Let's get physical!

Wait, I meant, let's get A physical!

I'm going in for a somewhat overdue complete physical exam this coming Friday, complete with fasting for a cholesterol test (drat!). I'm very curious about what's going to go down at this physical. First, I think my doctor will plotz when he sees how much weight I've lost. I saw the man in January, before WW, and I was not in very good shape. Second, I'm anxious to see what my numbers are going to be, that is, cholesterol, blood pressure and such. My last exam they were pretty good, actually, but I'd been eating quite well for the months beforehand so I wasn't surprised.

I think these numbers will probably be good too, but I also eat a lot of WW frozen dinners and while the majority of my diet is very simple (and quite often raw), WW meals, while tasty and easy, are loaded with preservatives and such. They're just so darned good. So I'm hoping that the bowl of oatmeal and the 3 pieces of fruit and 2 salads that I eat every day are doing the job of moving any of that cholesterol right out. We'll see.

Unfortunately I have to have a separate girly exam (anything abnormal at any point and my GP wants me to see a specialist, which I realize is in my best interest but...I just don't wanna) which I won't need until November, so it's not going to be a one-stop-shopping physical.

So I'm thinking I'll have a blood test, possibly a chest x-ray, and EKG and the general poking and prodding and listening that goes along with it.

When I was younger I had a fear of doctors. I had a couple traumatic things happen when I was a kid (dog bite, and a horrible case of the flu, out of school for a week), and my parents were never ones to visit doctors. I could have been bleeding out of my eyes and they'd try and cure me at home. It was a combination of things that made me phobic.

But with my years has come a nonchalance about doctor's visits. I just don't care. I can take any exam and it just doesn't bother me. I've had interns be a part of my yearly exams. I don't care. I can discuss almost anything without embarrassment. I have no anxiety about my yearly mammograms. A colonoscopy is no big deal. I don't worry about not shaving my legs (although I try very hard to remember to do it).

Being a somewhat shy person, it is a bit shocking that this is my take on medicine, but it is. It's not like I wear sleazy outfits in my regular life or anything, but if my doctor needs to see some part of me that isn't normally exposed? I couldn't care less. I don't get 'white coat' syndrome and I manage to stay cool as a cucumber.

The only thing that ever caused me anxiety was stepping on the scale. You know the scale, the doctor's scale, with the slidy thing. Over the years I watched as the slidy thing crept up and up, and my doctors became more and more concerned.

I have a very resilient body and managed to remain surprisingly healthy in spite of my weight (no diabetes, that sort of thing). But it's not good to be so large and I knew, as did my doctors, that I was living on borrowed time. It will catch up with me.

This is the first time in a long, long, incredibly long time that I'm actually looking forward to stepping on the scale. Actually, I don't know if I've ever looked forward to it.

I'll let you know how things go. The great thing about my clinic is that I can get my test results through an online program they have. I can email my doctor, I can set up appointments, all that good stuff. So I'll have plenty of access to my results, and quickly too. Of course a lot of it is Greek to me, but I know the important stuff.

How weird is it to look forward to your physical!?