You did not mean to but you almost killed me. PART 4

(The more we know the more we know that we don’t know)

Fed up with the size of my pants, I decided to take the leap and go on a diet. A special diet. One of those where you suffer for six weeks and then it is all over and you have to fight off the neighbours’ wives (in your dreams mate). Dramatic stuff this diet. No dessert — nothing at all. If the cravings get really bad, chew on a Provita. Or your fingers. How considerate. Oh and also, no bread, now pizza, no rolls, no anything with wheat or maize or anything else grainy. Including pasta and noodles — and cake. You didn’t know that was wheat? Nice try. Just goes to show you hey. No this and no that and very little of everything else. Except water — lots of that. And here I was thinking that water was reserved for hygiene. O hell yes and I almost forgot — no alcohol. Zip. Nothing. They claim it is sugar. Sugar in my whiskey? Are you sure these people can be trusted? Anyway — we take the plunge. The dear wife in support and making me wonder — was I that bad (fat)? Ok so it’s fun and you drink water and eat fish and green things and you pee every ten minutes. I started thinking the diet is a scam — it’s all the running to the toilet that’s doing it. After three days I have lost enough to keep me motivated but then a few days more and I notice something else: I have not taken my hay fever pills now for a day or two and my eyes are still open. What a coincidence. Maybe only fat people get hay fever. But seriously, it is gone and dearest is having the same experience: no sneezing, no itchy throat and no watery eyes. So I talk to my good friend at the health shop and mention this by the by. He laughs at me this Christo fellow. I told you long ago grain is cattle feed and not fit for human consumption he says. Yes, yes I know but why the hay fever? Oh, it is a cumulative thing he means. Allergies are. One on top of the other and before you know, you get a severe reaction from something small. Like when you pour water into a jug. Nothing much happens until the jug is full and then suddenly everything runs over and makes a big mess. So you stop pouring the big stuff into the jug and then the jug does not get full and nothing runs over. Are you serious? Two pieces of toast in the morning and roll or bite of pizza every now and then? Yes, he recons. Also, keep in mind that when your body reacts badly to something it takes a few days to sort itself out and by that time you have had two or ten more pieces of toast and had thrown a pizza in for good measure and you wonder why the jug is full. I am allergic to bread? Get serious man — it is the nation’s staple food. Yip, he says — poor nation. See how they are suffering and getting more obese by the day and see how they die of heart attacks and other horrible ailments.

Me allergic to bread — are you sure? Look at it like this he says: if you were to walk through a wheat field or spend an hour on the harvester during maize harvest — what will happen to your allergies? Oh nothing much I said. A week or so in intensive care and when I get out, I will be fine again. Whats your point mate, I said. He continues: if you are allergic to the stuff on the outside, what makes you think it is any different on the inside? Wow — that’s a horrible thought considering how much I need to scratch on the outside when it comes around. No wonder I feel so crap — there are no fingers to scratchthere on the inside. So what is it with grainy stuff, I asked. He reckoned it’s mostly the gluten and dear Mr Ackerman (founder of a major retail chain using himself as the good guy in his marketing), who is always on the side of the housewife, found people that can put even more gluten into the bread rolls to make it light and fluffy and white and much nicer looking than Mrs Jones’ rolls who does not shop at his place. How much more I wanted to know. Mr Ackerman is a decent guy and he knows it’s not easy to stand up the Jones’ so it’s more than double the gluten — and more than double the trouble. Do you know where this guy lives, I asked. Too late mate, he said. They all do it now and they have the stamp from the heart foundation for the fat royalties they pay. Their money says bread is good for your heart — you won’t have any mitigation.

A few days after that grainy storie, I went visiting for a weekend — travelling light as I dared to leave another few kilograms of pills at home. The next morning halfway up a short flight of stairs I suddenly stopped and sat down. Must have been a short or blown fuse I thought as the lights just went out and cut all power to all systems. Never for a moment contemplated failure of the alternator — too scary and way too expensive to even consider. After a quick recharge and systems scan I was up and on the way but a bit wary now — scary stuff this sudden darkness when the lights go out. The family was very concerned but how do I tell them that this fifty five year old with a triple bypass not too many Christmases ago is feeling faint and dizzy and wants to keel over? Naw, nothing wrong — just a bit of cramp in them old legs. Fine again now. But I wasn’t. The lights were fine but the computer was seriously overclocking. What the hell was that? You’re a fit young man and the overhauled alternator is still under warranty so how now? Coffee any one? No thanks, not for me I said whilst thinking — that stuff is really corrosive on the electrics and one never knows. Better be safe. Sometime during the night a little light went on — different from the one that went out earlier — LED I think. (Very bright and hardly uses any power.) It wasn’t the lights, it was just your blood pressure getting too low as a result of the rapid ascent up the ten stairs. What? Serious? Yes, makes sense. Must be that. So I switch the LED off and got some sleep. Next morning I bypass the Cozaar and Amloc routine but kept it to myself. They all remember the threat of the hydraulics blowing the pump so no point in spoiling a nice breakfast. The day went by and I cannot remember much other than that I kept my eye on the pressure gauge and the volt meter but both stayed nicely in the green. And so on during the next day and the next and I did a few test runs up the stairs but all systems good and no alarms going off — or on for that matter.

Back home I went to see the good doctor friend for what turned out to be last time on thirty years. (No, he is fine — I relocated.) I told him the sad news about his bonuses from the Cozaar and Amloc guys but he took it like a man albeit not without a fight. He sucked a liter of blood out me and made me run an ultra on his treadmill with those stupid greasy stickers and wires all over me. (Maybe the opportunity to shave off patches of chest hair to leave me looking absolute ridiculous was his revenge for the lost bonus.) I still suspect it was the smoke from the treadmill and not the alarm on the little box with the wires that eventually made him accept that I was not going to start begging and he told me to stop. Mmm, he said and walked off and I said to myself; you’re damn right it’s Mmmm. Bet you did not expect that hey?

For the next six weeks I monitored my blood pressure daily and even graphed it. All nicely with averages and means and all in soft pastel colours. The highest point during that period was significantly lower than the average over the previous five years on two lots of pills. The blood works was used to benchmark for another lot four weeks later and even my sceptic doctor commented that the values where so much improved over four weeks that he would not have believed it if he not done it himself. Was he disappointed? Impossible. Didn’t seem happy for me though — unless he didn’t want me to know but was actually overjoyed. (Do they train them that?) That cholesterol stuff, he said, normally you’d be happy to get that improvement in twelve months with serious pills. You taking double your pills? Nope I tell him. No cholesterol meds and no blood pressure stuff. Oh, but you lost a lot of weight — can see that now. That is what happened. Yes I did mate. I lost quite a bit. I now weigh about as much as I did when you first gave me these pills eight years ago. So what changed, he asked. Grain, I said. I cut all grain. Ja, he says. There are a lot of rumblings about that coming from some researchers lately — stuff about grain and other food allergies really screwing with your systems. So why the hell didn’t you tell me? It’s not that easy, he defended. You have a history and if I prescribe a treatment that is anything other than what is accepted in mainstream medicine and almost dictated by the medical insurance, you can sue me for malpractice. Malpractice — I asked. You can save my life and give me much better quality of life but that is against the law? Not only that he said: I am going to give you a fresh script for your CVD meds. Get it filled and keep doing so monthly. Throw the pills away if you want but if anything happens to you and the medical insurance gets wind you deviated from the “recommended treatment” you could end up paying for your own Elastoplast and I may be spending my days looking at the grass growing much earlier than planned. He said that to me. When I said goodbye I could have sworn there was a slump in the shoulders. A good man feeling he has failed his friend because he is being held at ransom by medical insurance in a system funded by the mighty pharmaceuticals. Maybe it was just gas. I never asked.

I must tell you the pig story. That is the story about me sweating like a pig. All I have to do is breath and I am soaked in perspiration. Usually starts at the back of my neck and then it’s all over. Most morning I would wake up to a pillow that is saturated — even after I turned it sometime during the night. I was a little overweight but not obese and fit enough to climb three sets of stairs without heavy breathing but I always had a stained shirt. Man, how embarrassing. Drink more water, drink less water. Get fit, don’t get fit. Always the same story and even in winter. (Our winters are pretty mild.) Asked the GP and he said ‘could be many things’. Asked the cardiologist and he said ‘ask the GP’ so I did — again. Took gallons of blood, did the little bottle with the blue lid (do they give pink bottles to the ladies?) and answered twenty questions. Surely this is not normal. Could just be genetically, he said. Told him what my dad told me about doctors and genetics. He said doctors say it is genetically if they have absolute no clue but still want to send you the bill. Like we were told when I was sixteen that I had “essential hypertension — most probably genetically”. Anyway, passed all the tests and exonerated the poor thyroid from all blame. The kind doctor remembered my bad joke so he did not blame granddad and his genes again. If you want, I can refer you. Sure thing — I will let you know. Within days after I cut the cattle feed (grain) from my diet, the pillow was dry. As was my neck and collar and most of the rest of my shirt. The pig was gone. And he stays away to this day until I have some pizza with the family (one cannot be rude when they order in) and then the wet pillow is back — promptly — but only for a night or two. So grandpa, it wasn’t you after all — seems dad was right.

Am I a conspiracy theorist? Nope — not really. Sceptic? After this — can you blame me? But — ask any doctor and if he is honest, he will tell you that the science they are being taught at med school is from the marketing budgets of the pharmaceuticals and not raw honest science because there is no funding for that. Ask him about homosisteïen, the effects off too much and the treatment. I will give you a hint: it’s like pool acid in your blood but they don’t really know and they don’t talk much about it. You see, the problem is that homosisteïen is controlled by taking a bit more vitamin B — and there is no money in that and time is money so we don’t spend our time talking about it. If you want to be constructive on the other hand, let us sit down with a cuppa and talk about the new generation of statins currently under development. Exciting stuff man. Exciting I tell you.

So yes, Mom and Dad, I don’t eat bread or rusks or cake or anything with wheat if I can help it, nor do I have maize for breakfast and dairy is long gone off the menu so we don’t even think about it anymore. On the other side of the coin I have enough energy for two grandsons (I can last well over an hour), my blood pressure is fine, the cholesterol is neither up nor down although above the two that the good doctor Wouter Basson promised me he’d get it to and I do not get hay fever — not even in spring. Not even from the darn cat. I do have a nasty chest scar as testimony to my earlier sins but somehow I feel less guilty about the smoking and drinking and much more inclined to blame it on the cattle feed and other stuff I had fed myself with — albeit it at the insistence of those responsible for my good health.

Yip, the best practise of the day almost killed me, stole my childhood and left me with some nasty scars — mentally as well. Do I blame you mom and dad? Yes I do. But not for making me drink milk like the friendly doctor told you to but for never noticing that I didn’t have a life. You never asked, you never wondered it and you never even made a serious effort to encourage me. I would have loved to share these experiences with you but alas, it is too late. Even the teacher who called me lazy bastard is pushing daisies now.

Dad, just like it was not that I was too lazy to kick the ball when all the other boys did; you were not a coward and a failure when you had to quit farming because the hay fever nearly killed you. Did grandpa tell you also to cut the crap and pull yourself together? Perhaps you too did not have the energy or desire to care about much of life because after all, we sat next to each other every morning to share our breakfast of maize and milk. Good stuff from the farm so we can be strong to face the challenges of the day. And so we did dad, albeit in spite of the good stuff straight from the farm.

(If history is anything to go by — there is a lot still to come which I will share the moment I know.)