What A Long, Strange Trip...

Okay, so, yeah. It's been a while since I dusted off the ol' keyboard.

[counts on fingers]

EEK. Six months. Guess it was time to let y'all know I'm alive... So, to make up for a seriously deficient amount of posting, here's a noveletta..

Been doing a lot of thinking lately, about fitness/health-related issues. Y'see, for the past year and a half I've been walking/jogging/running just about every day as part of a general regime to help keep my weight and blood pressure down. Since the start of the year, I've been getting back into the (home) gym to lift weights, spurred on in large part by my son, who is getting into weight-training for basketball.

And, as these things often do, it caused a bit of introspection. For most of my childhood and a good portion of my adult life, I was overweight, sometimes bordering on obese, sometimes well into obese and damn near morbidly so. I went on and off diets pretty much on a yearly basis as a kid, and even well into adulthood struggled to keep my weight in check.

Through college I lifted weights quite a bit, having the good fortune of living in a dorm with a weight center in the basement. Getting to the gym was easy, and while I may have been heavier, it was more muscle than fat. I was running about 220 - 230 pounds, which on my frame didn't look too bad. In fact, it's the curse of the large frame--even at 250 I didn't look *terribly* overweight.

I remember going on yet another crash diet after I graduated from college, getting down to 205, which was the lowest I'd been my adult life (maybe even my teens). It was the same type of diet I had been on dozens of times--rice cakes and grapefruit, little else, until the weight came off. Once it did, I went right back to eating the same way I always had, and the weight slowly crept back on.

In 1996, at a physical, I weighed 253 pounds (it was my pre-marriage physical; I have no idea whatsoever why I remember the exact weight, but I do). In four years I had managed to gain 50 pounds, despite being in graduate school, not having a lot of money, and still getting a fair amount of exercise mountain biking, rollerblading, and camping/hiking. It's evident in the wedding pictures, despite my attempt to hide multiple chins with a beard and wearing a comically large tux.

In 2000, I had my first gout outbreak. At one of the followups to the outbreak, my doctor discovered borderline high blood pressure and put me on medicine to control it. At 28 years old, I was on two different daily medicines for weight-related problems. Granted, the gout medication was only as outbreaks occurred, but they would occur quite frequently in the coming years.

In 2001, I quit smoking before my son was born, and from there the weight kept piling on. I deluded myself for quite some time, thinking that being a non-smoker was healthier than the increase in weight. The highest recorded amount (doctor's visit) was 284 pounds. However, I know that was on the downswing -- at one point, I found my size 44 waist pants getting too tight, and started watching what I ate and getting more exercise.

In 2006, I decided that I didn't want my kids growing up with a morbidly obese father with multiple health issues. I sat down, chronicled what I ate every day for two weeks, then calculated my daily caloric intake. I don't remember the exact number, but it was north of 4,000 on more than a couple days. Mind you, this is for a guy who sat at a computer for 8 hours a day, not someone climbing up and down ladders painting houses or walking miles and miles mowing lawns.

After getting an idea how much I was taking in, I decided to slowly cut back. I made hundreds of little changes in my diet, changes i could live with for the rest of my life. I didn't want to go "off" the diet and go back to eating whatever the hell I felt like, because the weight would just come right back. I use my morning coffee as an example:

I used to drink it with cream and sugar, and a lot of sugar at that. I figured that, conservatively, I was putting in about a tablespoon of sugar and a couple servings of cream, for a total of 100 calories or so. Multiple that by two, and that's 200 calories a day. I cut out cream entirely and switched to artificial sweetener, and I've immediately saved 1,400 calories a week with little effect on taste.

I made hundreds of these little changes over the following year and a half. I started out dropping my caloric intake to 2,750 calories a day, then 2,500, then 2,000. At the height of my weight loss, I was taking in 1,500 calories a day and dropping 1-2 pounds a week--a goal I'd decided would result in safe, sustainable weight loss. Despite not spooling in any sort of exercise regimen, I continued to lose weight over 2006.

In January of 2007, I hit a significant milestone: I dropped below 200 pounds. It had been at least 20 years since I had been at that level. I decided to work some exercise into the mix, and started walking on a treadmill, riding a stationary bike and hitting a rowing machine as part of my daily workouts.

In May 2007, my doctor took me off blood pressure medication. I've been off ever since. I've had *maybe* three gout attacks in the past 11 years. The medical benefits are quite tangible.

Sometime in 2011, the exercise got dropped. I still stayed moderately active, riding a bike fairly often and taking walks when the weather was nice, but no longer adhered to a formal workout routine. For a few years, this worked just fine, until we moved to Virginia in 2013. While I didn't gain back a lot of weight, maybe 15 pounds at most, I noticed that it was slowly creeping back up.

In October 2016, I started walking daily. At first it was 3 miles or so, but over the past year and a half it's ramped up to close to 5. As I got more into the routine, I'd add in jogging/light running as part of the mix. If you'd told 25-year-old me that I'd be jogging, I'd have thought you were joking.

In November of 2017, we bought a used weight bench off a local Facebook classified group. My son had heard that weight training would help him in basketball, and was eager to try. As he progressed, I found myself joining him, first as a spotter, then as a partner.

I'm no Charles Atlas (kids, ask your parents), but I'm currently in about the best shape I've been in my entire life. Five days a week I walk/jog. Five days a week I lift weights. I just dropped to within 3 pounds of the goal weight I reached in 2007, and I continue to stay off meds. I haven't had a gout outbreak in more than three years, and as I come within sight of 47, I'm starting to think about things like protein intake and increasing reps vs. overall weight for strength or toning.

And, as a side benefit, five nights a week I get to bond with my son. We communicate on a peer level; in fact, quite often he's the teacher. He's taking a couple advanced fitness classes in high school, and they've covered proper form for various weightlifting exercises. Not to mention, he's a voracious consumer of information when it comes to things that interest him, so he's researched body building and weight training extensively. He advises on form and diet, and I am better able to spot for him as he gets stronger.

I guess this is in response to something I read online, where someone was claiming that you can't lose weight just by counting calories alone. Actually, I believe the claim was that you couldn't keep weight off by calories alone. I forget if this was pushing keto, or paleo, or Atkins, or whatever the flavor-of-the-month weight loss program was, but it so thoroughly pissed me off I decided to dash off a quick timeline of my own experience.

You *can* lose weight by counting calories, and you *can* keep it off. It takes a boatload of determination and discipline, mind you, and I'm shocked as anyone else I have been able to keep it off this long. It has been a long journey, and I hope to continue it as long as I can. I don't post this to brag, just to prove it can be done. Heck, if I can do it, *anyone* can...

Side note: I forget who it was, I want to say Nutrisystem or some other weight loss program, that for a while offered their meal plans. It always amused me, because the only way those work is if you are disciplined enough to *only* eat the meals they send. And if you've got that kind of discipline, you've got enough to pick up comparable meals at the grocery store and save 2/3 the cost...

I'll try not to let another 6 months go by between entries, but I'm not making any promises...

That is all.

For Those Going to Nashville...

Ambulance Driver is conducting a class you REALLY want to participate in.

Folks, I'm going to be uncharacteristically serious for a second. Ambulance Driver and I go back a few years, and throughout that time has been a lot of good natured joshing, friendly back-and-forth, and just a little bit of alpha male rivalry (in KTKC, at least). But I couldn't imagine anyone I'd rather have administer emergency care to me, or teaching me how to handle medical emergencies.

He flat-out knows his s**t. He can teach it, he can preach it, he can walk the walk and talk the talk. I'm privileged to have some inside information, as well (keep an eye on the work page), and let me just say this is a dude you want to listen to when he talks about emergency medicine.

Or running a shotgun, for that matter. 

If you're attending the NRA Annual Meeting next month and you've got some free time, the course is Saturday, April 11th from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Here's the syllabus, and there's links to folks who took the class last year. I don't think anyone that went didn't come away a whole lot wiser and just a little bit safer.

Go. Register. Learn.

That is all.

A Word Or Two About Ebola...

Man, this is just turning into a complete and utter goat-rope, isn't it? I mean, we're seeing actual news articles out there that would have been rejected by the staff at the Onion for being too far-fetched:

First, we have a cleanup crew powerwashing the outside of an apartment where the first ebola patient was staying in the US after he vomited all over the sidewalk. Notice the distinct lack of anything even remotely resembling protective gear, caution tape, or anything that might indicate folks should stay away.


A nurse who treated the first ebola patient called the CDC to see if she should fly, even though she had begun to exhibit signs. The CDC cleared her to fly on multiple occasions. Now, it's bad enough that the CDC told someone that DIRECTLY INTERACTED WITH AN EBOLA PATIENT that it was okay to get on a plane despite running a fever, but for a gorram nurse to STILL GET ON THE PLANE???

We have a "supervisor" overseeing the transfer of someone stricken with ebola shown in immediate proximity to the patient with zero protective gear. The official Ishityounot explanation is that he needed to be able to see the transfer. Folks, if you believe that, I have oceanfront property in Kansas to sell you.

The director of the CDC is apparently telling people you can give - but not get - ebola on a bus. Because that makes ALL kinds of sense. If someone shouldn't get on a bus if they think they have the virus, then clearly you *could* catch it on a bus. Or a plane.

And speaking of planes, airports are now screening travelers arriving from West Africa. There's no word on what they're going to do if they do find someone with an ebola-like fever. $20 says they'll admit the person to a hospital, but not quarantine the entire plane.

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And of course, there's the blame game:

Ebola is the fault of the NRA. Because the NRA opposes Vivek Murthy as the US Surgeon General, and is apparently the sole reason he has not been approved, the ebola outbreak happened. Or something like that.

Ebola is the fault of the GOP-led Congress. Apparently we're not shoveling money at ebola research fast enough. We can sponsor studies into why certain protected groups get fat and others don't, and waste allll kinds of money attempting to treat firearms like a disease, but cut funding even the slightest and ZOMG EBOLA.

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Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not panicking about ebola, far from it. What I am doing, though, is taking note of how pathetic our response has been. We haven't stopped people from coming to the US from infected areas, even though Europe has done exactly that, we haven't taken any serious measures whatsoever, and our policy appears to be little more than "run around like a decapitated chicken reacting poorly to every new twist in the crisis." I'm not filled with anything resembling confidence at how this administration would handle ANY crisis after watching their laughable response to the ebola situation.

Another thing that gets me, though, is that *both* sides have crackpot conspiracy theories out now. The loony left is represented above, while the crazy right is running around babbling about FEMA concentration camps and Obama canceling the mid-term elections using ebola as a cover. When both sides start coming out with batshit insane conspiracy theories, that's rather worrisome. I fear it's because the truth is almost scarier: This administration is in WAY over its head, has no f**king clue what it's doing, and hasn't the faintest idea how to deal with any of this. It appears their plan is nothing more than "hide under a pile of blankets and hope this all goes away."

I think I'd go for conspiracy theories, too.

That is all.

Not Sure About This One...

#1 Blogdaughter sends this one in. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

Senior surprised by $315 bill for calling 911

"I got up, and I was dizzy and feeling kind of nauseous, and I thought, 'This isn't right,'" Shorewood resident Lois Sarrel said.

Sarrel had a rude awakening in early May.

"I guess I was panicking a little bit because women don't have the same symptoms as men for heart attack," Sarrel said.

She called 911, Emergency Services came out and triaged her, finding that she was not in fact having a heart attack. She declined transport to the hospital, and because of that, she received a bill for the services rendered. Apparently she is on Medicare, and they only cover emergency calls that result in trips to the hospital.

Now, on the one hand, I'm of the opinion that if your symptoms are so bad that you have to call 9-1-1, you should take the trip to the hospital to get checked out anyways. Something is going on that is causing you enough discomfort to brave modern medical care - it might not be a heart attack, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be something else serious.

On the other hand, I can see where this might cause some folks to forgo emergency care, and that's never a good thing. I can also totally understand that someone might not realize that a 9-1-1 call would result in a big charge like that. You think you have insurance, and that it will be covered, only to find out later that it's not.

Again, though, I come back to the whole "this was serious enough to call 9-1-1 but not go to the hospital" part. If it was so serious that you couldn't drive yourself to the hospital, you probably should have gone just to be on the safe side. Just because it's not a heart attack doesn't mean that it's not something serious. I can kinda see the charge if it's to discourage people from using EMS as a way of getting medical care at home (i.e. rather than going to their doctor).

Also, not for nothing, but $315 for an EMS call to the home is pretty cheap. I've seen several medical insurance plans where an ER visit is a $200 co-pay. Add in another charge for the EKG, and it's not too far off what she ended up getting billed. Throw in that she didn't have to drive to the ER, and it's starting to see pretty reasonable.


I still don't know how I feel about this one...

That is all.

This ... Scares Me.

Given a background in Biology and Biochemistry, this kinda scares the living bejeezus out of me...

CDC Director: Scale of Ebola Crisis Unprecedented

The current Ebola crisis in West Africa is on pace to sicken more people than all other previous outbreaks of the disease combined, the health official leading the U.S. response said Thursday.

The next few weeks will be critical, said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is sending more workers into the affected countries to help.

What's frightening about this particular variant is that people are living long enough to travel. The main thing about Ebola was that it was so quick, outbreaks very rarely had a chance to get very far - the hosts would be dead before they had a chance to spread the disease far. With a fatality rate well over 50% (1700 infected, 1000 dead), that's pretty scary.

Now, there's a step back that needs to be taken. According to the CDC, the disease has over a 90% fatality rate. That sounds really freakin' scary, doesn't it? However, if you look at the outbreak data, the true rate is wildly different. In some cases it's as low as 25%. In others, it's in the upper 80s (the three cases with 100% fatality had a single death each).

You do have to wonder about the correlation between survival and the state of medical facilities and/or presence of medical staff in-country. These outbreaks happen in countries that don't have the same sort of medical facilities or treatments available here; what might be only a really bad fever could easily turn deadly with lack of hydration or secondary infection.

In any case, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near Atlanta right now...

That is all.

Another dispatch from...

(image courtesy of Robb Allen)

A Favor, For A Friend...

It will no doubt embarrass him greatly, but I have a favor to ask for my friend Wally. He's having minor surgery done today, and I'd consider it a personal favor if y'all could take a second to have a friendly chat with your diety-of-choice and ask that this routine surgery go exactly as it should.

Pro-tip: It's never "routine" surgery when it's being done to you.

It's the kind of surgery that is completely and utterly uneventful in the vast majority of all cases. The rational side of my brain knows that it is extremely unlikely that anything untoward will happen. However, that's not the side I listen to in times like these - it's a lot like flying: the rational side knows that I am FAR more likely to get killed on the Harley than in a 737. But it's not the rational side I listen to when turbulence hits...

So, if you don't mind, think good thoughts for our favorite evil gunsmith genius today.

That is all.

Revenge of the Swine Flu...

Alternate Title: Swine Flu II: Electric Boogaloo...

Here's the latest OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE from the people that brought you the Swine Flu pandemic:

Scientists find new superbug spreading from India

A new superbug could spread around the world after reaching Britain from India -- in part because of medical tourism -- and scientists say there are almost no drugs to treat it.

Researchers said on Wednesday they had found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain.

NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called carbapenems, and experts say there are no new drugs on the horizon to tackle it.

First thought: Didn't they just recent announce that the Swine Flu pandemic (that was ZOMG GOING TO KILL US ALL BY MELTING OUR FACES OFF) was winding down?

Second thought: Speaking of the Swine Flu, wasn't there a little brouhaha over the fact that a third of the members of the WHO Swine Flu Advisory Council had ties to the pharmaceutical industry?

Third thought: "Medical tourism" is leading to cases of this "superbug" being brought back to England? Huh? Doesn't England have free universal health care, a system that we are being told to emulate here in the US? Aren't the Europeans so much more enlightened that the evil ol' capitalist USA in that they offer free health care to their citizens? Why, then, would anyone need to travel to India for medical care?

In any case, it's another item to tack on the list of the Taxonomy of Modern Dangers...

That is all.