High Cholesterol - November 3, 2020

 High Cholesterol
By, Michael Earnshaw
@MikeREarnshaw
November 3, 2020

“I’m sorry man, I know how hard you worked to lower it,” was the text that came through from my brother-in-law. I thought about it for a while before responding. 

I turned 40 in March of 2020. The day before my birthday I visited my doctor. I’m not one to visit regularly, I know, I’ve already heard it from my wife, but this visit was warranted. Something came up I needed to get it checked out (and since this blog isn’t about that situation I’ll let you know everything for the visit came out fine). Being as I hadn’t been to the doctor in about three years he wanted me to get some bloodwork done, especially since I was turning 40. I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary, I’ve always been a healthy guy. 

My watch started vibrating, alerting me that I had a call coming in. A name didn’t pop up, but I knew the number was the doctor’s office. I stealthily exited the class I was hanging out in and made my way to the nearest door to step outside on our playground and take the call. I answered just shy of making it to the door so I didn’t lose it. We went through the formalities and then I heard something I never could have expected. 

“Your cholesterol levels are very high and the doctor wants to speak with you about treatments.” 

A few days later I was back in his office being explained all of the differences between LDL, HDL, triglycerides, and how I had a lot of bad cholesterol but just enough good cholesterol that I wouldn’t drop dead any time soon. That’s good news I guess. 

“You’ve got two options, Michael, one, start medication and we test you in 6 months and see where your levels are at. Or two, you say you’re going to change your diet, limit alcohol, workout more, and then when you come back in six months, if your levels haven’t changed, you’re going on medication. No discussion,” were the choices my doctor handed me. 

I have never been a fan of medication, so I chose option two. 

Six months flew by. I got my labs redone, anxiously awaiting to hear the results. I felt that familiar vibration on my left wrist on a Friday while solving the World’s problems with my assistant principal. 

“So your LDL levels were higher than before. You’re going on 40 mg of Lipitor. We’ll have an order for your labs to be checked again in March.” This was spoken by my doctor’s nurse. My doctor didn’t even give me a call, no opportunity for a conversation, just like he promised. 

Now I’m not going to lie, I was a little upset by this news. I had made some adjustments to my diet, worked out as I usually did, and hoped the levels would lower and I could stay off meds. But as I reflected on the past six months I realized I could have done so much more. Instead of truly making the changes I knew I needed to make I found myself putting blame on “The Pandemic.” It was the pandemic’s fault I snacked on Flaming Hot Munchies each night. It was the pandemics fault I skipped a workout because of staying up later than I should have the night before. It was the pandemic’s fault I couldn’t get my cholesterol lowered by partaking all of the new healthy lifestyle changes I planned out in my head.

Excuses. That’s all it is. Too many times, when goals aren’t reached, I find myself blaming someone or something else. It makes it much easier to live with knowing the undesired result was out of my hands. But now I realize that is no way to live. That is not the message I want to send to my kids, my wife, staff, or students. I want to model that hard work pays off and we need to work towards our goals. And if the result isn’t what we hoped for we own it, make adjustments, and start again. 

I texted my brother-in-law back, “Haha, thanx man, but honestly, I could have done so much better. Luckily, it’s not too late. Time to make those changes now and hopefully get off the meds in 6 months. I’d rather rely on myself.”