NEEDLING

Turned the DVD player off after watching Super Size Me. This is my first viewing, and probably the last. I knew everything he talked about all ready, though I didn’t know it to the extreme he talks about it.

A few months ago, I had two teeth extracted. That day, I was in pain, hadn’t slept in several days, and came into work looking like shit. My manager, who’s now working at corporate office, basically forced me to go see a dentist. There’s one just a few store-fronts from our liquor store. A few hours later, I was sitting in a surgical chair with an old fellow sticking pliers in my mouth. I hated it. I hated the drugs they gave me beforehand.

There was this gas I had to breath in – I had decided not to be put to sleep (being fully aware of the linguistic connotations) and had decided to only have my mouth be put to sleep. After the shot into my gum, and it wasn’t taking - they’d stick needles in there every few minutes to see if I could still feel something – they decided to put a gas mask on me. It was no fun at all. I lost all ability to move my limbs. I could only move my eyeballs, see what was happening, be completely aware of my suroundings. I started trying to talk, or rather to yell at them that I hated what was happening to me, but all that came out were primordial grunts and garbles. I’d never before felt so powerless.

And hovering over me was the doctor, a tallish graying man in his early sixties, and a young nurse in her early thirties or late twenties who all ready hated my guts because it was past six in the afternoon and her shift had been extended. She’d been rude to me from the start. To her, I wasn’t a patient in pain – small, I know, not exactly life threatening... give me a break – to her I was an hour more on the clock. She made it quite clear to me when she picked up her cell phone right outside my room and called her significant other to inform him/her that because of a late patient she wouldn’t be able to make it in time. All of it with over-amplified sighs, sorry’s this isn’t my fault... blablabla... when I lost total access to my limbs and vocal cords, and that I was on this metal table late in the afternoon staring up at the ceiling and at these two people hovering over me, one of whom hated my guts, all the sudden I got more scared and more paranoid than I’d ever gotten before.

I tried to talk, and it came out as prehistorical grunts of fear.

“Whoops... guess we put a little too much gas, sorry about that,” is all the doctor thought to say. He pushed some button and the pressure released.

I felt like the biggest coward. I felt like a little boy except my mother wasn’t outside that door making sure these people weren’t going to do horrible things to me.

Then everything went numb inside my mouth. My limbs came back to life. The pliers entered my mouth. I couldn’t feel a thing, but I could hear my teeth resisting. I could see and feel the annoyance of the nurse as my teeth fought the pliers. I could hear things crunch in there.

In the process of going to a doctor for the first time in a few years – not counting the bull shit green card over-paid American doctor I had to see in Paris to get my papers – they told me my cholesterol as well as my blood pressure were high, that I needed to be careful. For two days after the dental surgery, I couldn’t eat any solids, so I contemplated my diet quite seriously. I decided I would not go to another fast food or hamburger joint ever again. I’ve failed a few time. I decided to buy fresh food at H.E.B. for my lunch instead of going to the local hamburger joint. I’ve done that ever since. I’ve lost weight, though not as much as I’d like to. I don’t like nor drink sodas, so that’s not a problem. Coffee is a big thing for me. So is alcohol.

I bought some books.

Eat to Live and Cholesterol Protection for Life, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (I was turned on to these books by reading Large Fellow, you can find more information here.) I’ve gotten the name of a doctor, a proper M.D., from my sister. A doctor who works with ‘alternative’ remedies – mostly meaning NO pills and such, and sticking to dietary solutions. So I thought about possibly doing an experiment, kind of like Super Size Me but the other way around. That’s why I rented that movie, so that I could see to what extent he took the experiment. The extent to which he took it is scary.

It would rather be an unfair start since I’ve all ready totally given up fast foods and hamburger joints, as well as Tex-Mex restaurants, and so forth. But I am overweight, an alcoholic, and I do live a rather unhealthy life-style. I don’t even know how much I weigh... (scared to know, really).

Maybe it’s time to go see that doctor, get all the numbers, the charts, the cholesterol levels, the this and that’s... et cetera. And jump on the wagon!! First, though, I need to read the books, study the whole affair, and see if I have the balls to go through with it.

(There is one thing I must keep in mind. I won a trip to Las Vegas with my work, and this trip won’t happen till the end of October. How could I go to Vegas and not drink, not eat whatever, not do all the things that are totally bad for me? What else is Vegas good for? So, for right now, I’m cutting out the meats, which I’ve more or less done for the last several weeks, I’m slowly cutting the coffee, and eating as much raw vegies and fruits as possible, along with beans, salads, and unsalted nuts. But I’m not going all out until AFTER Vegas, which gives me plenty of time to study up on it all.)