Cholesterol

Tom's cholesterol is high. Apparently, they're prone to that in his family, even though they LOOK healthy. I do not want my booper to have a heart attack in his 50s.

So, the doctor's first order is three months of exercise, then re-checking the cholesterol to see if that's helping. If not, it's medication time. The doctor says our diet is fine (unless we want to ADD fish, which of course, we do not).

But what IS exercise? I asked the doctor. Everyone's definition is different. For example, Tom does what could be described as sustained low-level exercise for long periods of time--light yardwork, long walks in the woods, long walks all over campus delivering paperwork to various bastards who can't get their shit straight.

No, that won't do it, says the doctor, who is a middle-aged, very depressed black man. Once, while rewriting a scrip for my crazy pills, he sighed deeply and told me that his taking crazy pills is what saved his marriage, and that sometimes medication really is the best way. The only time I have seen true happiness on this man's face was when I saw him at the beginning of the year when I was on death's door with a spazming esophagus. It was an unusual affliction, you know, and doctors can't help but perk up when they see unusual afflictions.

No, the exercise must be 45 minutes of sustained moderate-to-heavy aerobic exercise, NOT counting warm-up and cool-down time. At least three times a week. Poor Tom must sweat on the treadmill for three hours a week, basically.

We do own a treadmill. It's a walmart special, cost about $200, and works fine. We bought it a few months ago and I fully expect the motor to burn out and die before we hit the 18-month mark. That's okay when you compare the cost to that of a gym membership.

Anyway, I told poor, dejected Tom that I would do the time on the treadmill too, so that he wouldn't be alone in his treading hell.

We'll see what THAT does to my weightloss ticker. It may LOOK like I'm losing a lot of weight, but really, I just made the ticker shorter. It's an illusion. But today and Friday, I'm going to be doing that horrible prescribed exercise. Then next week on MWF, too. We'll see what that does to me.

In other news, my long-time best friend and sometimes pain-in-the-ass Sara is going out on a date with our beloved friend and ALWAYS pain-in-the-ass Jerry Williams tonight. Ha!