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Bloodwork & Strange Memories
Dec. 27th, 2007 06:26 pm
Well, Rob got bloodwork ordered by the new doc & his results were somewhat startling - his triglycerides are off the charts. 450mg/dll where 150 is the high side of normal. He is what the doctor calls 'pre-diabetic'. No more starchy goodness for him. Of course, it's also up to him to decide on what he wants to do about it, or if he wants to do anything about it at all.
This morning before I went to bed, coming home in the icy chill that is high desert winter, I started thinking about my birth day. I was born early New Year's Eve during a freak snowstorm. It sounds cliche, freak snowstorm, but believe me, any snow in Fontana is best defined as freak snow. Over 18" fell on the San Bernardino Mountains & Victorville got 17" over 3 days or so. The mini-blizzard lasted almost 5 days, ending w/snow flurries in Palm Springs. It's kinda funny because I had a difficult birth, breech & blue. When my dad first took my mother to the hospital, they almost sent her home because she was having 'false labor pains'. The only reason they didn't send her home was because it had started snowing outside & the nurses made the judgment call that it would be better for her to just stay in the hospital over night instead of driving almost 2 hrs home & possibly having to come back to the hospital in the middle of a blizzard. My dad went home after it became apparent that my mother wasn't going to make like a pinata any time soon, and he couldn't get back to the hospital until early on the 2nd of January.
If it hadn't been for the snowstorm, my mother would have gone home & endured a horrible birth, possibly dying in the process. And I wouldn't be here today. So I started wondering to myself, Who is to blame for the storm? And why? Why was either my mother's or my life so important that a snowstorm had to be engineered to ensure my or her survival? It snapped power lines, collapsed roofs & impeded traffic, but no one died... It was just a freak snowstorm. Now, it could all be pure coincidence, but it's one of those things that makes me go, "Hmmm..." And it kinda pisses me off. Sure, a freak snowstorm can be whipped up so I can be born live, but can I ever win Megabucks when it's over $1 million?
I feel bad sometimes because when people are really down, even to the point of contemplating suicide, I never have any encouraging words to offer them. Never can say, "Hey, life is worth living, you don't know what you'll miss out on." All those things to cheer people up & steer their minds away from the pain & suffering that is every day life. I can bolster a person's sense of self-worth, I can inflate egos, I can instill confidence and self-esteem... but I could never work at a suicide hotline. For me, the people calling would be like a suicide tip line. I could take notes on all the plans, survey their potential success rate, choose a suicide plan that best fit my needs and possibly save 15% or more in the process (snork, I kill me). "Hey, call me back after you try it so I know whether it worked or not!"
We were watching ST: Voyager earlier & it was the episode where the doctor got kidnapped by a medical facility. They had a drug that was being used to prevent arterial aging & it was also used to cure a virus or disease. The arterial aging patients were basically wealthy people whereas the virus was an equal-opportunity infectious agent. The medical facility operated kind of like an insurance-run company where so much of the drug was allotted to each level of patients. Well, the doctor didn't like the fact that the drug was being used freely on the one level w/the wealthy patients & was being withheld from the really sick patients, so he ended up giving the main administrator a dose of the virus to coerce him into changing the allottment policies. I looked up at Rob & said something like, "HMO's suck!" because that's what the episode makes me think of & he replied, "What, Holographic Medical Officers?" It was truly a classic one-liner coming from Rob, & I Rofl'd all over the place.
This morning before I went to bed, coming home in the icy chill that is high desert winter, I started thinking about my birth day. I was born early New Year's Eve during a freak snowstorm. It sounds cliche, freak snowstorm, but believe me, any snow in Fontana is best defined as freak snow. Over 18" fell on the San Bernardino Mountains & Victorville got 17" over 3 days or so. The mini-blizzard lasted almost 5 days, ending w/snow flurries in Palm Springs. It's kinda funny because I had a difficult birth, breech & blue. When my dad first took my mother to the hospital, they almost sent her home because she was having 'false labor pains'. The only reason they didn't send her home was because it had started snowing outside & the nurses made the judgment call that it would be better for her to just stay in the hospital over night instead of driving almost 2 hrs home & possibly having to come back to the hospital in the middle of a blizzard. My dad went home after it became apparent that my mother wasn't going to make like a pinata any time soon, and he couldn't get back to the hospital until early on the 2nd of January.
If it hadn't been for the snowstorm, my mother would have gone home & endured a horrible birth, possibly dying in the process. And I wouldn't be here today. So I started wondering to myself, Who is to blame for the storm? And why? Why was either my mother's or my life so important that a snowstorm had to be engineered to ensure my or her survival? It snapped power lines, collapsed roofs & impeded traffic, but no one died... It was just a freak snowstorm. Now, it could all be pure coincidence, but it's one of those things that makes me go, "Hmmm..." And it kinda pisses me off. Sure, a freak snowstorm can be whipped up so I can be born live, but can I ever win Megabucks when it's over $1 million?
I feel bad sometimes because when people are really down, even to the point of contemplating suicide, I never have any encouraging words to offer them. Never can say, "Hey, life is worth living, you don't know what you'll miss out on." All those things to cheer people up & steer their minds away from the pain & suffering that is every day life. I can bolster a person's sense of self-worth, I can inflate egos, I can instill confidence and self-esteem... but I could never work at a suicide hotline. For me, the people calling would be like a suicide tip line. I could take notes on all the plans, survey their potential success rate, choose a suicide plan that best fit my needs and possibly save 15% or more in the process (snork, I kill me). "Hey, call me back after you try it so I know whether it worked or not!"
We were watching ST: Voyager earlier & it was the episode where the doctor got kidnapped by a medical facility. They had a drug that was being used to prevent arterial aging & it was also used to cure a virus or disease. The arterial aging patients were basically wealthy people whereas the virus was an equal-opportunity infectious agent. The medical facility operated kind of like an insurance-run company where so much of the drug was allotted to each level of patients. Well, the doctor didn't like the fact that the drug was being used freely on the one level w/the wealthy patients & was being withheld from the really sick patients, so he ended up giving the main administrator a dose of the virus to coerce him into changing the allottment policies. I looked up at Rob & said something like, "HMO's suck!" because that's what the episode makes me think of & he replied, "What, Holographic Medical Officers?" It was truly a classic one-liner coming from Rob, & I Rofl'd all over the place.
