Bad News

Bad news never comes at a good time. If you are having a good time when he arrives, he kills the mood. If you are down, he kicks you. If you are weak, he throws sand in your face and laughs at you. He is one of those friends that darkens whatever room he walks into.

I was in a good mood when he arrived. I had just indulged in a liberal dose of my favorite mood altering drug, food. It was a mushroom cheeseburger with a loaded sweet potato, preceded by an appetizer of rolls with cinnamon and sugar butter. Good stuff. Very good stuff. I had decided to skip dessert out of a sense of restraint and responsibility, and because I was stuffed. Very stuffed.

Then I got the call.

I answered, "Hello, this is Mark," because that's who I am. She said, "This is Ashley at such and such clinic," probably because that is who she is, and she told me Dr. Soandso had asked her to call about my recent blood work. I knew it couldn't be good. Doctors don't call you with good news.

She said both my triglycerides and blood sugar were borderline high. I took this to mean that my results were almost bad, but not quite. Whether that was true or not is irrelevant because that is how I chose to see it. That way I could rest easy with the false knowledge that my numbers were still on the good side of the line.

This is a reasonable approach given that if I had been on the bad side of borderline Ashley would not have said I was borderline good. She would have said I was bad, and perhaps that the good doctor wanted to see me again. As it was, being borderline bad, he simply passed the word to me to exercise a little more, eat a little less fatty meat, and cut back on the sugar.

Oops. Too late.

Sitting in front of a very empty plate from a very fatty meal, accented with a somewhat liberal helping of sugar, all I could do was laugh.

I am sure you can tell from my tone of voice that I am intent on conquering this borderline bad situation. It is the smart thing to do. Just as soon as I verify the numbers. You see, the night before my physical I pre-arranged an excuse so that whatever the tests results were, I could tell myself I was really better than what they showed.

My secret? I forced myself to swallow multiple doses of prime rib pasta with cream sauce the night before my physical. And I supplemented the pasta procedure with an oral injection of rolls with cinnamon and sugar butter.

Don't get me wrong. I will take this warning very seriously. I will cut down on both the fat and the sugar, at least on all nights that fall immediately before my next physical. And I will increase my exercise. Why, just tonight I increased my activity. I walked and paced as I typed this ditty into my phone.

I probably burned off a whole bunch of that Reese's I ate on my way back from the restaurant.