A Petard of One's Own

This has been a week of distractions and unexpected inconveniences, none of which so far have proven fatal or even debilitating. Given the current climate of re-rampaging both plague and evidence of human propensity to disregard even the minimal fucking effort required to forego (or even temporarily redirect) their own suffering and misery, it seems in poor taste to complain, but I once did a whole post about a single *NSYNC album, without reservation or shame. Poor taste is less an impediment than a mission statement around here.

Some of the inconveniences are outside of my control, or at least no longer in my control. Like some of them I could have done something about, but that would have required action more than two decades ago before I decided to have children. When those are a problem I find them the hardest to complain about as there's nothing more comprehensively self-inflicted* than procreation.

I've been told by women my age that I'm unusual in that I make the effort to get a physical done every year, which I find a little baffling. From everything I've heard since I was old enough to hear things, men die earlier than women do. One assumes a certain percentage of those early deaths involve most of the things you'd see in a Jackass movie, only in the instances where no one was getting paid to do any of it and if it were being filmed, it would probably be illegal to show it in most distribution platforms given the end result. I'm trying to teach myself not to automatically gender ideas or actions or events, but if I hear someone died being pushed down a hill locked inside an old refrigerator, it's not that I assume it can't be a group of girls, it's just that I'm going to have to see a lot more evidence before I start to reorder my presumptions.

So I make an effort to show up at my doctor's office on a yearly basis. It helps that she's a very nice lady I've been going to for 20 years or more now. She's compassionate and thorough and in possession of the kind of comprehensive professionalism that won't allow her to indulge in a chuckle when I make jokes around being uncomfortable ahead of the prostate check. How many medical practitioners have the grace to save you not only from heart disease or liver failure but also from terrible dad-comedy hackdom? That's full service.

One of the inconveniences this week was in preparation for my visit, making time to go get blood drawn by a person whose job it is to steal blood from humans who volunteer for the process, which will never not be weird to me. I'm very attached to my blood and I have a very primal vested interest in keeping it on the shady side of my skin. But the nice lady (and it's always a lady for some reason) steals it quickly and painlessly, in almost insultingly prosaic little glass vials that match none of the mortal melodrama of the occasion.

The first time I went in yesterday, I had forgotten I was required to fast for 12 hours before giving. So I had to slink away after having girded all that needed girding to undergo the procedure. So it was twice as inconvenient as I had to make more time this morning after not eating for the whole time I was asleep to go and actually accomplish the thing.

Now I wait. I wait to see what the results are on my now four-year mission to stay off of statins by controlling my cholesterol with just dietary changes. No red meat, no fatty pork, no cheese, no egg yolks, nothing, for four years. I know it's a losing battle, but I've fought the world-sized whirlpool that draws us all into pharmaceutical dependency to a lengthy, exhausting draw to this point. But I figure if I don't make an effort to save myself, who will? Besides pharmaceuticals, I guess. Those have saved lots of people. Fuck.

---

*In all but the most horrible of cases, of course