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.

Share on Social Networks

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

Related Posts