Think I’ll stay on the subject of aging for one more blog. For most of my senior years, I’ve continued to allow my inner 17-year old to make all my health care decisions. Since my inner 17-year old is very much like my real one of more than 55 years ago, it means I’ve entrusted my health and my life to a naive, self-anointed smart aleck who’s had it coming to him most of his life. I’ve managed to push back on his many indiscretions with several maintenance meds that have served, over the years, to sustain an otherwise shameful dissipation of some pretty good genes.

“But it sort of boils down to this: do I want my fries, burgers, pasta and Popeyes for maybe another five years, or do I want broccoli, carrots, kale and the bathroom scale to run my life for another 20?”

   But now the sleeping dog has awakened, and this big dog apparently wants to hunt. My current meds are meant to help prevent sudden death type events like heart attacks and strokes. I can live with that. It’s those slow, relentless, debilitating ones that I fear the most, those “living with” type diseases, which also come with the kind of  dietary restrictions that tend to have you pining for an immediate heart attack or a stroke. And my inner 17-year old has been having none of it so far.

   My primary care physician, completely unaware of my inner 17-year old’s proclivities, is permitting me to manage my new pre-diabetic condition with a self-willed diet and exercise regimen that would extend the number of vital, healthy years I have left. But it sort of boils down to this: do I want my fries, burgers, pasta and Popeyes for maybe another five years, or do I want broccoli, carrots, kale and the bathroom scale to run my life for another 20?

   Of course, as with most of my lifestyle decisions of the last five years, this one is squarely under the expert tutelage of one Carol Ann Madigan, whom I love dearly and my inner 17-year old fears like death itself.

   My body has confirmed what I’ve suspected for years now. Not only is there no such thing as a free lunch; the lunches I’ve been paying for, along with most dinners and breakfasts, are not good for my health. Unfortunately, the rude awakening of the need to make serious dietary changes just happened to coincide with the opening of the Orange County Fair, for which Carol had procured concert tickets.

   As anyone who’s attended a county fair knows, it’s where diets go to die. I was able to avoid the fried butter, fried Oreos and pork chop-on-a-stick easily enough, but there was something about the call of the “candied bacon-wrapped pork belly bites” that had the ring of a foodie bucket list item to it. And so the diet would have to be put off for another day. 

   But numbers don’t lie, and my latest A1c number is a hard stop. I don’t know much about diabetes, but the thought of eventually going blind, having your feet fall off and just the progressive deterioration of one’s body is a sufficient enough wakeup call.

   Even my inner 17-year old is saying it’s time to grow up.

   I’ve done this before, back when I ran marathons. Even though that training allowed me to eat Dove bars with both fists, the feeling of eating healthy and strenuous exercise had its own unique endorphin rush about it.

   We’ll see. Over the long haul, I don’t really trust my inner 17-year old as far as I can throw him, though.