OF FORBIDDEN FRUITS…

When I was a child in a very Catholic home and a very Catholic school, everything was forbidden…lies were forbidden but I told them anyway and lied about that. In fact every rule was broken but I never worried about it because there was always confession where you were cleansed of your venial sins and could start all over again…and sin some more. But the thing is this, when I had shaken off the guilts…so I told myself… of my Catholic upbringing, this thing called SCIENCE furtively slunk in and took its abode in the empty spaces. For many years, I imagine, like everyone else, I was a devoted disciple of this discipline…scouring the newspapers and magazines and later the internet…to get the latest on the forbidden fruits…what to avoid. Why do they always shoot down the things you love? I loved eggs sunny side up or scrambled and before I knew it…they were to be shunned like the devil himself. They’d raise your cholesterol levels and clog up your arteries and one fine day you’d clutch at your chest and keel over. So for many years, we lived a life of deprivation and now they’ve changed their minds…the egg has been exonerated… it’s nutritious and life saving and a normal person is allowed to gobble up to three eggs a day. But then it begs the question…WHAT’S NORMAL???? They tell me that `normal’ is a progressing science…which means that they’re free to change their mind whenever they choose to do so.

Butter is another food that has taken quite a bit of bashing over the years. We used to slather our bread with butter…lovely, thick and creamy…and it nourished us right up to adulthood…and then one morning, we opened the newspapers and…it had turned into a cringing criminal, caught red-handed, like the egg…and would send us to an early grave. They wagged their finger and said… saturated fats will plug your arteries so switch to unsaturated…margarine, to keep your heart healthy. But the latest is that some margarines have trans fat that can send your cholesterol shooting up to dizzying heights and suck up your good cholesterol. Then they encouraged us to pump our body with supplements and superfoods and forage for…cranberries and blackberries and gooseberries and goji berries and… several culprits have popped up in their midst… interfered with our normal bodily functions and caused a toxic overload and muscle impairment and do we need more… It was so much simpler in the past with the apple a day keeping the doctor away.

So with all this ongoing befuddlement, I have developed a deep mistrust of all things medical and I would rope in doctors as well, who have this knack of furrowing their brow to suggest that you’re seriously ill and send you off to do a battery of tests when you feel that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you…with the exception of those who are not alarmists and brush away your concerns with…` It’s probably nothing.’ Yiannis says that I hide behind my little finger because I’m afraid to address my health issues…he may be right. It so happened that last week my little digit couldn’t hide me any longer. I was dizzy and my heart was fluttering and Yiannis who is fully equipped with all sorts of medical devices… diagnosed me with elevated blood pressure and a racing pulse. He rang our GP and between the both of them, decided I should take his mother’s blood pressure tablet…half a tablet. The doctor also printed off a list of tests and Yiannis threw in a bunch of others  with clusters of letters and numbers. He knows people in high places…the microbiologist is a friend of his and agreed to go the extra mile for him.

The test results were fine but I was still not out of the woods. I had to see a cardiologist to investigate into the state of my heart. We walked there…me with a thumping heart banging in my ribcage and a head all woozy and knees, trembling. All the way to the heart guy’s I was picturing myself with blockages and being sent off to get a couple of stents driven up into my arteries. The cardiologist is a friend of Yiannis’s . While he was doing the ultra sound he asked…`Did your GP prescribe this pill you’re taking for your pressure?’ The heart guy is quite territorial and doesn’t take kindly when the GP makes incursions into his territory…` Yes,’ I said…` and he concurred with our house doctor.’ The heart guy appeared alarmed…` WHAT HOUSE DOCTOR???’…` The one sitting outside,’ I said pointing to Yiannis. He spluttered with such merriment because he knew about the medical practices of this engineer turned house doctor. He carries all his equipment to his mother’s and checks her vitals and gives the doctors a running report over the phone…`I always suspected he was practising medicine on the side and now you’ve confirmed it,’ said his friend the cardiologist, coughing out mouthfuls of laughter. Just last month when he came to check on my mother-in-law and was about to pull out his blood pressure monitor from his bag, Yiannis quickly thrust his into the heart guy’s face…` Here use mine!’ The heart guy gazed at him calmly and said…` Why? Is yours better than mine?’

Anyway, after the ultra sound, the heart guy and I had this verbal exchange…` Do you take a lot of salt?’…`Yes.’…` Don’t take any.’…`Uhhh…I don’t think I can do that.’…` Take half then.’…`Ok.’…` Cut out on the wine as well.’…`Uhhh…I only drink on weekends now.’…`Ok.’ He prescribed another pill and told me to take my pressure every morning and evening for three weeks and get back to him. Then he looked up at Yiannis and said…` There are only two approved pressure monitors.’…and he enunciated their names slowly, searching for reactions in his friend’s face. Yiannis had to get a new one just when he thought he had mastered the old one.

Now I feel that I’m in uncharted territory. The new approved monitor is for a much bigger and thicker arm. I have to wrap it around my arm several times and sometimes it flashes…` ERROR’… and I try again and it whirrs and beeps and gives me all sorts of readings and when I get totally exasperated I rip it off and resort to the old unapproved one which…used to be extremely user friendly. It gave me nice acceptable readings…until two days ago when it started acting up and giving me some spiked numbers. I dragged out the new monitor and gave it a shot again. Then I did some mental arithmetic…we did a lot of it at primary school and I sometimes got the answers right… and worked out the average of all the readings… with some minor adjustments. In the meantime Yiannis was testing his blood sugar and pricking one finger after the other because he didn’t like the results. Finally when we sat down at the breakfast table, demoralized and flustered, we decided that…we felt well and those machines were not going to tell us otherwise. We also took a bash at the doctors and agreed that they didn’t know what they were talking about.

So stay well and take the machines and medical practitioners with…a pinch of salt and go ahead and munch away into the forbidden fruits…in moderation. Cheers!