Water, Water, Everywhere!
I had planned on writing about the return of the cicadas, but upon reflection, I decided against it. We are at ground zero for the hatching of this brood, and they have been aggravating my tinnitus for the past couple of weeks. But, so what? The nymphs sleep in the ground for about 17 years, come to life, exchange genetic material with their mates, deposit the eggs, then die. A few weeks later the eggs hatch and the nymphs drop to the ground to begin their 17 year dirt nap. When Kathy asked me what purpose they served, I had no answer. This convinced me that the cicadas really weren’t worthy of more than a paragraph.
So let’s talk about my recent Medicare check-up.
I go to MAHEC, the Mountain Area Health and Education Center. It is staffed primarily by residents, supervised by fully qualified doctors. The doctor I have visited for three years now, Dr. Dizon, is finishing his residency this summer and will be employed after that by our local hospital, Mission Hospital. He told me that, because my health is good and my visits are uncomplicated, I will probably be assigned to a brand new resident. That doesn’t bother me at all. These guys and gals are learning the trade, and tend to spend a good bit of time with their patients. I have certainly been very pleased with Dr. Dizon.
I was less than pleased with the results of two blood tests, tests that measured kidney function. I was borderline on each test. Dr. Dizon noted that these test results were not terribly bad, given my age. Still, he said, we should try a little experiment. The most common cause for these low test results is dehydration. Let’s try a little re-hydration, then repeat the tests.
That made perfect sense. At that time, my daily intake of fluids was two cups of coffee in the morning, and two soft drinks in the afternoon or evening. Kathy has been bugging me for a long time about my liquid intake. This is the same Kathy who has a glass of water in every room of the house, and who has every cup holder in her car filled with cups of water.
I love coffee, but I limit my intake, and not because the caffeine keeps me awake. I could drink a cup of coffee at 11:00 PM, and be sound asleep by 11:10 PM. I limit my intake because that 11:00 PM cup of coffee would wake me up at 1:00 AM for a head call. As a friend once told me, you never buy a cup of coffee, you just rent it.
The soft drink I prefer is root beer, which has no caffeine in it. The local restaurants generally do not have root beer, and my alternative, Coca Cola, does contain caffeine. The problem with caffeine and, for that matter, alcohol, is that both turn off the production of vasopressin, our anti-diuretic hormone. Do you remember those days of our youth, when you could go to a bar and knock back three or four beers before needing to hit the head? And after that, we would make two head calls for every beer? That is the interaction of alcohol and vasopressin. Without vasopressin, liquids just go through you.
I don’t sleep that many hours every night, and I prefer not to have those few hours interrupted by the need to tap a kidney. And so I limited my intake of fluids, especially those containing caffeine.
I decided to follow Dr. Dizon’s advice. I still have only two cups of coffee in the morning, but I’ve nearly tripled my intake of root beer. (Kathy suggested I cut back on the root beer and use water instead, but I prefer the taste of root beer to water.) After a month of this new liquid diet, the vampires at MAHEC drew another blood sample. And it worked. My kidney function tests have returned to normal.
There is a downside to this new diet of mine. I make a minimum of two head calls during my sleeping hours. And my first head call upon awakening? Well, Kathy now refers to me as Austin Powers.