I got a text message from my brother yesterday.
Okay. It wasn’t a text message. He “BBM’ed me”. Whatever that means. All I know is that this little blue circle showed up on my Blackberry screen instead of the little envelope. And apparently there’s some kind of difference between the two that I can’t quite figure out. Then again, I’ve had the phone for six months now. And still haven’t figured out how to set up my voicemail. So this shouldn’t surprise anyone.
There’s this highly technical term that we use all the time in medicine.
“Negotiation.”
“Negotiation” is what us doctors do when we are trying to promote patient adherence. Or, in layman’s terms, how we get patients to actually follow the treatment plan that we set out for them.
As it turns out, most people don’t like to take antibiotics for the entire week that they are prescribed for. (Five days of pill popping! How egregious! But you know what’s even more egregious? Penicillin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae. Just do the full course of medication. Trust me.)
People also don’t seem to want to implement any kind of lifestyle changes. I mean it’s kind of the same deal as New Year’s Resolutions. You are totally gung-ho about them the first week. You go to the gym every day. Eat your 5-A-Day. Take the long way home from work just so you won’t pass by those tantalizing golden arches. (They’re so…yellow. Who could resist?) But then you think, hey, I’ve been really good this week. I deserve a reward. And really, how much damage will one Super Sized Extra Value Meal do…(1500+ calories worth of damage. That’s how much.) But the thing about this kind of stuff is that it’s a domino effect. With the endpoints being coronary artery disease and insulin resistance. Neither of which are fun. Again. Trust me.
“When I was your age,” I will say. As I rock back and forth in my chair. (You know, that chair that all grandparents seem to have that is their chair.) “We had it rough. We didn’t have mini airplanes or time travel machines or winter jackets with built in space heaters or any of the other new-fangled gadgets that you kids have today.”
I’ve read and reread my notes. Outlined. Underlined. Circled. Starred.
I even broke out the multi-colored highlighters (that’s how you know I mean business).
And the conclusion that I come to is always the same.
Matters of the heart. Are. Complicated.
I could jump on the bandwagon.
Start out this post with an image of me running around my room, hands flailing around, screaming, “SAINTS WON! SAINTS WON!”
But that would imply a few things. None of which are true.
Firstly. That I like football. Which is not false, necessarily. I don’t dislike it. I just don’t like it. Probably because I can’t for the life of me understand it. I mean. I understand the premise. And the rules. But if you sit me in front of a tv screen on which a football game is playing? I am for some reason incapable of following it for more than two seconds. My mind wanders. I lose interest. I start thinking about what I’m going to cook for dinner next week and whether or not I should have bought those plantains the last time I was at Whole Foods and, wow, aren’t plantains one of the best things ever invented?
And then by the time I look up and regain my bearings? Someone has gotten some down or something and I am completely lost. All over again.
Maybe that’s why I like baseball so much. You can zone out for five minutes and won’t have missed anything.
It might also lead you to believe that I watched the game. At all. Any of it. Which would be a complete lie. I meant to. But decided that I wanted to eat sushi instead. And by the time I was done with that, all of my guy friends had left the bar that they were watching it at. So go figure.
And then there’s the whole part about being a Saints fan. Which, I guess, is kind of true. Since, on our way to the sushi restaurant, I did declare to Sophie and Anu that they were who I would be rooting for. Why the Saints, you may ask, given my obvious ambivalence toward the sport in general? Now normally I choose who I want to win based on uniform color. But this year, I weighed them in terms of food.
Jambalaya. Gumbo. Beer-battered catfish.
Versus…I’m not sure. What do people eat in Indiana?
Don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s not jambalaya.
Enough said.
Now that I’ve spent the last few weeks playing at being the devil. Tempting you. Luring you. Cajoling you into straying from your 10 in 10 or Weight Watchers or Atkins or whatever other diet/health revolution plan you’ve put yourself on (and you thought I was kidding about that Apple Strudel Bread being the real reason for Adam and Eve’s Fall. But I was there. Firsthand. Aiding and abetting.)
Welcome to Eats Well With Others, where we take a vegetable-and-cupcake laden approach to life (always with a bit of laughter on the side)!
