I’ve known for a long time that I’m not the healthiest guy around. I’ve been a Type II diabetic – afflicted with what we used to call Adult Onset Diabetes, and before that, Senile Diabetes – for the past twenty years, and I started insulin earlier this year. I have a couple of conditions consequent on that, such as high blood pressure and minor tingling in my fingers and toes. I’ve also picked up a mild case of lymphedema, so I wear compression stockings to keep my ankles down to a reasonable size. Even so, I’ve always thought of myself as being in reasonable condition otherwise.

So, when my family doctor asked me to go in to repeat a couple of blood tests I didn’t attach too much importance to it. And this morning when she called me up to ask how I was feeling, I blithely answered “OK, pretty good, I guess.” Which turns out to be somewhat incorrect.

It seems I’m severely anemic, to the extent that, if I should feel a little dizzy, I should hie myself off to a hospital rather than book an appointment to see her. And in the meantime, stop drinking coffee or tea, start taking as much iron as I can, and get ready to see a couple of specialists lest I bleed out where I sit, because with numbers from the tests, it looks as though I’m leaking internally, even if I thought I was ok a few minutes ago.

“You’re sure you haven’t been dizzy? Or fatigued?” Well, not to speak of. I mean, I don’t sleep much – it cuts into my reading – so of course I occasionally nod off. And that’s part of being diabetic anyway, isn’t it? And dizzy? Isn’t that what I can expect, given that I take meds to control high blood pressure caused by diabetes? Apparently, “No,” to both questions.

So now I’m taking another set of pills, and I’m going to get poked and probed by another set of gloomy haruspicers. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

Trying to control a Dahon V folding bike the other day when the (kinda-weird) saddle fell off, I wound up taking a fall on my right wrist. I can’t say I was a happy camper. but I thought little of it right away. A few hours later was a different story, though, as, once I woke up for my usual old fogey 2 am call I couldn’t get back to sleep. My wife had a funeral to attend in the morning, but once she got back she drove me down to the local ER. I never realized how bumpy the roads were!

As it turned out there is a small triangle of cartilage in the wrist which cushions the bones of the forearm and helps anchor and direct various ligaments, and in breaking my fall I managed to tear it. A trio of X-rays confirmed that no bones were broken, and a half-cast to immobilize the joint saw me on my way. Don’t let anyone tell you that Canadian emergency room service is poor – I was through triage, checked by a doctor, into X-ray, and out with a cast on my arm in a little over an hour and a half, which I consider pretty good care. I have to go back to the Fracture Clinic in a couple of weeks for a follow-up visit, and I won’t hear anything about charges for care.

I’ll concede that the hospital wasn’t dealing with inner-city traumas, but I’ve been in hospitals where that sort of thing was being handled, and still was though in a matter of hours (while staff also handled a major accident, a couple of heart attacks, and what looked to be casualties from a gang fight involving knives). Everyone got seen according to priority – that’s what triage is for – including the dweebs with bad colds who hadn’t seen their family doctors all week and wanted service on a Saturday night RIGHT NOW (and to hell with the little kid who had fallen down a flight of stairs who came in after them). Canadian ERs do have problems with wait times on occasion, but it has always seemed to me that a lot of it is due to abuse of the service by folks who should have seen their family physician first or failing that should have gone to a walk-in clinic. At least everyone gets a good level of care, which some jurisdictions elsewhere can’t claim.

Anyway, my adventure with bicycling means I’ll be a little slower than usual making my way around town for a while, and my on-again off-again exercise program is once more on a back burner. I really can’t let that stand. Ben Franklin said he didn’t mind so much getting old as getting fat and old. I agree with him, but hopefully I will eventually be able to strike the f-word from my description.