Through the Bus Mirror Darkly

I rode a bus today. Why not? I can still do my darndest for the polar bears even when the gas pumps aren't eating me out of the house and home. I guess Al Gore did something right, at least, in regard to this reforming polluter.

Next to me, plopped an old guy. Spry old geezer. Bet you my Gramps would have looked the same -- if he hadn't smoked, fought in a war, and insisted he knew better than any old doctor.
Himself a doctor, for all he had revolutionized the STD and leprosy management in his home country, had he been in charge of his own health in an official capacity here in US, it would have been a guaranteed malpractice. Maybe, because he had traveled so much, so, that particular "I am a lone alpha wolf, hear me roar" mindset never quite had a chance to evolve.

As it is, my grandmother is a widow longer than I have been alive, my mother is left hovering over my father, and I am wondering what the hell is so fundamentally wrong that we recycle not beer cans but old pickup lines, remember we ought to have practiced safe sex often when there's only time for plan B, and lacking a spouse, on average, croak 3 years faster than the poor ball-and-chain sots? Statistically significant data, I'm sorry to say, all the more ominous for the sorts of ailments waiting to do us in. Single, we're a lot more likely to die obese, fighting cholesterol and atherosclerosis, wheezing from untreated lung cancer.

Does it mean there's no hope -- other than matrimonial bliss? Certainly, no. But it does mean prevention-crazy HMOs have something of a working concept. Annual doctor visits might be a pain, but if it's going to save me from oodles more down the road, I, for one, am whipping out my IPhone.

*Non-affiliated with American Board of Physicians or any advertising agency thereof. ;-)