After I was diagnosed with heart disease, I asked the surgeon who would be doing my bypass operation if it could wait until the summer. He didn’t respond, “Well, it’s your funeral,” so I assumed it would be okay.
For some reason, neither my friends nor my family finds this amusing.
After the diagnosis, everybody immediately became a concerned expert on my diet. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t take recreational drugs. And, now, apparently, I wasn’t going to be allowed to eat, either. Suddenly, my long-standing joke about living the life of a monk wasn’t nearly so amusing.
This was so not fair. My father didn’t have to radically change his diet until he was 55, a good decade older than I am. Of course, he was motivated to change his diet by having a triple bypass operation on his heart, but still...
An example of how the people around me became food police might give you an idea of what I was up against. At our regular Friday night family dinner, my sister Lisa (still thinking there was an outside chance that I would live forever) limited me to one greasy onion ring. She didn’t have the physical power to enforce her will; this was not prison, after all. (Hey! - if that’s the way you see family interaction, that’s your issue, isn’t it?) She just gave me the “If you die, I will make you feel guilty for an eternity” look.
It’s more effective than force. I only ate the one onion ring. While she was watching. A friend of mine suggested the family take up a collection to see a nutritionist. I am not making this up. I kind of wish I was. My parents kicked in $100; my sister and friend pledged another $50 each. I felt like a kid in a wheelchair at a Jerry Lewis telethon — those aren’t tears of gratitude, friends, they’re tears of humiliation.
I thought they were all wrong, of course. If there ever was a time to eat food that’s bad for me, it’s now. In a few months, an operation will help clean out my system; in the meantime, I’ve got a free pass to all the cheeseburgers and chili fries one man can eat!
The diet police pointed out that I had to survive to the operation. Loudly. Repeatedly. Honestly, there were more histrionics than in the final season of Six Feet Under. Okay, okay, I started eating more fruits and salads. I’m a sucker for Six Feet Under references.
Meanwhile, I had to get a prescription of heart medicine renewed; my heart specialist told me to talk to my family doctor. Looking over the heart specialist’s notes, my family doctor told me that the heart disease was actually quite advanced, that it had obviously been developing for a long, long, time. Now you tell me! I’m halfway through teaching two courses, figuring I have the time, and now you get around to mentioning that my condition is serious?
I asked my family doctor what I could do about my condition, and he immediately prescribed pills to get rid of the “bad” cholesterol. (I have an image of cholesterol in a trench coat hanging around the entrance to an artery going, “Psst, kid. You want some fatty acids? I got some - very tasty. You look like a nice kid, so, I tell you what – first blockage is on the house!”)
My cholesterol was 6.4. This didn’t seem all that bad to me. Okay, it’s a “c,” which is only an average mark. But, it seemed minor when compared to my temperature (98.6) or my weight (none of your bloody business). As it happens, normal cholesterol levels are just over 2; scale is everything.
Already being on more drugs than I’m comfortable with, I ask him if maybe I could just change my diet. He says I should cut down on eggs (which I don’t really eat) and red meat (which we don’t eat much in my household any more since my father’s heart...troubles). Then, he tells me that changing my diet isn’t going to do much.
No?
You see, son, there are two types of heart disease: dietary and hereditary. Dietary heart disease is caused by eating too much pickled herring, and can be substantially cured by eating less of what causes it (like.. .say.. .pickled herring). Hereditary heart disease, by way of contrast, is caused by choosing to be born to the wrong parents, and can only be cured by the most expensive interventions modern medicine can provide.
Wow. You know what this means.
I’ve got $200 to party with!