My mother thought that you weren't really sick unless there was blood. Aches, fevers, and high temperatures were normal occurrences for children and I didn't miss a day of school from 1959 to 1966, despite twice suffering from extreme cases of poison ivy. If she was in charge of Health Care in America, the budget for medical treatment would drop to zero.
Last year my younger brother ignored a nagging chest pain. His wife asked him to go to the hospital.
"There's nothing wrong with me." My brother was his mother's son.
Several weeks later he and his family came to New York. His wife's cousin was marrying a Brahmin Hindu from Bombay. I took care of his two teenage kids while they were attending a fancy function. Later that evening he stormed into the hotel room with a large McDonald's bag in his hand.
"Damn, the food at the rehearsal dinner was uneatable. Veggies and more veggies. I'm not a cow. You think that they were trying to kill me with veggies." He pulled a double cheeseburger Happy Meal out of the bag. "Dad, you really should be careful about what you eat." His son warned in a quiet voice. "No one is going to live forever." He chomped into the burger. His kids grimaced at his resolve. They wanted him to live into their future and his diet of meat meat meat was a ticket to an early grave in their young eyes. Upon his return to Boston the chest pain worsened and he relented to his wife's pleas Being covered by a union plan he visited a hospital in Cambridge.
My dearly departed mother must have been rolling her eyes in heaven, until the doctors announced that Paddy was in immediate need of a by-pass operation.
"When?" Paddy had tickets to the Bruins-Canadians game that evening.
"Tomorrow morning?" The doctor was dead serious.
"I'll see you in the morning then." My younger brother had paid scalper's price for the seats.
"Yes, you will, but you're not going anywhere." The doctor explained to my brother that this was a life or death issue. His wife further begged him to stay overnight in the hospital. Paddy had one condition.
"I want a bacon-cheeseburger." It was a last meal request. His diet consisted of meat, fried foods, and more meat. "I want a cheeseburger. I want it now." He was acting like a little child and the nurses treated him as such. No cheeseburger and the next day Paddy went under the knife for eight hours for a quadruple bypass. Only a quintuple bypass is more extreme. The doctors discovered that his coronary system and arteries were in horrible condition. The hospital kept him in the ICU for several days and then released him to his wife.
"What about my cheeseburger?" He whined on the way home. His kids yelled at him and his wife threatened to make him walk home. He was in no shape to fight them and whimpered, "No more cheeseburgers. What kind of life will I have? Damned veggies."
His loving wife has said that Paddy has been suffering meat withdrawal. Vegetables are pushed around the plate without reaching his mouth. He has basically gone on a hunger strike and his resistance to good nutrition is endemic to most Americans, for the # 1 cause of illness in the USA is the food. People eat like pigs. Their diets of soda and fast food are taxing the health care system to the breaking point, but no one is willing to look in the mirror and see themselves as the major reason for their ill health.
Personally I eat well; vegetables, fruits, fish, olive oil, and natural foods. Steak once a month. Still I also have stopped looking in the mirror. I too am overweight and I prefer my shadow against the wall, for my weakness is drinking. Too much for my own good.
My younger brother’s brush with death taught me a lesson.
No more Pina Coladas.
Beer is the drug of choice. You are what you drink as much as you are what you eat.
And I'm willing to pay the price for that delight.
Happy Beermas.
