Perspectives through Prose, Poetry and Photography
Since I happily left corporate chaos behind eighteen months ago, my calendar, once overflowing with teleconferences, meetings, travel and ‘to-do’ deadlines, is now regularly sprinkled with doctor appointments, diagnostic procedures and preventative check-ups.
It’s not that I hadn’t paid attention to my health when I was a stressed-out corporate exec, but without the business commitments cluttering every hour of every day, the “Fitness and Medical” category, tinted red, seems to jump off the page. In addition, I now log in those appointments for my husband as well, since we “travel in pairs” these days. Some of the time I’m actually sick or injured, like last year when I fractured my fibula, or more recently when I underwent a vitrectomy to repair the hole in my macula. But more often than not, thankfully, these appointments are preventative, rather than curative.
This morning, after a fourteen hour fast, I am doing (yet again) another lipids profile. Translation: though I am asymptomatic, and my cholesterol appears to be under control, I will sit in a technician’s cubicle, pumping my fist and pondering which arm will present the better vein. After my dutiful warnings and several failed attempts, he/she will give up and try the other arm, tapping frenetically in the hope that the thin blue line will pop up as a ripe target.
I will ignore the temptation to bloviate on that subject again, having already expounded on the joys of blood work in my post entitled “The Luck of the Draw”.
I write today, instead, about a conundrum: I endure tests and prods, mammograms and colonoscopies, hoping – trusting that in so doing I will uncover dastardly disease early; yet secretly fearing that if I keep looking under rocks I will inevitably find a slimy critter lurking.
Still, I embrace this conundrum, and tell myself that I am in control of those things under my control. I’ll plan my days and weeks around the scheduled services, and bemoan the clumsy intrusions into my veins.
In between, I will joyously live my life, playing with grandsons, taking long weekends to look at autumn foliage, singing, writing, laughing, loving and treasuring each new, glorious dawn.
Hope all will be well!
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Thanks…I survived the blood work…results In a few weeks!
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Rather this than someone who sweeps these things under the carpet, only to have little time left to backtrack…
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Absolutely!
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