

    That was it. “Everything looks okay.” I took to mean that I wasn’t dying, and that there didn’t look like anything was killing me. My health was okay.

    Right? That was the correct way to interpret that. Because if something looked bad in my results, they would have said something. I’m not crazy for thinking that, right?

    So, I went home. Had a glass of wine with the wife, ordered noodles, ate with the family, and watched the Cowboys defeat the Bucs while texting with friends. Just going back to living my life like normal. I’ll go to the gym, like normal. Shop for groceries, like normal. Just live normal. I need to go see the dentist, right?

    I guess I’m okay, and this is what being in your forties is like. Something hurts, I think it’s life threatening, I see a doctor, and I go back to normal.

    Huh…