Due to fault of no-one other than myself, I am an obese person. I might not look like it from a glance, but if I go topless in front of you, you will see for sure. It’s not for lack of trying. I’ve tried a couple of diet regiments and exercises but the former especially, seems to wither down and stop gradually over time. At the moment, I try to exercise whenever possible, usually a brisk walk at the park and sometimes if time and circumstance permit, I go on the threadmill at work. I wish I could exercise more after work but my youngest, Asif is still scared of being left alone at home even for just one hour. Also at barely six years old, some would call it irresponsible to leave a child unattended, even for a short time. So that’s that.
One thing I do regularly is health screenings or medical checkups. I have got my wife to thank for this because she will keep nagging reminding me to do one once every year at least. I argued, I know my body better than any doctors and I can already predict the results. I will have a lot of cholesterols, high blood pressure and I’m obese. I don’t need to pay a hospital 500 ringgit to hear all that every year. That said, I still do it, the health screening every year. At minimum, I get to accompany my wife for the purpose. At best, the tests could detect a potentially life-threatening disease that I’m not aware of.
For this year’s screening, we picked KPJ Kajang. Solely because the nearer hospital - Hospital An-nur was already fully booked. I think all the major hospitals are the same anyway so we usually pick the ones closest to home. As expected, I learned that I’m overweight, high fat and cholesterol and high blood pressure. Apart from that however, the tests also picked up a rather abnormal heart beat on the graphs. After doing a further echocardiogram, the doctor confirmed that and explained that is due to my thickening heart muscles due to you guessed it - high cholesterol and blood pressure. The high bp is obviously self-inflicted but the high cholesterol is actually genetic. I apparently have familial hyperlipidemia, an inherited disorder which causes my liver to produce an abnormally high amount of cholesterols. That’s why my cholesterol reading shows 7.2 even though I’ve been fasting during Ramadan and also intermittent-fasting in between.
But what do I do? Just ignore it and hope that I don’t die too soon? Fortunately, there’s some medications for that. There’s the usual high blood pressure pills and also pills to reduce my cholesterol production. The bad news is, I probably have to take them daily for life. Hey that’s better than meeting my maker sooner, right? The doctor quipped that I could stop taking the high blood pressure pills, provided I lost at least 10 kilos of my current weight. Like Barney Stinson used to say - challenge accepted!
Since my hyperlipidemia and thick heart muscles are hereditary, my siblings could possibly have them too. Remind me to remind them to get checked for this. So for once, I’m glad I listened to my wife’s nagging to do the annual health screening. As a man that’s constantly broke, I am glad that my company covers my health screening and my wife’s company covered the super-expensive consultation and outpatient treatment. I would be blissfully ignorant otherwise. Moral of the story here - get yourself checked folks! It’s well worth it.
