You Can Eat All the Green Vegetables You Want.....Gee, Thanks!

A big part of my wake-up call after suffering a stroke was having to accept the fact that I was going to have to change my diet. Fast food burgers, pizza, and the multitude of sundaes, sub sandwiches, etc, etc, that I dearly loved were now verboten if I was going to avoid diabetes.

Having high blood pressure, I also needed to eliminate as much salt from my diet as well, and I quickly became obsessed with reading food lables to try and find something that was good for me and also tasted like food instead of cardboard. Let me tell you, it don't come easy.

Nutrtion websites proclaim loudly that you can eat all the vegetables you want and still have a healthy body. Problem is, at least to me, is that I have yet to meet a carrot that tastes like french fries or a monster pizza. Even a bargain brand ice cream beats broccoli hands down, unless the green stuff is smothered with melted Velveeta.

Then there's the no-salt thing. I never realized how much of a salt-o-holic I was until I started doing without, and with the amount of sodium loaded into almost every prepared food, canned vegetable, bakery goods, etc, it's really hard to avoid overload. Even my favorite frozen pancakes hold more salt than the Dead Sea!

At the beginning of my quest to eat better, I thought the biggest challenge would be controlling calories. At 6 feet tall, I weighed 240 pounds the day I came home from the horse-pital (just some equine humor--it's close to the day of the Preakness), so to reach my ideal weight I needed to shed some 60 pounds of "relaxed muscle". After eliminating carbs (sugar and those foods easily converted to sugar in the human body), and salt, I wasn't going to have to do much calculating to control calories. In 3 weeks, I lost 8 pounds, and with what I've been eating, I don't miss food all that much. Eating to live is a great slogan, but a lousy aperitif.

All in all, I have to admit that my diet is a lot healthier today than it was before my brain exploded, but I'm hoping some lonely scientist somewhere is on the verge of discovering a pill that gives one the metabolism of a hummingbird and the blood vessels of a giraffe. You see tadpole, because of their looong necks, giraffes have very high blood presure to shoot blood all the way up to their pointy little heads.

In spite of all that pressure, they suffer no ill effects. Go Tarzan!!!!

Ahhh...the New Packard We've Heard So Much About

I read in the paper that Obama Motors (the car compny formerly known as GM) may import cars from China as part of its future comeback strategy. That got me wondering; how in the world can you be sure the car you're buying is really 100% American made?

Then it hit me! With Obama opening up Cuba to American tourists, why not allow us to buy up all those old, pre-Glorious Revolution vehicles caught in that time-warp in the Carribean?

Si se pude!(yes, we can!)

Drugs for the Drug Rep

As part of the hospitalization after my recent stroke (or CVA--cerebrovascular accident), my cholesterol levels (LDL-180, HDL-39, TGs-116) and blood pressure were found to be high. I was also checked for diabetes, and although my HbA1c (6.1) didn't classify me as a full-blown diabetic, it wasn't low enough to let me follow any diet I wanted.

Part of my discharge paperwork included prescriptions for Toprol XL 50mg/day for blood pressure, Lipitor 20mg/day for cholesterol, and Aggrenox 25mg/200mg/day to prevent blood clots. In the space of one week, I had gone from taking Prilosec OTC for occasional heartburn, along with the intermittent aspirin or allergy med, to becoming a walking advertisement for the pharmaceutical industry.

Everything was proceeding without fanfare until I developed an allergic reaction to the Aggrenox. Being the type of guy who can't follow convention, I didn't get the common side affect of headache. Instead, I broke out in hives, my lips swelled, and I got short of breath. For a moment, I marvelled at the irony of surviving a brain injury only to die from a medication reaction. After the episode passed, I called my doctor and ended up on the cutting-edge medicine called aspirin. Why didn't they think of that the first go-round?

As a drug rep, part of my job is to explain to physicians why the meds I represent are important, what type of conditions they treat, and provide infomation re side affects. It always bothered me that doctors would be reluctant to prescribe a drug a patient really needed because of concerns about side affects. In my mind, the benefit of preventing a heart attack (or stroke), far outweighed worries about a headache or upset tummy. Now that I was on the other side of the debate, I better understood the impact adverse events have on patients.

Lots of people end up on lots of medications, and every additional agent adds another risk of reaction, not to mention interaction with other meds. Patients who suffer a severe reaction may end up stopping all their teatments, especially when it plays to the human desire to ignore health problems in the hope they'll go away on thir own.

In my case, my numb left side, and limp left arm and leg were constant reminders of what had happened to me, and were ominous indications of what lay ahead if I didn't change my ways. So I'm taking my meds, praying they'll do their job, and thanking God someone was smart enough to invent them and give me the chance to avoid another event.

As for the HbA1c level, I was going to have to improve my diet to keep from progressing on to full-blown diabetes. But that's a whole story unto itself.

The "Home" Front

After spending a very long, sleepless Thursday night in the hospital, it was great to be back home with Mrs MercMan, Daisy the Golden Puppy, and Grandma Gimlet, who graciously offered to stay over and help us out during my fall from good health. I ate the best dinner ever and slept the sleep of the saved in my own comfy bed.

Saturday went pretty well, considering I was still awfully shaky on my feet and my left arm was darn near useless AND numb. I felt good enough on Sunday that Grandma was able to go home herself when Mrs MercMan's brother John came by to visit in the p.m. I guess I should have known that my recovery wasn't going to happen overnight, but such are the dreams of fools and the recently injured.

Monday morning, I got out of bed and limped into the living room to turn off the outside light and open the front window curtains. I had just flipped off the light switch and started to back away from the front door when I lost my balance and collapsed onto the floor. Next thing I knew, I had 75 pounds of Golden Retriever licking my face while I tried to figure out how I was going to get back upright. With Mrs MercMan's help, I finally got back on my feet and scuttled to the kitchen to lick my wounds and have breakfast.

After eating, I went to the bathroom, where I decided I should get cleaned up by taking a bath. You can probably see wht's coming. In spite of having just fallen after merely backing up, how am I ever going to be able to get in and out of a bathtub, especially with a game arm? Exactly. I was able to lower into the tub just fine, but after washing off, the real dilemma came when I tried to push myself up on the side of the tub. I was able to get my good leg under me, but when I tried to balance with my left, I toppled over the edge of the tub and crashed heavily onto my left side on the bathroom floor, just missing the vanity's sharp edges and still clutching the soap dish I had pulled off the wall in a futile attempt to arrest my spill. As I lay dazed and embarrassed on the floor of our teeny tiny bathroom, Mrs MercMan and the aforementioned puppy tried to open the door without smacking me in the head! Except for the pain, cursing, and damaged fixtures, it was like a scene from some slapstick comedy. By Monday evening, I had some vicious-looking bruises and was convinced I was bound to be permanently disabled if I didn't knock my brains out the first week I was home.

So far, my return to North County was less than a triumph.