Exercise Intolerance
It began on the online dating site I’ve joked about before.
But so many other things about that adventure, not the least of which that I was actually dating, and then of course later the fact that I found true love there and then lost it (again) to death (again), kind of overshadowed this tickle in the back of my subconscious.
Then it started showing up in some comments, ancillary to the primary concerns and rarely remarked upon, about COVID-19. But it was overshadowed by the pundits waxing political about anti-vaccine historical precedents and anti-masking as an offshoot of Tea Party demonstrations of anti-tyranny, complete with Gadsden flag, and a whole host of other things. But the thing is, even though they concentrated on these explanations, they still sounded bewildered. Why would people be so frantic, they pondered, about “a little piece of cloth” or “an FDA-approved vaccine”? Why would they be in favor of the virus? Why weren’t they more interested in protecting themselves, their families, the vulnerable?
And again, that tickle.
During lockdown, home gym equipment, unsurprisingly, became high-demand. And again, the pundits talked about its price, its cyber-risky connection to the interwebs, its exclusivity, even its near-religious aura.
Tickle, tickle, tickle.
The loud conspiracy theory guys on the marginalized cable networks foaming at the mouth about stuff often stop foaming long enough to sell nutritional supplements. While these patent medicines claim to deal with a whole host of health issues (although, remember, theFDAhasnotevealuatedthesestatements productsnotshowntotreatdiagnoseorcureanydisease), lots of them focus on code words, for, you know, functionality, like “T” and “endurance” and “feeling young and strong” and such. Some are even more explicit. One recent ad even made me go, “Can they say that?” But then again, there was the throwing-the-football-through-the-tire one, and that aired on the weekends, in daylight, on broadcast TV.
Hmm.
Guys on the dating site (remember, we’re 49 to 60 or so):
I stay fit and active, exercise abt 3x a week.
(Picture of person in sleeveless black tight fitting UnderArmor shirt and wrap sunglasses)
I live a healthy lifestyle and you do, too.
(Picture of dead fish)
I enjoy active adventures.
(Picture of Harley-Davidson)
Hobbies include working-out (sic), staying fit and healthy.
People ignoring masks and vaccines:
It’s a disease of the elderly and obese.
The people who died were already sick; or, nobody dies of the virus, they die of what they had and the doctors call it COVID.
Sign: NO VAX I HAVE AN IMMUNE SYSTEM
Natural immunity is best.
Most people survive it.
Children just won’t get it. They’re not at risk.
Of course it disproportionally affects [demographic group]. They all eat [stereotypical unhealthy food] and all have [stereotypical chronic disease].
I don’t know what’s in that shot.
Supplement sales click-bait banner ads:
THE ONE SOLUTION TO BELLY FAT DOCTORS DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT
DOCTOR BEGS: DON’T EAT THIS VEGETABLE
IF YOU EAT THIS 3x A WEEK YOU WILL NEVER AGE
Goop:
Here’s an enema. (you: What’s it for?) It’s a Wellness enema.
Hmm.
Against lockdowns:
If we protect the vulnerable, then we can go back to work.
Nursing homes are the real danger zones.
I’ve never heard of a quarantine where the healthy are quarantined with the sick.
Hmm hmm.
You know, tiny children get cancer. I don’t know how you can’t know that because their tiny adorable bald heads show up on St. Jude and Shriners commercials all the time. At Christmas I guess it was 2010 or 2011, my in-laws hosted a family they were close to whose youngest daughter was fighting bone cancer, and when that little girl walked through the door my Maggie-Dog, who hated people almost as much as I do, trotted right up to her, sat and made herself very small and thrust her nose, low, against the child’s hand. Gently, nudging. Got gentle pats and soft exclamations in return. And smiles. My husband sobbed like a child for twenty minutes after we went to bed that night. Did You See Your Dog. But, really, she was always like that. The elderly, the bereaved, the tearful — she was there. Burst in shouting merry Mauritius statutory holiday (that’s a joke just for Les and George; hi guys) and beaming and waving Jim Beam, and she would be in the closet.
We now know, or suspect, or whatever epistemological word we should use for medical insights, that lots of cancers are environmental in one way or another, contributed to by tobacco, asbestos, talcum powder, toxic this and bad habit that. But when a baby gets cancer, you’re like what the hell she’s so young to have a 3 pack a day habit. And how long has she even been breathing to have breathed in so many toxins? Or eaten, to have eaten so many?
I think I have thought to myself, Disease doesn’t care, over and over again in the last 22 years.
Heart disease: The silent killer. Number 1 killer.
Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura: Rare disease. Number 1 trillionth killer, I guess.
One Person: Yes but didn’t he (you know) drink?
Other Person: Yes but heart disease is — wasn’t he (you know) overweight?
Another Person: Yes but didn’t she (you know) never exercise?
(She had what doctors call “exercise intolerance,” because her heart rate would –)
Persons: Jeez, get a pair of sneakers. Cheapest prescription in the world and no doctor needed…
You know who don’t have immune systems? Gay men with AIDS…
You know who have high incidents of comorbidities consistent with more serious cases of COVID? Poor people who live in food deserts. Who can’t afford a Peloton. Or a gym membership. Especially a gym membership that they never use. Lots of people can afford that, though. Just not the same people…
(It’s such a short step to)
Persons: You know who are dying? Sick people. You know what sick people are? Losers…
(in whispers, because “good” people have to pretend they don’t really think this because other people will think they’re “bad” people, but then again, wink wink, we all know what’s really true once we get past all the politically correct nonsense): The deviant. The lazy. The food-stampers. The gluttonous, the self-indulgent. The junkies and the drunks. The fat people…
The losers…
Sick people who didn’t have to be sick, but they’re such losers that they don’t eat right or work out “abt 3x/wk” or have “fit and healthy lifestyles” or avoid THESE FIVE FOODS THAT CAUSE FATTY LIVER and, you know, they just, well, they just don’t kale…
It’s not our damn fault that they’re just so weak and sick and with so many diseases. It’s common sense, right? You see it all the time on the news. The obesity epidemic. America overeats. Big Gulps. And so therefore it’s not our fault that a bunch of fat, lazy, piggish pervert slobs are ruining our economy, destroying our small businesses, forcing children to…
(Dreadful Pause.)
One anti-masker to another in a horrible whisper: What if it really is a killer?
The other, to the one: Nah. You’re healthy, right? You take care of yourself.
A contented sigh. Then:
One, to the other: What if it isn’t enough?
The other, to the one: It has to be.
(Dreadful Pause.)
One: Why?
Other: Because IT HAS TO HAVE BEEN WORTH IT I DID EVERYTHING THEY SAID I BOUGHT THE DAMN PILLS ONLINE THESE BIKE SHORTS MAKE ME CHAFE AND I HAVEN’T HAD A STEAK IN SIXTEEN YEARS HOW COULD THIS BE FAIR?
Me: Disease doesn’t care.
They do not hear me.
Me: Disease isn’t immoral. “Fitness” isn’t moral. Health isn’t moral. Babies get cancer. Sometimes there’s not a villain. Sometimes disease is the villain, albeit an amoral one. All disease, not just the microbe kind. It’s your steak and your tobacco and your Big Gulp, sure, but it’s also your genetics and your zip code and your damn luck and sometimes disease just doesn’t give a damn and you know what? We’re all on the same side of that equation. All of us. So let’s ride the lifeboat together, huh? I’ll pull you in if you slip. You lift me up when I fall.
(Dreadful Pause.)
Preacher (in the distance, faintly): And THE LORD will not let the faithful perish in this awful way. THE LORD rewards the faithful with life and health…
Me: Disease didn’t care about me or those I Ioved. Disease has killed two men I loved both before the age of 60 and right now there is a man in this country who eats 72 hot dogs in one sitting AS A PROFESSION and the medical estimation is that it will take something like 2.9 years off his life so he’s got till 71 if he’s average. But THE SNEAKERS, you never laced up the SNEAKERS, what did you expect?
Preacher (in the distance, faintly): And THE LORD
One, to the Other: Thank God I’m healthy.
The Other: Amen.
Again.
As hard as this is to believe, to even contemplate, it’s even harder to endure.
I had a love. I lost him to death, the natural causes kind where you find yourself agonizing for two days over modem medicine and its inadequacy to save a man in his fifties and then on Friday you learn that it’s too late and it’s not a dream and it can’t be undone and here comes the pain.
And then I had a new love. I lost him to death, the natural causes kind where it’s Friday again and it’s too late to save a man in his fifties and it’s not a dream and it can’t be undone and here comes the pain.
old pain/new pain they feel so much the same and the common denominator is me at the bottom of the equation and will the pain never stop.
I love you, Chuck.
I love you, Dan.
Containing My Joy
#SoCS We watched the film Hidden Figures last night. It’s a film about race, culture, and prejudice, but also about math. Hard subjects all for me. Hard subjects for America … Continue reading Containing My Joy
Location, Location, Location
The Friday Reminder and Prompt for #SoCS Sept. 19/2020
I have permitted myself to look at on line real estate sites.
Moving out of this house, if it happens, is probably three or four years away. There are complications. Two existing homes, two careers, two families, and the accumulation of two lifetimes. Two states. Two sets of tax laws.
But I let myself look.
Some things are already in the calculation. Waterfront. Lake, by most indications. Isolation. Trees, acreage, spots made for coffee and contemplation. A kitchen for two to work side by side in cooperation. Blue and white is the kitchen color coordination.
For the rest of it, I leave that to the exigencies of fate. The happy home will present itself somehow – it will ask to be owned. I’m just making myself available to its inevitable presentation.
Just as long as it doesn’t become too much of a preoccupation.
planet literature 