Last evening, we visited my wife’s cousin in the Oklahoma City Heart Hospital. He had just gotten a stint in his heart. It wasn’t his first, and he has to go back in a couple of weeks for another. He is eight years my junior.
Yesterday morning, as I was doing two miles on the treadmill, I bumped up the speed and broke into a jog. I hadn’t jogged since sometime before 2001, when I had my knee surgery. Now, it didn’t bother my knees in the least, which surprised me quite a bit. My pulse reached 168, however, which I realized was a higher rate than I should try to maintain for any length of time at my *ugh* age. So I slowed it down.
Then there was the hospital visit. How fragile we humans are, I thought. While we were standing in the hospital room, talking, I started getting pangs of pain in my lower right side. I thought the source was internal, but later in the evening, and especially confirmed now, I realized I had pulled muscles as I tried to do too much, too fast, on the treadmill. On one hand, I feel extreme pressure to burn the blubber to get myself healthy, but on the other hand, I have to make sure I don’t kill myself in the process. At this point, I think I would still require a coffin with an extra-heavy-duty bottom and additional handles for more pallbearers, so the whole thing would be rather counter-productive, don’t you think? I should probably get a heart scan soon.
As motivated as I am by the image of a basketball under my shirt when I look in the mirror, I know the mid-body fat, the part everyone wants to lose first, will necessarily go last, and that process can’t be rushed without it being unhealthy. Hmmm… there’s always liposuction, eh? Verrückt, nicht wahr?
