The Denial of Disappearing Climate Change

You know that phenomenon when people who stand to gain from the ruination of the earth  say 'Brr, it's cold today. See, there can't be any global warming?'

I feel almost embarrassed to have been able to type that sentence, but you know what I mean.

Yyyyeah, that is me, right now, in relation to the ecosystem of my body.

Yesterday, I went to get my semi-traditional beating by the usually-not-listening drug-mule diabetic nurse, after submitting some vials of the old red stuff for testing last week.

I knew I'd be getting a beating, because I haven't been particularly good for a while. And fair enough, she knew her role in the proceedings, and beat me within an inch of my life. Blood sugar down on a year ago, but still pretty freaking high. Choloesterol up. Liver enzyme count up. She changed my prescription slightly, offered me her latest 'super safe, honest, in the trials' gizmo - a kind of injectable nausea, that makes you feel a bit sick and makes you feel full. I said I'd read up on it, but that if I could avoid the whole injectable pathway, that'd be good thanks.
The one thing she impressed on me, several times, looking me straight in the eye and annunciating importantly, like a character in a Chris Chibnall Doctor Who story delivering plot-exposition, was that 'Doing nothing...is the wrong thing.'

My body, it seems, is finding ways to cope with my dumb ass. It's working just fine...ish, despite elevated blood sugar levels and all the rest of it. Just as Mother Nature's finding ways to deal with our shit, but she doesn't have to be happy about it. You can run it this way, said the nurse, but if you do, one day it'll break. Badly. And that'll more or less be that.

Which of course I already knew, but which doesn't especially help. I'm going to 'talk to someone' she recommended, because I feel the need to unravel this shit at the root - the sense of self, the sense of identity, the sense of giving myself a ready explanation for things, and the self-detructive lemming factor, and the self-war...so that'll be fun for whoever it is I talk to. Get an overthinker to tell you about themselves. What could possibly go wrong there?

And then, today, it was weigh-in day, and I tipped the Nazi Scales at 17 stone 4.25 (I would do it in Kilos for you, but we've had a memor through from Jacob Rees-Poshgit to only use imperial measurements). Down a pound and a half on last week, down...I think a couple of pounds or so on two weeks ago. And in my brain, immediately the line sprang up: 'See? Can't be all that bad - I'm losing weight!'

A...ha. And the rain means there's no global warming too, asshole. Get your shit together Fyler, for fuck's sake...

Wrong-Footing The Toe of Destiny

Well, that was a surprise.

As usual, O followers of the Dissappearing Witterer, the whole shebang begins with a taking-stock. That means a weigh-in, so we have a mark at which to aim.

When I began again before Christmas, I was over 20 stone, and close to 20 stone 7.25 - the weight I was when I began the original Disappearing, some seven years ago.
As foreshadowed yesterday, have recently been eating like I don't know where my next meal is coming from, and doing precisely buggerall by way of exercise.

Which rather takes the piss, as today's relaunch weigh-in weight is: 19st 8.25

This makes no sense whatever, but is enough to give me a spring in my step as I set out yet, yet, yet a-freakin'gain.

There's a danger, when you start out with good news (and yes, absurd as it may sound, starting out at just over 236 pounds is good news), that you immediate relax your resolve, thinking 'Ach, things are nowhere near as bad as I thought they were, where's me pizza?'

This wrong-footing of the Toe of Destiny which was previously booting you up the ass is the way to get precisely nothing done, and continue happy and comfortable and full of carbohydrate - at least in the short term.

At which point, you should feel entirely at liberty to punch yourself in the head and use whatever is available to you to motivate yourself.

'Oi, y'know that noise you make when you get out of a chair?'

'Yeah...'

'ACK, wrong answer, put the pizza down, get your shoes on and get walking.'

Yes, absolutely, I'm suggesting you bamboozle yourself. If it helps, yourself is trying to bamboozle you all the time - 'One more slice, where's the harm?' 'No-one ever dropped dead of eating this particular cupcake.' 'It looks a bit overcast out there...'

Fat is commmmfortable. Part of your brain - or at least part of mine - wants to stay that way, because it's like slobbing around in your PJs all day, it feels freakin' gooooood. But sometimes, you've got to go out. Taking an occasional day in your PJS - fab. Spending your whole LIFE in your PJs? Really not so good.

So lie, cheat, bamboozle the bejesus out of your brain if you have to. But when you get good news, treat it like a door-to-door double glazing salesman. Be wary. Nod, understand, but don't necessarily let it coax you into anything that doesn't fit in with your pre-existing plans.

Let not the Toe of Destiny go awry, for it is thine ass for which it is intended.

Now - time to register with a doctor...

The Myth of Captain Healthy

While I'm thinking of it, the other reason not to weigh every goddamn day or chance you get is that, in case you missed this, scales are Nazi bastards, and they'll try and upset you and make you reach for your "Fuck it all, I'm leaving home!" treat of choice.

Last night, d and I were in Cardiff, and, as you do, and as is one of the great pleasures of liking any one or number of human beings more than the general mirthless, remorseless crowd of fuckwits, dickheads and douchebags that make up the human race, we had a meal together, sharing time, exchanging days and breaking bread. Breaking literal bread in my case, as we ended up in an Italian place that we've always walked by to get somewhere else, every time saying "Y'know, we really should try that place some day. Anyway..."

So last night, we said "Y'know, we really should try that place some day. Anyway...", walked on, discovered that the place we were heading for was about as attractive as a bullfrog on a blind date, and doubled back to finally cross the Italian off our List of Places To Eat At Before We Die.

It was...good. Not great, but good. Not fine dining, certainly, but fine if you found yourself in a particular part of Cardiff and seized with a sudden dangerously low blood-carb content. I had a brushcetta starter piled with tomatoes and raw onions - yeah, technically it was date night, but what you have to understnad is it was eleven year married date night. d had meatballs that were OK, but with which, should the need have arisen, you could at least have taken out the eyes of your first few attackers, come the zombie apocalypse. She added a side of garlic spinach, because, as I say, this was an eleven year married date night, dammit. For main, she went lasagne, and I went penne amatriciana - pasta, following bread, I know, sue me.

She went chocolate cake for dessert. I went smiling and a decaff latte.

All was good and groovy, except that in the aftermath of the meal, d wasn't well. Something had disagreed with her, and it wanted out any which way it could. I'm not sure a swaying bus ride home in the freezing cold especially helped either, but it was that or stand around for half an hour as her spine turned to one of Elsa's ice sculptures from Frozen. So we swayed.

Me - all I can tell you is that something must really have agreed with me, because 24 hours later, I still contain absolutely all of a bruschetta starter piled with tomatoes and raw onions, and a plateful of penne amatriciana.

Which is a real bastard if you're weighing every day, because then you wake up the morning after an official weigh-in, and weigh, and want to kill yourself when you see two weeks of pedalling run away yelling  "Fuck you, Disappearing Boy!" and throwing you V's and one-fingered salutes, giggling as it goes. I'm not getting on the scales tonight because something seems to be knitting itself a raft or a trap door in my colon and to have determined it wants a never-ending lock-in.

All I can do is continue as normal, get some dinner, get some biking done, try to get some sleep and move the hell along.

On the upside, I had my annual diabetic review today, after which you can kiss my ass and call me Captain Healthy. They bled me last week, and apparently, all is groovy. I have an HBA1C level of 54.

Impressed? Yeah, I didn't have a clue. "All good," said the nurse. Having just checked online, I can tell you the HBA1C is a measure of glycated haemoglobin - different from blood sugar in some...erm...crucial way, apparently. Now, the online stats say you should aim for an HBA1C of 48 or below, unless you've been advised otherwise - which to my nowledge, I haven't. So either my diabetic nurse knows more about my condition than she's ever bothered to let on, and I fall into the "below 59 is fine" category (which does appear to exist), or it was after 5PM when she saw me and she just couldn't give a shit any more. Pretty much like me in my current predicament.

Annnnnyhow. All good is what she told me, so all good is what I'm going with for now. The more I lose, the more the system is likely to come under better regulation, and the more optimal my HBA1C will be.

So, with d set to finish work just two hours from now, I need to get my clogged ass up and get some dinner and biking done. Catch you later, Disappearers all!

The Double Check and the HateCycle

Today was a weird one. Had lots to do, ended up doing very little of it, not least because with the organisational idiocy for which I'm legendary in my close circle, I'd booked two doctors appointments for the same morning. So we schlepped to the first one - to have blood taken for an annual diabetic review next week - and I was vampirised with remarkable efficiency. One thing to be said for taking blood-thinning medications is that getting blood taken is usually no drama whatsoever. Then we hot-footed it to the hospital for the other, bigger event of the day - a cardiology appointment, which unbeknown to me these days includes a rudimentary ECG (and accompanying crop-circle waxing when the sticky pads are ripped off). So...that was fun. Fortunately, my heart behaved itself, and gave the doctor a lovely regular 50 beats per minute rhythm to study intently for ten seconds before he told me to sod off, and that he'd see me in two years.

Result!

That said, the whole thing, which took about four hours from leaving the ohuse to getting home, left me with a kind of hospital lethargy that has persisted for the rest of the day. Right now, I'm writing this before getting on the bike, and rediscovering the resentment and loathing of the machine. You know I've had a couple of knackered nights already, but this is more, or less, or certainly different to that. I'm looking across as it and hating the idea of getting on that bike.

Sigh. Where to go when that mood grabs you?
There's a quote I've tried and failed to find about the business of writing. It says something like "Anyone can write when they're inspired. The mark of a real writer is writing when you're not. Writing when you don't feel you can. Writing when it's the last thing you want to do."

The same is true of Disappearers and putting in the effort. Truth be told and bottom line, no-one's going to care if you don't do the exercise. No-one's going be shocked or scandalised. For the most part, unless you're a schmuck like me and tell everyone, no-one's even going to know.

But you will. And whne you next get on your scales, you'll be lying to yourself when you dare to hope, because you won't have done the work you need to do. And when the results don't come, you'll know why they haven't. Your choice, as a grown-up. Have days off, have nights off by all means, I don't mean to get all drill sergeant on your ass. But if your only rationale is the childlike "I don't wanna!" then shut your yap, and do what you need to do.

Does it help you loathe it less? No, of course not. I still hate the idea of getting on that bike right now. But it's an hour out of my life, and at the end of it, it'll be done. The angst of not doing it would probably last longer and be more painful.

So - to the HateCycle, Disappearing Man!

The Lone Arrhythmia

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it boys and girls?

First of all, let’s cop to this – I’ve been a complete hypocrite today.

Nono, I mean in addition to my usual hypocrisy. Thing is, I’m a socialist by inclination, and a liberal by nature, and I’m not remotely ashamed of either fact. I regard the National Health Service as one of the best ideas of the last hundred years, on a par with feminism and equality. The idea that no-one should die or suffer unduly for want of medical care or the money it takes to get it is, to me, a statement of political will for the benefit of everyone, something we barely recognise in this jaundiced, politically fuck-weary age.

I have a mother, though.

A Valleys mother, who is about as far from being a socialist as it’s possible to be while still recognising that UKIP is a party for Martians, and who, having worked for much of her adult life in the NHS, knows what’s what with its inner workings.

 After my recent double cardiac palaver, she called some people.

‘You’re seeing the cardiologist Wednesday,’ she said. ‘It’s all sorted. Shut up – you’re not waiting nine months.’

I pointed out that I was on the non-urgent waiting list, so clearly I didn’t need to see a cardiologist Wednesday, and that in any case, there’d be nothing he’d be able to tell me that we didn’t already know, because unless I presented with a chest cavity doing the rhumba, my heart seemed to function perfectly normally.

It was however forcibly impressed on me that I wasn’t so much going to see a cardiologist Wednesday for my peace of mind, as I was for hers.

You’d think that by the age of 43, I’d have worked a way around that one, but I haven’t – d can still do it to me too: by making me believe, however briefly, that the course she wants me to take is doing her a boon, she can make me take better care of myself:

‘You can’t possibly be warm enough.’

‘I’m fine, honey.’

‘Well here, take another blanket.’

‘I don’t need another blanket.’

‘You’re making me cold just looking at you. Take another blanket.’

‘Well, OK…’

Idiocy of the highest order, I know, but part of the desperate-to-please kernel of my character.

So anyway, I was going to see a cardiologist – privately (ptui!) – on Wednesday.

Today was Wednesday. I saw a cardiologist.

He was useful, in all fairness.

For the first time, I had an explanation from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Everything conceivable about my heart, it turns out, is just fine and dandy. Except I have a ‘lone’ Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation.

 ‘A lone one?’ I asked, trying not to smirk as the image of a heart with a mask on, riding a white horse into the distance took centre stage in my mind. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Means there’s no reason for it,’ he explained. ‘None at all as far as we can see. It’s just blech – a thing you have.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘T’riffic. So what happens now?’

‘Well, you’re on the Betablockers. The arrhythmia is one of those things that grows more and more dominant over time, until eventually it’ll be permanent.’

‘And what the hell happens then?’

‘Oh then, it’s just normal. With the Betablockers, you probably won’t feel it.’

‘O…k,’ I said.

‘The real danger is a stroke,’ he explained. This had been mentioned to me before: it’s why I’m taking the Betablockers. ‘You know what a stroke is, yes?’

I thought I did, but it turned out I didn’t, really.

‘In your case, what’s happening is that instead of the atria of your heart doing this-’  He squeezed both hands in a downward motion. ‘-they’re doing this.’ I swear as d is my witness, he did jazz hands.

‘I have a jazz heart,’ I muttered under his continued explanation.

‘What that means is that the blood that should be going from the atria to the ventricles is kind of sitting about getting bored. D’you know what happens when blood sits about getting bored?’

Monopoly? I thought, but didn’t quite say. Pizza Hut? Finally cracking open Game of Thrones, Season One? I dismissed the thought – if my blood was that bored, I think I’d probably be dead.

‘It clots,’ he said. ‘Which means when our atria finally stop doing this-’ – Jazz hands again – ‘-the clots go down into the ventricles, and then when the ventricles pump, the clots go out into the body. Now, they can go anywhere,’ he said, and I thought I know they can, I’ve seen House, ‘but if they go to the brain – that’s a stroke.’

I blinked for a second. ‘And that’s why I’m taking the Betablockers, yes?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re taking those to minimise the effect of the irregular rapid heartbeat.’

‘Right,’ I said, not following.

‘You need an anti-coagulant to stop the blood from clotting.’

I raised a hand. ‘Erm… I’m a klutz,’ I mentioned. ‘I bang into things pretty much all the time. I also have a close personal relationship with the floor. I fall over really more than you’d think was possible.’

‘I’d try to avoid doing that in future if I were you,’ he said, as though under the impression I had some say in the matter. He explained the joys of Warfarin to me, by the end of which, the best that could be said for the pain in the ass blood thinner was that it wouldn’t actively come and punch me in the balls when I wasn’t looking.

 ‘Or there’s this bright shiny new thing,’ he said, not in fact adding that I’ve taken a massive kickback from a pharma company to get you to be dependent on for the rest of your life. I swear I heard that in my heard though.  He explained it was virtually side effect free (if you didn’t count the potential to bleed out of every known orifice, and some places that are barely orifices, like my eyes), and that it didn’t carry the ass-pain burden of regular blood tests that Warfarin did, and that, best of all, I could continue to eat green vegetables on it.

‘Gee. Thanks,’ I may have actually muttered.

So as of tomorrow, my blood will be as thin as a politician’s promise. Should you punch me, I might fill up like a black pudding full of blood. Should you cut me, I will not only bleed over your ass, I will geyser like a Tarantino extra. I like to think of it as training to be Russian royalty (though I’m guessing that’ll be an allusion that’s lost on some of you?)

‘Plus,’ he added, enthusing like he was going after his bonus, ‘the really good thing about this new drug is that there’s far less likelihood of it causing a haemorrhage.’

‘A what-now?’

‘Well…’ he said. ‘It’s blood, you see. If it clots, you can get a stroke. If it’s too thin, you get the risk of haemorrhages.’

‘Brain…haemorrhages?’

 ‘Well, haemorrhages anywhere, really, but yes, brain haemorrhages tend to be game over. But you sort of have to decide what you’re more scared of, strokes or haemorrhages.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘But I can’t make the choice for you,’ he said, smiling and sitting back, knowing he’d made a sale.

Still, at least my impatient relative is happy. Disappearing-wise, have walked round the lake several times today (five, I think, though to be honest, the revolutions really do tend to blend into one) and have walked 8800 steps, amounting to 592 calories. Foodwise, have had a McDonalds porridge and an apple. Will be getting on the bike after dinner – oh yeah, Heart-Boy also confirmed the earlier GP assessment – all sorts of moderate exercise, good and groovy. Insanity – hell no!

‘Overexertion could trigger the fibrillation,’ he said.

‘But I’ve only ever once had an event after exertion,’ I explained. ‘The rest of the time it’s been walking into places. Walking through places. Sitting on a tube. Walking out of places. Bending slightly over.’

‘I know,’ he said, smiling enigmatically at me. ‘No real cause, but you might as well avoid the risk.’

‘But-’

‘Solo,’ he said, nodding. ‘On its own. Without cause.’ I swear he shrugged.

Normally, when you go to a specialist, you expect to understand your condition more thoroughly and draw comfort from it. And to give him his due, I feel I know more about the thing, and if anything it’s given me a sense of fatalism – there are risks of heart attack, risks of stroke, now, apparently, risks of brain haemorrhage, but essentially, the fibrillation will get more and more, and eventually, it’ll just be my own little bucking bronco, Hi Ho Silvering away inside my chest – but for the most part, I’ll neither know about it nor care. This is what we call a pathway.

Oh and finally, one little tip for any fellow socialists. Pay. But pay once – my next appointment with this consultant will now be on the NHS, but if I have any issues with the medication, I’ve got a named consultant, and can go and see him. It’s evil that we should have to do this kind of thing, but if you pay once, it sort of works to get you eventually the sort of treatment on the NHS that you should be able to get without paying at all.

Fight the power, comrades! Or, if you can't fight it, at least sidle up to it slyly and kick it in the shins.