The Land of It Could Be Worse

One of the common threads of growing older is health issues--everybody has them. Even really healthy people. Stuff starts to run out of steam, like hormones. Like the collagen in our joints that used to let us roll out of bed without making an "oof-oh-argh" noise. Or the electrical juice that connects our feet to the data bit that stores where we parked. Little things. And when the little things add up they do annoy. I can complain about them all day long. Fortunately, I can have characters do it so I don't look self-absorbed.

Then bigger stuff starts to break, or simply refuses to work as well as it used to. The knees--wow, they start protesting virtually every activity, even sitting perfectly still. I had to choose between jogging and having ankles that worked. Ever thought about your ankles much? Until now I've thought about them even less than I have my ear lobes. They're pretty important though. I could complain about them, but they gave me no grief for 50.5 years. It could have been worse.

Realty checks arrive in timely doses, which is fortunate whenever I feel sorry for my aches, pains and creaking bones. I'll see someone far younger than me who has to struggle to walk upright, and for whom a stroll to the store is an act of extreme courage and fortitude. My ankles work, so does my spine. It really could be worse.

So I've developed gluten intolerance and I'm out right allergic to a healthy food additive called carageenan (and therefore to seaweed, goodbye sushi and anything else flavored and thickened with algae). I can handle the gluten thing. It's annoying that it affects perhaps 30 million people and web sites still treat it as the same thing as Celiac's disease. Celiac's is a type of gluten intolerance, a subset for the math geeks. You treat gluten intolerance and the basic symptoms of Celiac's exactly the same way: don't eat gluten. But the really tough part is accidentally consuming gluten and then spending three hours nearly comatose and three days sloughing off the swelling, the temporary weight gain of 3-6 pounds around my middle and "brain fog." But as I get better at the diet the more controlled it is. Eh.

It could be worse, I could be allergic to something really common. Oh wait, I am, because carageenan is in soft serve ice cream, soy milk, many dairy products especially those in commercial baking, and it's in high and low end chocolate as an ingredient of "heavy cream." (That's right, "heavy cream" can be further described by a manufacturer as "cream, carageenan." It's not that the stuff is evil, I just can't eat it. Tingling throat, instant internal puffing, so not pretty. Oh, and they use it to put a textural element of fat into many poultry products, including the roast chickens you can buy at the market. Adds succulence with no calories--it's a gift from the goddess, really. It's vegan, for heck's sake. It's just boiled algae--and bakers love it. If you're gluten intolerant, carageenan is a powder you can add to rice flour for some baked goods. Sucks that I can't eat it--I loved fat free half and half for the four days I consumed it before I realized that's why I was sick (which is how I discovered I was allergic to something so common in food and rare as an allergy).

It could be worse--most people who are allergic to algae are allergic to shellfish, but I'm not. Yay! Sashimi, lobster and crab, yum. I could be allergic to modified food starch or autolyzed yeast extract, guar or xanthan gum. Some people are. That would really suck, because that means goodbye to virtually every commercially prepared food there is.

So I suppose this is my way of venting and simultaneously reminding myself that it could be worse. I could be ill and not know why. I could live somewhere in the world where women wear tents and are put to death if they're raped. That's always a reality check--wow, could it be worse.

And now I will cease to complain about health for a few more weeks. On to happier news. My next blog will be about Frosting on the Cake 2: Second Helpings. A table of contents...an excerpt...happy things. Books are always happy things.

(Written doing that one pass exercise thing.)