New deal

Merde.

Pardon my French, but I'm more than a little upset that my body, which has served me fairly well for half a century, has chosen the Best Year Ever to turn on me.

Several months ago, my doctor put me on a blood pressure medicine after rightly issuing a stern admonition to lose a lot of weight.

This was the first prescription medicine I've ever taken, and I wasn't at all happy that I had allowed myself to get so fat that I needed to take a drug to keep me from stroking out.

On Monday I was back in his office for a routine checkup, quite a bit lighter than I was during the last visit, but still heavy enough that Dr. Marshall felt it necessary to beat me up a little more on the obesity front.

Then, yesterday afternoon the phone rang. It was Tina from Dr. Marshall's office with the results of my blood work. She read out a bunch of numbers, but the bottom line was that my borderline high blood sugar had barely crossed some sort of unhappy threshold since my last test and my cholesterol levels had gone from not very good to pretty darn terrible. Tina informed me that the doctor was now putting me on a second prescription medicine to go after the cholesterol issue.

"Dr. Marshall left me a note to read to you," Tina said ominously. What followed was a fairly extensive diatribe on the evils of red meat, simple carbs, sugar, salt, obesity and the virtues of exercise and fresh vegetables. "And he wants you to come back next month for another blood test," Tina finished. I was self-righteously ticked off when I hung up the phone.

Okay, I'll admit it--I'm way guilty on some of the charges. I eat way too much white bread, white rice, potatoes, salt and red meat. But I'm totally innocent on the exercise and sugar indictments. I consume almost no sugar or sugared drinks and I've been working out more in the last six months than I have in many, many years. And, I've actually been losing weight, haven't I? Doesn't that count for something?

I admit that I have increased the simple carbs and bad red meats (like hot dogs and hamburger) in my diet over the last several months, mostly because the Best Year Ever plan includes scrimping money and those foods are cheap; so I can see how my cholesterol and blood sugar levels have gone up since my last blood test.

It's unfair. My reward for thrift is a second prescription drug, and one that I'm not pleased about taking. The pharmacist pointed out that one side effect of the statin drug I'm now on is that it can impair the user's liver function, so it's important for me to get a blood test for that now every year. "It's too bad that it can wreck the thing you've only got one of," she said a little too cheerfully for my taste.

Merde.

So now I'm on two different drugs, and I've got to continue to lose weight, eliminate salt and sugar from my diet and watch my intake of simple carbs and red meats. I can deal with one or maybe two of these at one time, but I don't know how I'm going to handle working through all of these things at once. After some deep thought, I've concluded my diet must now consist entirely of raw broccoli and prescription drugs in order to follow my doctor's laundry list of dos and don'ts.

For the last 50 years, my body and I had an arrangement. I was to eat and drink whatever I wanted in whatever quantities I desired, sleep as little as possible and exercise only when the mood struck. In return, my body was to keep on running without issue or complaint. That was our deal, and it worked out pretty well for both of us for a long time. Now, apparently the arrangement has changed, and I don't like the new deal one bit.