Tag Archives: health

The Chronicles of Hernia

According to a number of movies from the 40s and 50s, Christmas is a warm, wonderful time to gather with loved ones and sing carols, exchange gifts, and eat goodies—much like it was in first-century Palestine. And so, I thought to myself, what more appropriate time  than that of joyous celebratory yuletidiness to have an abdominal mesh inserted into my nether regions?  I went to see my doctor about just such a possibility.

For those unfamiliar, such a mesh is the long-term fix for what is known in medical jargon as a ‘hernia’. For laymen and Jim Fowler fans, a hernia is not a wheezy African dog; that would be a laughing hernia, which are more painful than a coughing hernia but less painful than a sneezing hernia. A medical hernia is Continue reading →

This is it! The Diet Starts…Monday

Oh how I love New Year’s with all of its revelry in celebration of an arbitrary moment in the incessantly monotonous passage of time.  What better reason to party?  What I don’t love however, is that it is (once again) time to be pressured into taking stock of my stockiness, throw my considerable weight around in considering my considerable weight, and ask myself why I don’t look like the touched-up models and celebrities I see in photo-shopped magazines and professionally enhanced videos.  Is it because I am (ulp) normal?

Well, I’ve (once gain) had it with being normal!  I look and feel like an average human!  Ugh!  And so over the New Year I have (once again) resolved to immerse my typical averageness in the very American and very lucrative dieting and starvation industry so I can more closely resemble the media fantasies we all know and worship. Continue reading →

Sicky Sicky Two-by-Four

In a controversial decision last week, the AMA (the American Medical Association, not the Amarillo International Airport, nor the Academy of Model Aeronautics, nor the text lingo for ‘Ask Me Anything’) declared obesity as a medical disease, making it kinda like cancer or HIV except that it’s not.   Perhaps you are old enough to remember that the AMA was opposed to Medicare, then opposed to cuts in Medicare, then opposed to universal health care under Clinton, then opposed to opposition of universal health care under Obama.

In a related story, the AMA’s preferred footwear is flip-flops.

Perhaps what makes this decision controversial is that it is so stupid. Continue reading →

Introverts Unite!

Okay, so I’m torqued, ticked, teed, and my O is P’d.  I’m going ballistic, nuclear and postal all at the same time which is causing my knickers to get all twisty and the area directly under my collar to get uncomfortably warm.   I’m fed up, fired up, riled up, worked up and so up in arms that I belong in a deodorant commercial.  I’m in a huff inside a snit enclosed in a tizzy.  I’m steamed and amped and at the end of both my rope and my wits resulting in my being bent out of shape.  When I cross the border into nearby Wisconsin, I am cheesed.

The reason that I’m throwing things like fits, conniptions, and tantrums is that I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of being oppressed.  That’s right, I’m being oppressed!
For those of you who are unaware, I fall into a segment of the population at large that is discriminated against almost as much as ugly people:  I am an introvert. Continue reading →

High Way to Health

Regular readers of this blog are obviously getting the USDA recommended allowance of dietary fiber. And if such readers also happen to comeback to this site from time to time, they will have noticed that I have recently, through no fault of my own, been the victim of healthcare.

After being molested by the staff of my local physician (to include a test for pertussis which involves scraping a sample of one’s frontal lobe via the nasal passages), I was diagnosed with pneumonia. Panic I did not, for I had had this dreaded disease before, albeit the “walking” version which I think means that I had pneumonia but not really—kind of like zombies are “walking dead,” meaning they are dead but not really or like Republicans are “walking conservatives,” meaning they are conservatives but not really. Continue reading →