We interrupt our previous tale of my repeated efforts to dodge prostitutes worldwide for an update on my ongoing war against the decaying flesh coffin known as “my body.”
You may think it’s an odd attitude to have, war with your own physical self. But we all are, gentle readers. We all are. We live in an age where thin, or at least lean and muscular, are considered most attractive, yet our bodies are still hardwired from millennia of evolution to store as much fat as possible in case nobody’s able to kill a mammoth next week. Oh, but store too much and you’re killing yourself faster than a cocaine addiction. We’re most physically prepared to reproduce in our early 20s but most of us aren’t mentally ready until we’re in our 30s. To paraphrase C. Montgomery Burns, our bodies started the war with their thinning hair and expanding waistlines, and now they want to call “no contest” because they’re losing?
But I digress.
My usual issues with my flesh body, in addition to being heavier and balder than I care for and utterly refusing to react to healthy food and exercise as anything other than low-grade torture, typically have to do with little things. Refusal to shake a cough between November and March. Persistent floaters in my vision that apparently I just get to live with forever now. Refusing to fall asleep when I want to but then even more stubbornly refusing to wake up when I have to.
A bloody hour I spent trying to wake up this morning, while my subconscious flooded my dreams with conspiracies and cabals, sinister agents out to ensure I stayed asleep as long as possible while a noble few tried to see out the prophecy that I would arise at ten and… something something. The exact motivations are a little blurry.
My motivation? I had to hit the hospital and have a centimeter-long stone removed from my right kidney. Well it had shifted slightly out of the kidney but the point remains. This is my flesh body’s current favourite strike against me: every 16-20 months, it fires a tiny rock out of my kidney in order to cause excruciating pain, pain described as on par with childbirth. Sensible, they’re both about trying to squeeze things through holes way too small.
After stone one, I did some research. Certain foods exacerbate stones? Away with them. Raspberries? Easy enough. Granny’s raspberry bushes are a distant and bittersweet memory anyway. Chocolate and almonds? Fine. Chocolate covered almonds weren’t the healthiest snack anyway, shouldn’t be too bad to who am I kidding I miss them so much!
The stones returned. And got bigger.
So I drank more water. Less cola, more water, how can that be a bad idea?
The stones returned. And got bigger.
But today, on stone four, they finally shot themselves in the proverbial foot. Stone four was too big to pass on its own. So was stone three, I admit, but it was able to give it more of a go. I was able to detect stone four before it could cause the usual night of extreme agony and nausea, and then was able to have it extracted before it had its chance. As such, stone four was the least traumatic of its kin.
And now the real work begins. The examination of the stone by medical professionals, hopefully ending with some clue as to how I can stop stone five (already in progress over on the other side) before we have to do this dance again come summer of next year.
And before you say “eat less cheese,” you’d best have your doctorate in urology ready for review because do not come between me and cheese, I will cut you.
Next time we return to the Surprise Scooter Prostitutes of Vietnam. Promise.
