Thursday, September 17, 2009

TAKING A SECOND LOOK, ON SEPTEMBER 17

REMEMBERING MY DAYS OF YES OR WHY I RESENT CHOLESTEROL

There may be an unspoken side to the current battle over health care reform. It has to do with cholesterol. If I can say this to my doctor, I can say it here. I hate the day I learned to spell cholesterol...!

Not just spelling it, but understanding it. We're always told knowledge is power, but the power of this medical knowledge has helped shatter a once blissfully ignorant life. I mean, think about it. All those giddy days when three or four eggs for breakfast, thick juicy hamburgers, salty french fries, exotically-sauced ethnic foods, and free-form slabs of German chocolate cake were all there for the joyous taking. No doubts, no guilts, no lingering regrets.

But now -- well, now that I've been victimized by today's incessant babble of medical knowledge, my breakfasts feature shredded wheat! my lunch breaks include sliced pears and crackers! my dinners are broiled fishes I can't even pronounce! and desserts, they've vanished in a blizzard of fat-content labels! I am no longer the happy Huckleberry boy of my uninformed youth. And I resent it.

OK, so my doctor is pleased. Maybe even Congress is, because I may now cost Medicare less. But while my numbers have improved, I ask myself -- what do my newly unclogged arteries do for my happiness...? My playfulness...? That rhapsodic gusto for food that once made me a jolly green giant of a man and a citizen? Instead, this medical knowledge/power has helped make me tense, short-tempered, a walking galaxy of gastronomical guilts. This is not fun. For either me or the nice citizens around me.

Yes, yes, I am persuaded by my doctors (and those conflicting medical studies that infest my daily Tribune) that I am now healthier. That I feel better. That I will live longer. That I will save Medicare added costs. And yet, I have my tummy-deprived doubts. I don't really feel any healthier. Or better. And as for living longer, everyone has an Uncle Joe who lived to 95 on diets of eggs, pasta and beer!

So I am left with a 21st century conundrum. Yes, we have important new access to more knowledge about more things in my life. But so many of them start with "no!" I can't help it. I remember my days of "yes." To eggs, ethnic sauces, chocolate cake, and cars from Detroit. Why, I ponder, does knowledge always seem to mean that whatever we like is bad for us, and whatever we don't is good for us? The Bible? the Torah? the Koran? the New England Journal of Medicine? I search them all for an answer in vain.

I just wish happy-go-lucky Uncle Joe were still here to tell me (and Congress) how he did it...!

2 comments:

  1. This is an interesting piece which raises good questions...cut out everything you love in "hopes" of living longer, but be left with the cravings...or be like Uncle Joe, eat what you want, enjoy it to the fullest, and take your chances on living a long happy "full" life.

    I'm like a seesaw with this one...the old theory you are what you eat vs. eat dessert first cuz you never know.....

    I guess it comes down to finding that "happy medium"....but I'm not sure where that is!

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  2. Ahh, Nicole, neither is anyone else!! We humans are such frail foolish creatures at times. But the happy medium is of course the answer -- one for each of us to find! Good luck on YOUR search...I'M trying like the rest of us!

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