Scale Back

A few years later I received a wake-up call that nudged me just enough to begin a slight deviation from the broad way toward the straight and narrow path. From my wife’s perspective, and rightly so I might add, I had once again launched myself in another tirade over some trivial happening that had occurred during the course of my day. After patiently waiting for a pause, in my seemingly endless ranting, to offer a sensible response, she cautiously posed a question during a momentary lull. “David,” she said, “Do you think that your reaction to this incident that transpired over six hours earlier today would be considered reasonable by anyone who had just now walked into the room with us?” She continued by saying, “Maybe you have some physical problem that is affecting your emotions.” “Maybe you have high blood pressure?” I had kept my medical equipment from my days as a nurse. A sphygmomanometer and stethoscope had been collecting dust in the bedroom closet. Aletha helped me to check my blood pressure; it was 190/110. I sat there in the Lazy Boy reclining chair and asked myself, “How does a nurse, who knows the pathology of obesity, wind up with high blood pressure and risk premature death due to a stroke?” As I said earlier on, I have always been on the plump side, but now I faced with a life threatening medical problem. In 1993, I weighed 240 pounds and my blood pressure was 120/80. In only five years I had ballooned to 375 pounds. Why?

# posted by David @ 1:53 PM