Chance encounter with woman leaves me grateful for my health

By David McElroy · November 24, 2018

When I saw her walking toward my table, her face was familiar, but it took me a long moment to place where I’d known her.

I hadn’t seen Dana for about six months. I didn’t know her well, but I used to talk with her casually when she worked at a restaurant where I go a lot. She left quit that job earlier this year and she hadn’t crossed my mind until tonight.

At first, I couldn’t even remember her name, but I exchanged empty pleasantries with her anyway. I asked how she had been, but it was mostly just a polite question to which I expected a simple answer, but her answer wasn’t simple.

She told me that she left this job for a job at another restaurant. As she was getting ready for her second day of work at the new place, she felt something happen inside her body. She knew it was serious but she didn’t know quite what was going on.

Dana went to an emergency room and found out she had just suffered a stroke. She hasn’t been able to return to work since then.

I thought Dana was close to 65 years old, so maybe her working life was being cut just a slight bit short. I was mistaken, though. She’s only 46 years old.

For the next 15 minutes, Dana gave me a long litany of her health problems. She’s overweight. She smokes and drinks alcohol heavily. And she has recently been diagnosed with three bulging disks in her back.

The bulging disks in her back are pinching a nerve and she needs a procedure that has a chance to change that without invasive surgery. As a result of the stroke, her left hand constantly feels as though it’s going to sleep and it feels as though needles are pricking that hand all the time.

She can’t stand for long. Even when she washes her own dishes at home, she has to sit on a stool because her left leg is weak after the stroke. And she has to see a pain doctor because of constant pain which comes with the back problems.

She’s also unemployed because she can’t work, but she was turned down for federal disability payments. She’s meeting with an attorney this week to talk about fighting that. And now that the federal government has “made health insurance affordable,” her insurance costs $691 a month — which she’s about to have to drop since she’s eaten through her savings.

She told me about taking a cot back to Walmart to get her money back — simply because it was the only thing she owned that was new enough to return. She needed the cot, but she needed the money even more — because she didn’t have another way to buy food.

When I had my gallbladder removed about 10 months ago, it seemed like a big deal to me. It was an annoyance and it was frustrating to be forced to change what I eat (and how much I can eat). There’s a part of me that felt a little sorry for myself.

But as I listened to Dana, I felt as though I had nothing to complain about. I’m in really excellent health, especially for someone who has abused his body so much over the last 10 years or so by eating so horribly and letting myself get overweight.

Talking with Dana, I felt as though she was another warning to me. I’ve always believed that I’m going to live to a ripe old age, but how I treat my body is going to determine just how long that is. For many years, I’ve had the odd notion that I would live to 120 years old. I know that sounds like an odd premonition, but there’s no reason I can’t live a long time — especially with advances in medicine — if I’ll simply take care of myself.

My only health struggle continues to be my diet. When I eat a ketogenic diet, I’m healthier and happier. I wish I had never learned to use bad foods — sugar, mostly — as substitutes for emotional needs that are missing.

I don’t want to be like Dana. I don’t want her health problems. I don’t want to have a lifestyle that makes me look 20 years older than I am. I want to take care of myself — so I can be healthy and happy.

It’s unlikely that I’ll see Dana again, but I’m thankful she ran into me tonight. She reminds me how important it is for me to get my emotional needs met and then to take care of myself physically.

I’m grateful for the health I have. Sometimes I don’t remember just how lucky I am.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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