Category: Mens Health

Posted on

That unhealthy glow

IMAG0214

I’m a dumbshit! I totally admit it. Laugh all you want, I can take it.

Yesterday the sun was warm and the sky was blue, there was a gentle breeze and I thought;

“It’s a perfect day to spend a little time on the deck.”

So I took my glass of water, my Kindle, and my fat ass outside, without a shirt, and settled in a lounge chair.

I was only outside a little while… OK 40 minutes and my chest and belly are sunburned to beat the band.

I know better!

I never do shit like that without sunscreen on. 

So guys… learn from my stupidity, watch yourselves and your kids in the sun.

With the upcoming 4th of July celebrations we’re all going to be outside a bit more. 

Be a good example to your family, apply sunscreen with them  not just to them.

Posted on

The annual exams of this old carcass are almost done.

vitruvianOnly one more MD appointment and then I’m hopefully done for the year.

Dealing with the medical stuff as we get older is a royal pain in the ass. I’m not in poor health, but even now I find myself longing for the days when I needed Zero help from any physician.

My eyes aren’t what they once were. My sinuses are a mess, and the doctors are always hounding me about my diet, exercise and a litany of other age related concerns.

None of the things the Docs are mentioning are “In the RED” they’re just little things that seem to happen as we age. Of course the medical profession says “we have a medication for that”. I’ll be far more impressed when the medical profession says we can fix that problem for another 30 years!

Yeah, give me a drug or procedure that reverses the issue for 20 or 30 years and I’ll submit to it. I’m not one of those people that is going to willingly take a fist full of drugs 3 times a day. Besides the expense, the side effects are usually murder.

I can tell you this… I eat meat! I’m not going to stop eating meat and if that means that I don’t live quite as long so be it.

What’s the point of living a long life if it’s a life devoid of the little pleasures? I’d much rather be happy than ancient and sad.

Like most men, my preferred death would be to pass on during the most mind blowing orgasm of my life. I’d like to arrive at the gates of heaven roaring in pleasure,  semi hard, and dripping.

I like that image for no other reason than it would be fun freak out all the pious religious people who missed out on so much because they lived in terror of an afterlife of punishment.

I’ve got this twisted view that God shakes his finger at you for not enjoying the gift of life and the joys our bodies were built to have. What a waste if you didn’t enjoy everything the world had to offer.

I know that’s not the mainstream view but then again… I’m not and never have been mainstream.

I hope everyone has a great Fathers Day. Now go find some time to do what made you Fathers in the first place.

Posted on

Sometimes you can’t just “Walk it off”

For the past couple of months I’ve been having problems with my sinuses. I was annoyed and thought that I’d had 3 minor colds over the past four months.

IMG 0581

Like most guys I ignored it. I’d apparently get over the cold and be good for a few weeks then have a new minor cold again. These bouts were irritating and I was thinking “Wow, getting old is a stone bitch.” I’d begun to wonder if a cold a month was what I had to look forward to for the rest of my life.

Then about 2 weeks ago I developed yet another cold. This one however was different. I was coughing and hacking, my throat was swollen, I was sleeping sitting up and my sinuses were completely shut. If you’d held a hand over my mouth I’d have suffocated.

I was thinking, “OK, the previous colds have just run me down, now this one and all the pollen in the air has just combined to form a perfect storm”. Well After a week of getting a little better during the day then not sleeping at night… then a particularly rough night of coughing and hacking (I could get maybe one or two breaths between coughing bouts) I finally called my Doctor.

I described the symptoms including nose bleeds and colors of sinus discharges (who knew greenish yellow was bad?). The receptionist relayed the information to the Doc and he phoned in RXs to my local pharmacy.

After two and a half days on the meds I’m feeling pretty darn good. Most of all I’m sleeping… a lot! Tuesday & Wednesday escaped me. I happily napped and slept deeply both days and nights.

I really ought to pay more attention… My first clue that I was really sick should have been that I hadn’t been interested in sex for over a week. That’s sex of any kind… alone, with someone, naughty videos, nothing. I think the new rule is going to be if I’m not interested in sex… Call the Doctor stat!

I’m actually happy that the pollen and everything else brought this to a head. I’m planning some Summer trips and feeling crappy while you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself is never fun.

One friend described me as the Black Knight from Monty Pythons Holy Grail “It’s just a flesh wound“.

I’m antsy now. There are so many things that need to be done in the yard. The grass / weeds combination is out of control. I’m itching to get the weed whacker and go to town. There are a lot of little projects that I wanted to be done with already.

I suspect that’s how I’ve had a low grade infection for months on end… I’d start to feel better and then overdo it. So I’m going to relax… rest, watch TV maybe even a naughty film or two and wait for my body to finish the repairs.

There’s time enough to do the projects and those that don’t get done… well maybe they just didn’t need doing.

Posted on

Always Been a fan of the movie Dogma

51hDRCYEF0L

If you haven’t seen the movie it’s well worth your time.

There are a lot of pious religious folks that really hated the movie because they didn’t like it’s portrayal of the church, angels, and it’s generally irreverent take on God.

Personally, I suspect that God was sitting in the audience laughing right along with the rest of us.

I bring this whole thing up because I’ve been really ill with a cold / sinus / allergy? thing for going on 7 days. God created the world in 7 days… I’m done with feeling lousy!

As I was sitting in my favorite chair last night flipping aimlessly through TV channels all I could think was “When is this going to end?”

Which led me to Alan Rickmans line “It never ends” as he’s wiping the blood off his jacket with the hem of Gods clothes.

Strange what you think about at 3 am when you realize that your body is putting up a good fight. In the process the bug that you’ve caught is finding all new ways to inflict pain. Then you realize that  the bug in question hasn’t any clue whatsoever that it’s making you want to stick you head in a microwave.

Who knew that your teeth could hurt in such exquisite ways. Not a toothache per-se but a whole palate of pain that would make what Dustin Hoffman endured in the movie “Marathon Man” seem like Sunday at the park with Ice cream.

Much later last night, I noticed that every time there was a breeze through the house or indeed if I moved the comforter on the bed I’d start coughing violently. This led me to ask why?

I’d noticed a lot more pollen than usual in the air over the past few days. I started wondering if part of the problem was that there was so much pollen my body was simply trying to expel yet more foreign bodies.

When I say pollen… I mean that everything that can bloom is blooming. There are clouds of the stuff so thick at times it looks like dust storm. Everything in the house is covered with a pale yellow dust.

You want to talk sick??? Think of the pollen this way it’s cum!

Yeah you read that right it’s plant spooge, and you’re breathing it, eating it, and you can’t get away from it. Makes what you do in the bedroom seem pretty tame don’t if?

Don’t even try to tell me you don’t swallow!

LCARS

At this point I was actually thinking about sleeping in the back seat of my car.  I could even program it to fire up the fans and suck filtered air into the cabin  ever 4 hours.

It’s been in the garage for the past week. Sealed like a space capsule, all the cabin filters in place. A beautiful leather clad oasis of clean air oh my!

Sleeping in the car was looking better and better. The space craft metaphor is strangely true in the case of that car.. There are times when I expect to hear Majel Barrett Roddenberrys’ voice saying something like “Warning you’ve entered a personal hazard zone.” As I drive through Southern California.

Ok yeah it’s weird.

Tell me you’ll do better after the 6th consecutive night of getting 2 hours of sleep and coughing so hard your’e tasting blood then wondering if your lungs are coming up next. I double dog dare you!

As the morning light dispelled the insanity of the witching hours a simple plan began to gather like the light in the East.

It dawned on me that an experiment to find out if it’s the pollen or if I have a cold would be to close the house, (limiting the introduction of more pollen) and turn on the A/C.

The recycled air is filtered albeit not well, but limiting the introduction of additional pollen might go a long way toward removing the irritants. Much as I hate to have the A/C on this early in the year I figure I can run the experiment for 48 hours and see what happens.

Which leads me back to “Dogma”

There’s a scene where one of the demons says “No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater… than central air. “

So here I sit having a cup of coffee house darkened by drawn shades the sexual sinning hum of the A/C compressor occasionally heard from outside. And You know what? I’m not coughing as much. The real test will be tonight when I try to get some sleep.

Meanwhile the Dogs are more than happy with the A/C being on. They’re snoring loudly on their beds.

Now you’ve been through part of the rabbit hole that is my brain.

I hope you’ve incurred no permanent damage.

 

Here’s a bonus question… The control panel shown above, what fictional species does it belong to?

—– Update —–

Running the A/C & keeping the house closed seem to have helped. I also got a whole 6 hours of sleep. It was restless sleep but sleep nonetheless.

2012 BMW i8 Concept SpyderI haven’t braved the big bad world outside yet today. According to the weather reports it’s supposed to get windy in the valleys starting today so I’m guessing we may see the wind pick up a little bit here. More blowing pollen oh joy…

Part of the restless sleep was that I kept dreaming about driving through Germany after having picked one of these babies up in Leipzig . If you’re going to have restless dreams you should at least make them worthwhile.

This is the BMW i8. I know I’ll never be able to afford one even if it makes it out of the concept stage. I can dream though can’t I?

Posted on

I’d really like to thank my prescription insurance provider …

I wrote this a few days ago. I’ve been waiting to post it for a couple of reasons.

I wanted to make sure that I still felt as strongly about it as I did when I wrote this peice.

I wanted to end this on a good note

Pills

My insurance provider has decided that they know better than my Physician.

In order to save .02 per pill, for an overall savings of 1.80 per prescription, my insurance provider ExpressScripts changed my prescription. You know… I’d have paid the 1.80 extra just so I didn’t have the hassle. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given that choice.

They assure me that the drug they’ve substituted is the SAME as the drug that I’ve been using successfully and with no problems for 3 years!

If it’s the same then why is the molecular structure different? Why is the chemical formula different?

I went on the new drug this morning. Less than 12 hours after the switch I’m feeling like shit.

My diastolic Blood pressure has climbed 10 points in the past 6 hours and I’m not doing anything.

I have a couple of questions to ask.

Why can my insurance provider execute “Step Therapy” without actually seeing me? STEP means we’re going to fuck you in the name of savings.

The FDA claims that if we purchase drugs from Canada, or Mexico we’re placing ourselves in danger.

At least buying from Canada and Mexico I’m actually GETTING THE DRUG that my Doctor prescribed!

Yet the FDA has no problem with prescription drugs being substituted without a Doctor exam, and in some cases without actually contacting the physician that wrote the prescription in the first place.

Why would you take a patient off a medication that was working just fine, with no side effects, and essentially experiment with them? I thought we outlawed that kind of experimentation after Joseph Mengele’s experimentation in the death camps came to light.

Sterile latex surgical gloves

Essentially, this phamaceutical insurance company has decided that it’s OK to have me start taking a drug which may … OR MAY NOT work.

They’ve done this in a situation where I am likely to be at work, or at home and the effect or lack of effect may be subtle enough that I won’t notice. By the time I figure out that I have a problem…   I could conceivably be on a gurney in the back of an ambulance.

Then it occurred to me, if I’m hospitalized it would not be their problem…

It’s MINE and can easily be covered up as a “Natural” event, NOT A DIRECT EFFECT OF ExpressScripts swapping my medication with ZERO SUPPORT.

As of today, almost 2 weeks after the switch I’m adapting. The initial 96 hours was very rough. I’ve been having good days and bad days however I’m returning to my normal self.  I spoke with the Doc yesterday, he wasn’t too concerned. He mentioned that new research had expanded the definition of “Normal” and that I was well within the range.

He also reminded me that I needed to come in to see him and that he had a rubber glove waiting with my name on it. DAMN!

You know… his fingers don’t look that big, should a prostate exam take 30 minutes and why does he dim the lights?