Should I Keep My Head in the Sand?

Last Wednesday was "biometric screening" day at work.  Each year, Quest Diagnostics comes into the office, draws some of my blood, and measures my waist.  It's all part of the annual process that the company follows.  Each employee, and their spouse, has to get an annual screening to determine their cholesterol levels, waist circumference, and blood pressure.  You not ony have to get these things measured -- you have to actually pass three out of the five items. 

Last year, I passed with flying colors.  So, when the e-mail with my results showed up on Saturday morning, I didn't think much of it.  What could I possibly have to worry about, right?  In fact, I forgot all about the e-mail until Sunday night.  That was when I decided to catch up on a little work while waiting for the Ravens game to start.

As I started plowing through e-mails, I came upon the note from Quest Diagnostics.  "I wonder how well I did this year?" I asked myself.  As I opened the e-mail, I contentedly rubbed my belly, which was full after a nice meal of take-out Chinese (pork lo mein, pork egg foo yung, pork dumplings, and pork fried rice -- notice a theme there?).  I clicked the link to the Quest Diagnostics results site and looked at my results.  Big mistake.

Starting straight at me were two big red ALERT messages.  My total cholesterol was 239, up from 222 last year.  My LDL cholesterol was 148, up from 131 last year.  Immediately, the denial started.  "You've got to be kidding me," I yelled.  Kim asked what had happened and I told her.  "This is ridiculous," I explained.  "No one better tell me what to stop eating.  And, there's no way I'm taking any medications.  I hate medications.  They're the tools of the Devil."

No matter how much Kim tried to calm me down, all I could see was a life of misery:

• No more large orders of fries from McDonald's.
• No more evening snacks, standing at the kitchen counter, eating half a family-size bag of chips.
• No more roast chicken followed by a dessert of roast chicken carcass.

That was yesterday.  I've calmed down a little bit.  But, while the thought of my newly-diagnosed high cholesterol is still fresh in my mind, I've decided to have one last hurrah.  I got home from a meeting at 1:30PM and still hadn't had lunch.  I opened up the refrigerator to see what we had and found two small leftover steaks.  "Yummm -- red meat," I said to myself as I threw both of them on a plate.  For dinner, I had a big plate of leftover egg foo yung.  Still hungry, I decided to cap my meal with a big piece of apple pie smothered in ReddiWip.  Ahhhh!

Maybe I'll take my head out of the sand tomorrow.