Health and Other Details

Over the past few weeks, I’ve become more than a little preoccupied with my health. The fact that I have my annual checkup in about a month is probably just a coincidence, but I can’t be too sure. I go through these periods every once in a while when I’m feeling out of breath from going up a flight of stairs or my pants start to choke off the blood supply to my torso.

Even my wife has noticed, not about my pants getting too tight, but about my sudden interest in my own health. I ordered a club soda with lime instead of a cocktail a few weeks ago at dinner and I could tell that she wanted to ask if I was feeling all right. The fact that I didn’t order a beer caused such a reaction means that I probably should have started taking more of an interest in what I do to my body a while ago.

Whatever the reason, I have every intention of making this life change, of eating well and drinking less and even exercising, stick — at least until my annual check up is over. It’s not that I’m afraid of my doctor. She’s a wonderful person who appears to genuinely care about me. I just wish that we could find some middle ground between what she views as being healthy and my thoughts on the subject.

Sure, she’s a licensed medical professional, but I feel as if my opinion should hold some weight. I am, after all, the person who’s living in my body the last time I checked. If I’ve learned anything from the Millennials and Gen Z it’s that our voices are supposed to matter. Perhaps not as much as a person who’s spent years of her life learning about how to keep people healthy, but they should count for something.

The entire situation makes me wish I were dumb enough to buy into health hoaxes like eating beets to create a more elastic taint or suppositories to make my bunions more manageable. Unfortunately, I’m not that desperate…yet.

Of course, by the time I am that desperate, it will be too late — a fact of which my loved ones are fond of reminding me. The older I get, the more often I’m asked about whether I want to be around long enough to see my grandchildren and, I guess I would, in theory. The problem is that, the older I get, the less interested I am in younger generations, and I can’t imagine the next one is going to bowl me over with their capabilities or new perspective on life.

Still, I suppose I could be surprised. It would be a shame if I weren’t around to see what Gen Beta or Gamma does with the world. It would be even more of a shame if they screwed it up even worse than it is right now. Not because of the human suffering, which would be awful of course, but because I wouldn’t be around to shake my head and tell everyone that I was right.

“The world really did go to hell in a handbasket,” I’d say, and then talk about how I predicted the fall of society thirty years ago before watching naked people prepare roaches on the death elimination round of Kitchen Wars. It would be a cold sort of comfort but cold comfort is better than no comfort at all and, sometimes, it’s the only kind we can get.

About the Author

derekbremer Prior to his life as a stay at home father Derek spent more than a decade performing public relations and marketing functions for financial consulting firms and found the job to be precisely as exciting as it sounds. When not tending to his wife or daughter Derek enjoys subjecting the public to his unique take on fatherhood, travel and animal husbandry. He has been published in Scary Mommy, Sammiches and Psych Meds, The Good Men Project, HowToBeADad, Red Tricycle, RAZED, HPP and the Anthology "It's Really Ten Months Special Delivery: A Collection of Stories from Girth to Birth.