Category: Health

The Story behind the Menu

 

I am going to go out on a limb and say that things could be better. On the other hand er.. leg, it could be a lot worse. So, on the whole, I have decided to not put my foot down and complain about the state of things.

I could not resist the above paragraph folks. So, thanks for letting me get away with that. The truth is that I have a hairline fracture on my ankle and am hoisted up on one foot for weeks. At first, the daughter remained in denial. She kept telling me that she can barely notice the limp in my stride, about how the foot would not pain if I don’t think about the pain etc. It was only later I found that her hidden agenda was making me believe I was perfectly fine. Fine enough to go to Disneyland for the Thanksgiving break. Well, we put a stopper to her Disneyland dreams when she saw me hobbling into the house on crutches. Even she knew that no amount of psychological counseling can get me to Disneyland at this point. So, she buckled down to a week-end at home and teamed up with the husband to "take care" of me.

The pair of them made a sufficient noise about getting me to rest over the week-end and said I was to remain upstairs while they cooked up a Thanksgiving lunch for me.
Very gallant of them of course, but I have to say, I have whipped up many a meal in my life, but rarely have I made such a noise about it. I mean neighbours heard pans clanging and music blaring. Not to mention questionable noises and smells. After about an hour of this cacophony, I asked them what the menu was, and I got the following:

Pan-seared vegetables:
What that means is that the duo had cut up vegetables in haphazard shapes and let them burn. My longish nose picked up a smell like burning rubber and I asked them in a slightly alarmed voice whether everything was under control.
"Oh no….!" moaned the chef
"APPA! You said not to cover it. If we had covered it, amma would not have smelled the vegetables burning!" the sous chef’s accusatory tone rang out. I must say I would have preferred it if she did not burn it at all in the first place.

Potatoes with a hint of Cumin:
I distinctly heard the husband say "OOOPS! The lid just fell inside and it plopped all over."
The daughter rang out, "What is that appa? You said chilli powder, but isn’t chilli powder red? This one is brown or is it green?" I decided I did not want to let my imagination explore what the powder might be, but a few seconds is all it took for me to realise that the "Oops" was the Cumin bottle.
I heard them splashing water on the pan. They must have washed the cumin off because by the time I ate it, they were boiled potatoes.

Lentils with the freshness of roma tomatoes:
The dal was fine – only in the last moment, the sous chef decided that she did not like tomatoes and the Roma t’s retained their freshness.

Thanksgiving

I groaned as I hopped into the kitchen. Every single spice bottle was on the counter and every inch of counter space was full. I must’ve looked a sight because the husband said he was going to clean up and that I had come too early. The daughter said that if they had aprons, things might have been better

And so it goes … never a dull moment in the nourishncherish world.

PS: My friends and neighbours have been wonderful they’ve sent food across, so the kitchen is holding up after the last bout of cleaning. Thanks all 🙂

The Bill of Health

Have I told you about the husband’s visit to the doctor a few years ago?

When asked to take up a physical exam, the husband will run a marathon or at least a half marathon. I think he just likes to tone his muscles and present himself as the ‘Man with the glowing physique’ to the physician. As soon as enters the Doctor’s office, he also makes it a point to bring the topics of conv. around to running and subtly inserts hints about his long distance running and running shoes. The psychological advantage being that the doctor with his glasses as he scans the lab reports cannot be too harsh on numbers that don’t look good. You can’t bombast a guy for his triglycerides and make him kneel down for seeing him at Saravana Bhavan with an oily dosa at hand and an oilier vada in his mouth if he has just run a marathon what?

Following his usual tactics, he ran a marathon, set up a physical exam and started bragging about his running minutes into entering the Doctor’s presence. But, he had recently changed doctors and this one was not to be fooled by marathoners. There is something about spectacle positioning that can make grown men feel like school children. It is neither too low down the nose, nor perched perfectly – the eye penetration factor to severe spectacle ratio is perfected by some causing folks so spill their guts with a mere ‘Hello’. This doctor held a doctorate on spectacle positioning and frowned upon learning that he was a runner.
“Hmm….Marathon running eh?”
“Yes..” *Gulp*
“I know you marathoners. You will run and then say,’I ran so much, so let me eat’ and you will eat.”
“No Sir…sorry, no Doctor.”
“Yes…Yes…I know you people. You will eat way more than necessary. Has your weight reduced because of the running?”
“Ehh..no, but that was not my goal.”
“Then muscle toning eh?”

There was a laugh in the muscle toning that told him that no matter what his answer, he was not going to be happy with the Doctor’s take on it, so he kept glum. (which is saying something)

Fast forward a few hours and imagine my shock when I saw a haggard looking husband droop into the house and recoil at the food I had put on the table? A little gentle probing revealed all. Apparently the doctor in his enthusiasm to drive a point told him that, “Last month….a young man – running, busy job etc came. This month dead.”
I mean…what the? What?

Obviously shaken to the core, he veered off food for a few days, and ran a half marathon after the check-up as well.

The same thing happened to me a few days ago. There I was, sitting and browsing about this and that when I read this article that said my job is killing me. A sedantary job does that apparently.

http://mashable.com/2012/03/02/work-death-infographic/

So, here is a call to all workers, please put in your quota of exercise and eat right. I myself sacrificed a bag of fries yesterday. Which reminds me – it has been a while since the husband ran a half marathon, I should ask the Doctor’s office to remind him about his annual physical exam.

Tea anyone?

Is there a TA group? Sometimes, I find myself in remission, and other times I have a furious re-lapse. For those of you who already know me, it is no surprise, but for others, it’s time for a confession.

I am a teaholic. Anytime, you put a cup in front of me, I can do justice to it. I can drink out of the cheap tea-glasses in tea-shops on the roadside with the same fervour and enthusiasm I accord to petite cups fit for Princesses. I can sound like a camel thirstily slopping water at an oasis or slide the life-saving noiselessly into the opening. Sometimes, I can drink tea soon after I’ve polished a cup of icecream, and still walk and talk normally.

I grew up amidst tea estates and had access to the finest teas! I am proud to admit that I took advantage of all these opportunities. I am not so proud to admit manipulating the brother when he was gullible enough to make tea for me endlessly for a little bit of praise.

“Wow – you know the best tea? It is what you make dear brother!”

The effect was phenomenal: he would swell with pride, and his eyes would pop. He would run and bustle about making a cup of tea for me. Sometimes, in my praise, if I went overboard, the brother would go overboard too, and bring in biscuits on a tray with the tea. Even when his tennis or football, or whatever bally game it was he was playing at the time beckoned him, the man would deliver. Of course those times, the tea did look too much like ditch water for comfort, but if you closed your eyes and drank it, it was fine. I am a trifle sad that he has since grown up, and my polished gestures of appreciation are not greeted with the same enthusiasm of his youth! Passage of time does that to one. Sigh.

While critics have criticised me for the obsession, I wish to throw this study out at them, and tell them that I have only been keeping diabetes at bay all this while.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/DiabetesNews/tea-coffee-protect-diabetes/story?id=9339312

This story has lightened my heart. Now, I am off for a hot cuppa in this cold and hostile weather. I am looking over my shoulder as I say this

“You know the best tea in the world ..?” (Well, it is the holiday season, I tried it to see if my little brother would come in with tea and biscuits! But sad luck, I’m on my own!)

On Healthcare

When it comes to Healthcare, I’ve a little experiment to suggest. You can take the combined brain mass of the intellectuals around the world, and defy them to come up with a mess. I’ll bet the feather on my hat that they could not come up with a solution that matches the large scale bungling that capitalism has produced.

There are certain things that Doctors have to do to survive, and there are certain things that Insurance companies have to do to survive. What’s the wrong with that? Nothing *shrugs shoulders* Everyone could sing and admire sunrises, but for the minor blemish on the horizon: The things that Insurance companies and Doctors have to do to be healthy financially don’t always intersect with the fact that the patient has to healthy.

Let’s consider a chest congestion. If the same ailment were to befall me in my hometown in India a few years ago, I would walk up to the clinic across the street. Not in the mood for a clinic? No problem, I’ll settle for the pharmacy and refer lovingly to the “brother” who runs the store as “Anna”, and say I have a cough. If I could cough for him grossly, with the ringing sound of phlegm, he would prescribe me an anti-biotic in a jiffy. Two days later, I can breeze along the streets of Broadway and perform as the lead singer at the Italian Opera without anybody being any the wiser.

Not so here – uh uh! Nope! I have to get a minimum for 3 appointments before the anti-biotic, charging my insurance company I know not how much, and charging me my “co-pay” each time. Let’s say, the co-pay is $20. $60 and 10 days later, I am still no closer to getting a cure than a baboon coughing up phelgm without any access to health care in the Congo basin.(I don’t know whether baboons cough, but let’s assume they do) Then, it is prudent to have a meltdown in the Doctor office, at which point a nurse would stir in your direction, and touch you with her sympathy. By the time, the anti-biotics come along, the lung that’s been wheezing along fine thus far looks pneumonic, and a chest x-ray is in order, the bronchial tract that was hitherto clear has constricted making you whistle everytime you breathe. In short, you can forget the opera, and the coughing baboon in Congo is better off, because it did not lose $60.

I am not saying that walking to a pharmacy and having an anti-biotic prescribed has merits. But you must accept, it has ease and works for 80% of the minor ailments that befall a middle aged person.

Now, we come to Pricing. You can get the medications from an approved pharmacy for $160, whereas the same thing in Walmart costs something the common man can afford(like $10). It has happened to me, I got something for $4 in Walmart, while the same medication cost $100 in Walgreens after the co-pay of $20!

What is frightening is, where does this rip off stop?

Does it make older people feign health as long as they can possibly help it rather than get entangled in the quagmire of health care?

As if, the medical healthcare industry has not caused enough heart-ache, they are now becoming creative. Case in point: this lady’s depression treatment was denied because she put up photographs of herself in a bar on her birthday on Facebook!

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20091123/ap_on_hi_te/cn_canada_facebook_insurance

(which incidentally lends credence to my previous post on Facebook)

Where does this long road lead?

The beauty of questioning

I spend a lot of time vacillating between an agnostic secular person and a religious person, who doesn’t believe 80% of what my religion has become over the ages. Suffice it to say that the days I spend in my former state far outnumber the days I spend in the latter.

Here is my problem: I like to believe in the power of hope and if belief is what brings hope, I am all for it. On the other hand, over the ages, I can categorically state that religion has done more damage to mankind than good. The moment religion ceases to be a personal experience, I can see it wreaking havoc.

I quite like the idea of finding yourself. Easily, that is the path taken by all the “founders” of religion – be it Buddha or the Sufi saints of Islam or the Bhagavad Gita. But how does one explain “finding oneself” to the masses? That is where the problem begins. So, the explanation became finding one’s moral conscience – still good. But a few centuries later, moral conscience evolves into a set of rules written by the elitist community of the religion. Slowly, the congregation becomes more of a unifying force, one to forge your identity with, than to use as a tool to better yourself.

At my wedding, the priest was a person who was my grandfather’s friend. My grandfather was a kind-hearted, generous, loving, able teacher, caring husband/father and he was a pious man. But somehow, whenever people described him, they put his piety ahead of his other virtues. This priest came to my wedding and said he would do all it takes in his power to make sure that great man’s grand-daughter lived a fantastic life, and put us through the most grueling wedding ceremony in recent times. I didn’t understand more than a few words of what was said – there was no need for me to elongate the proceedings by asking for clarifications in between on a hot day in front of the fire, with no food in my stomach. The ceremony lasted a good 9 hours of listening to things I didn’t understand. Everyone who came to congratulate me, said the priest was excellent, he hadn’t missed a single thing – who would understand how my intestines were reacting at the time? Which religion?

What I am trying to say is, some people are ritualistic by nature – to them, rituals become religion – this isn’t orthodoxy, this is just an interpretation of their own religion. It is also show-case worthy.

I have spent my growing years chanting some prayers that my mother taught me on the way to the school in the morning, as we ran for the train. That is all I know today, and probably that is all I will ever know – who knows? Every now and then, I think that just because I am part-agnostic, I should not deny the experience of a religion to my daughter. So, I take her to the local temple. She asks a million questions along the way as usual. We are in the temple, and she looks at the statues and asks – “If Ummachi (God) made everything and gave us everything, how come he isn’t even moving?”

I savoured the question – the beauty of questioning always delights me. I am sorry that when it comes to religion so few people still have the power of questioning left in them.