Most of us are familiar with the phrase that says if you don’t have your health, then you have very little.
I’ve been there. I was going to wait to write about this topic until Easter time, which will be the first anniversary of my resurrection from having almost nothing in that regard. However, I’ve been inspired on what is nearly the eve of the Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce’s Be More Healthy Expo. I was listening to Chamber Member Diana Bean, who is coordinating the Expo, at the last Chamber Breakfast at O’Malley’s on Main last Thursday.
Diana is a bit of a health evangelist, extremely passionate about her and her husband’s chosen occupation as health and nutrition coaches, after having gone through their own transformation. The things she said rang true for me, having undergone my own life and health-altering experience last year.
The problems that actually led me to a form of salvation started a few months before Easter. Due to poor health habits, certain stresses of life we all go through and perhaps some unhealthy opinions of my own self worth, I had developed a condition that caused internal bleeding. My blood and all the hemoglobin that keeps our bodies functioning were slowly dripping away. The sensations this caused made me think that I had developed hardening of the arteries. I was getting weaker by the day.
It had not been but perhaps six months earlier I had been able to ride my bicycle on a 12-miles round trip to the gym during my lunch breaks to keep up a regular regimen of exercise. After a few months of my internal bleeding I had reached the point where I could not ride my bike 20 yards without having to stop to catch my breath. I asked friends and family what they thought was wrong with me. They all thought I would soon need to go into the hospital for an angioplasty operation. In the meantime, they suggested I self medicate with aspirin in order to thin my blood.
In fact, this was the exact opposite of what I should have been doing. Thinning my blood only exacerbated the problem. Ultimately, I was home alone on a Saturday night, and found myself struggling just to catch my breath. I had pain pounding throughout my chest and down my arms. I called a friend and asked him to stay by his phone in case I needed some help calling the paramedics. I intended to hang in until I could enter the hospital on the Thursday afternoon so as to not miss the Sun’s “deadline” cycle. As luck would have it, I suppose, he tried to call me back but my ringer was not on. Panicking, he called the hospital and soon enough my adventure through Los Alamitos Medical Center began.
It did not take the professionals at the hospital very long to figure out what was going on with my body. Before too long I was being pumped full of blood, which I greedily accepted. I was treated with medicine to stop the internal bleeding. And then they lowered to boom. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. In fact, I had become severely diabetic with a soaring blood sugar level for which they pumped me full of insulin, seemingly over and over to get the blood sugar level down, until I felt like a human pincushion.
What followed was a series of consultations with real doctors who informed me that for the time being I would be on a regimen of insulin and other medications. It was time to get religion.
I began a special diet that incredibly helped me melt away weight no amount of exercise seemed to have been able to shake. I stayed with the program. I had seen advanced stages of diabetes and how it can ravage the human body. I wanted no part of that type of fate. While the process continued other things began to improve in my life.
Fast forward: About eight months later I had my blood work done to see what had become of my condition. My doctor Cynthia Zia from Urgent Care in Seal Beach said I had undergone what seemed like an amazing transformation. She immediately took me off insulin – at a great savings to my personal expenses.
I was feeling as though I was awakening from a nightmare. Along the way, I had become aware of some unusual fact of our American way of life that, depending on the person, can lead to such health complications. I also learned that there are millions of people in our country who have Type 2 diabetes and they don’t know it. So many of them could probably overcome the insidious disease if they did.
Which brings me to this weekend’s Be More Healthy Expo.
This wonderful event put on by the Chamber of Commerce under the leadership of Diana Bean will be offering many and various type of free health screenings.
What a shame if many people don’t avail themselves of this offering. I’m living proof that a little bit of self-knowledge can save your health, can transform your life and can help you be a more constructive person. But don’t take my word for it. And don’t necessarily just take aspirin the next time something ails you. You might want to get a professional opinion first. You can do that, courtesy of the Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 22, in Eisenhower Park, next to the Seal Beach Pier.
Dennis Kaiser is the editor of the Sun Newspapers.
