New Year’s

January 1, 2007.
Ho-hum. Yet another year drifts into the filmy past.
Which means like yesterday’s “For Better or For Worse” cartoon, we’ve made another year.
I don’t expect you young whupperschnappers to understand such a proposition. In fact, 63 isn’t very old.
I’m still riding motorbike, and I ain’t dead yet. In fact, I’m still doing pretty much what I was doing five years ago.
Our 93-year-old nosy neighbor is down to barely being able to stand.
His wife is a wreck.
His son from Pittsburgh has been here since Thanksgiving and is loathe to go home.
“I can’t leave them here,” he says.
2006 was my year of wonky balance.
The year began with the episodes that had prompted me to retire the end of 2005.
No episodes occurred in January, but one occurred February 4 in the Rite-Aid pharmacy in Honeoye Falls.
It’s like my heart had stopped and the blood was draining from my head. I had to grab things to remain standing.
Similar episodes had occurred at the mighty Mezz since September of 2005; at least four.
We were thrashing mightily to find what was wrong; all kinds of tests.
Regrettably they were at Thompson Health in Canandaigua, not some abandoned mini-mall storefront in the vaunted Boston healthcare system.
I was referred to a neurologist, and he suggested the episodes might be a blood-pressure medication side-effect.
He also referred me to Physical-Therapy for “balance training,” although to my mind that turned into getting back in shape.
Within a month of the neurologist, we dropped the suspect blood-pressure medication pretty much on our own.
My blood-pressure was fine, and we started monitoring it.
Getting back in shape at the PT-gym is also exercise, a way of lowering blood-pressure.
Dropping the suspect blood-pressure medication, we expected the side-effects to disappear fairly soon.
But they lasted almost the entire year, although steadily decreasing over time.
I began to suspect the B-12, which was extraordinarily high at the beginning of the year. I was taking B-12 supplements per Elz’s suggestion, but the Doctor said I didn’t need them.
So we flushed the remainder down the toilet.
But B-12 was still in my multivitamins, so my B-12 level lowered slowly over time.
But the Doctor said the B-12 level wouldn’t matter — off the hook, Elz.
Whatever; the last full-on episode was that one in February, and there were a few mini-episodes through April or May. They seemed to be proceeded by hot-flashes.
By Rachle’s (doesn’t matter) wedding we were down to slight wooziness, but I felt sickish at Staple-Bend Tunnel.
By Fall last year the wooziness was gone, replaced by feeling unsteady on my feet. But even that has gone away replaced by slightly degraded balance and/or tiredness.
Throughout all this I’ve been pretty much driving and mowing lawn and walking the dogs as if nothing was wrong.
We were leery of driving alone after that February episode, and wooziness delayed the motorbike until June.
A few months ago I was more inclined to skip the PT-gym, and seemed to have to take more naps; but that has passed.
It’s like I probably retired too early thanks to the suspect blood-pressure medication — and the towel-head pill-pusher that prescribed it.
Now we’d like to get off the cholesterol medication. Research goes this way and that — like it ain’t cholesterol that causes blood-clots; it’s transfat.

“Elz” is my sister in Floridy — she’s 61.
My brother in Boston loudly insists misspelling anything doesn’t matter.