My holiday week off means a bit more than just cutting the cords of work on a yearly basis. Yep, sometime between Christmas and New Years, I give myself the annual gift of health. That's when I have my annual physical.
I have some friends who wonder why I subject myself to this smack in the middle of the holidays.
"What if it's bad news? You've ruined your Christmas!"
I opt for the flip side. I'll assume it's good news and start my new year off right.
So, I head off last week to my wonderful and extremely young internist in Los Angeles. He's so youthful that I'm thinking Doogie Howser may have babysat him. Nevertheless, the guy is terrific because he's obviously read a magazine or two and can actually get on the computer, as opposed to those other practitioners who remember when Lucy Ricardo gave birth in prime time. I have three friends who just had their family doctors die of old age. Not me. I want a guy who didn't vote for FDR in any of the four election years he ran.
Of course, my physical was preceded a week earlier by extensive blood work. This way, my doctor can analyze the results with me in-person, making our session so much more productive than just "inhale, exhale."
Well, the naysayers to my annual physical timing during holiday week can be "harumphed" one more time. I passed with flying colors. The cholesterol count? Best in years. The HDL and LDL and NHL and all those other abbreviations nobody can make sense of? Best ever.
Organ-wise, everything plays the right notes when they have to. My weight actually went up five pounds. Normally, this is nothing something I want to hear, but he notes that the gain was all fat converted to muscle, thanks to my physical training twice a week. Still, I want to go down and not up, so future sessions will include a bit more cardio-vascular.
Overall, my grade for the 2011 physical was....98.
You may be asking. Len, with all that perfectness, what the hell did you lose two points for?
Well, straight from the "perfect timing department," my annual exam happened to coincide with the painful manifestation of my most recent physical training mishap. Regular readers will know that I originally began that training as a means to strengthen my cartilege-less and acutely arthritic right knee and stave off as long as possible that hinge replacement surgery you get at either St. John's Hospital or the Home Depot. So far, this has paid off.
Except now a particular exercise involving squats on a gravity rack is having the opposite effect.
It's screwing up my left knee.
Periodically, the squat rotation makes my left joint a bit "dodgy" as the Brits might say. A bit inflamed and difficult to bend. The biggest nuisance during one of those flare-ups is the pain-laden inability to sit on the one seat in the house into which all nature flows.
Okay, so I had one of these muscular arsenals last week as I was seeing Doogie Howser MD Jr.. A rare happenstance, indeed. How many times do you go into the car mechanic about that funny noise that magically seems to stop when they've got your hood open? Well, I got lucky. Not only was my knee making that funny noise but it also was swollen. No mystery here.
Well, the diagnosis was....the onset of arthritis in my left knee.
Kill me now.
Years of being the one good leg that was acting as sole support for the bad leg that has bothered me since high school finally took its toll on the healthy hinge. Now, I face the rest of my life with two bum wheels and I probably need to start paying more attention to those Hoveround wheel chairs they sell on day time television in the middle of those Matlock reruns. And back in consideration after an extended absence are the magic acupuncture needles of Dr. Gua in Encino.
So, my contingent of Negative Nellies in the friendship department are vindicated slightly. You got your bad news, Len, right in the middle of the holidays.
As for me, I will suck it all up and enjoy the 98 score I got overall. Today is another day and another year. I head off to personal trainer Christina this afternoon and we will figure out some way to beat this and get those two damn points back in my column.
Dinner last night: A slice of apple pie since I had a late lunch at Ye Olde King's Head---a British BLT sandwich.
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