Health related post

If you don't like reading about other people's health, just move on to the bottom for some jewelry p_rn.

Got my blood tests back. Nothing wrong with me, as far as I can tell. My HDL is a touch low, but the HDL/LDL ration is only 2.15, which IIRC, pretty darn good. My triglycerides are a touch high (211 when the highest normal range is 200) but my family tends to high triglycerides and mine have always been a touch high, so this is also OK. My AST is also a teeny bit low (12 when the low end of normal is 13). The iron, which is what really had the cardiologist worried, is just fine. So I guess there are no easy answers in my blood.

I did my stress test yesterday. The tech was flabbergasted when I walked in with a 127 beat per minute baseline (after sitting around the office for half an hour crocheting, so it was certainly not artifically elevated). They stopped the test on me after 7 minutes because my heart rate had gone up to 184, 102% of the target rate, and I was only going 3.3 mph at a 14% incline--pretty much as though I were walking home quickly from my friend down the hill, a normal Shabbat walk for me. They had a doctor in teh room after minute 3, and made me sit down on the treadmill until my heart got back to under 130. The scary part is I didn't feel much difference between 184 and 127 and wanted to continue the test: I love to walk fast. Must ask the doctor about fast walking before I go to NY, since I tend to eat pavement from the Upper West side back to Brooklyn at least every other day when I'm back there, and if I can't tell when the ticker's going dangerously fast....

Of course the cardiologist isn't in today :-( I should be glad he's at a conference: keeping up with the latest is one of the reasons he's such a good doctor (listening and giving patients the benefit of the doubt is the other!) but I wanted to see if he though I should go up to 2 beta blockers a day, which I'm avoiding. I hate taking pills. I'm only 18 (at least in my mind) and the nightly ritual of "Dear, did you take your pills?" "Yes, honey, and did you take yours?" is making my youngest howl with laughter at the Ancient Ones.

After the test I was feeling so lousy that I decided a little retail therapy was in order. Walked down Ibn Gavirol in Tel Aviv to Tzemer Motti. They had 30% wool in the window and I asked oh-so-nicely if they had anything in at least 50% wool. "You mean less than 50%, don't you?" the man behind the counter asked. "No, more than." His wife looked at me like I had sprouted horns. "No," she barks and turns away. Was it something I said, or the fact that I was dressed like a stereotypical settler-girl?

So we went to Jerusalem, and Tzvi at Badei Shani said he's have the South West Trading yarns in within two weeks, but I'll be in the States by then. So I comforted myself with a haul from Notzizim on the pedestrian mall:











And all that for 65 shekel (about $14)! Never let it be said retail therapy doesn't make the world a better place.