When I was training hard in an effort to go to the 1984 Olympics, my total cholesterol hovered around the 135 mark with the good stuff, HDL, being in the high zone. I watched my diet but I wasn’t fanatical about it because everything seemed to be working OK in that area of my life. Being involved with athletics, of that nature, isn’t all hot showers and massages; it’s like having another full-time job, and sometimes that can cause problems in one’s life. Stress levels at home went up and my cholesterol went with them. A 35% jump is a lot , but it was still in the safe zone and it went back down when my youngest son and I were the only ones in our family still living in Hawaii. At 44, I was single and would have been the oldest one on the US team. That wasn’t to be, but that’s life.
Bicycle racing, triathlons and someone who understood diet better than I came into my life, and the cholesterol dropped to 142. As I grew older and less likely to put in 100-mile days on a bike, my cholesterol crept up to the mid-150’s. After leaving Hawaii and going to Oregon, my present wife and I took on the duties of caregivers for my mom.
She had been living by herself in N. California and upon her release from the hospital she was given 6 months to live and we were told she’d have to live in a home for Alzheimer’s patients. Before her slip into Alzheimer’s, my mom and I had talked at great lengths about her wishes, and one was not to be put in a nursing home. We had been living on the coast and after our move she came to live with us in Eastern Oregon.
After changing her diet and getting her mobile again, she lived another 10 years. After getting her well, the first 7 or so years, she was capable of doing her own checkbook and went to town with us to do her own shopping. She had good times and bad but, if we could keep her out of the sugar, candy bars and other junk food she bought on the sly, she remained reasonably healthy. She also had an obsession with bugs and sprayed everything with heavy duty insect repellent. The last three years were much more intense. Her last year was wasted paying for a lifetime spent as a sugar junky. Sugar, junk food and chemicals caught up with her, as did osteoporosis, cancer and Alzheimer’s.
Caregiving is a difficult job. It’s not only long hours and physically taxing with 24-7 being the work weeks and months, if it’s a family member or close friend, it’s also a mental and emotional stressor. My cholesterol and some other vital signs went to an all time high, or low depending on which direction was worse, so did my wife’s. My mom passed on in November of 1999.
In the spring of 2000 I needed to take a trip to soothe both brain and body. I’d spent the first three months of 2000 in a frenzy; trying to finish our house that I’d been building for the previous three years. Before leaving I figured I’d better get a physical. As it turned out everything was back where it had been and has remained steady, or improved, since then.
