Dual health crises

How was your weekend? Mine got off to a rocky start. Charlie the Moodle was very unwell in the early hours of Friday morning and was so crook that he couldn’t walk when we left the apartment at 6.30am. He was hunched up in pain and I could feel his belly clenching when I picked him up.

I made an 8.45am appointment at the vet, rocked up and discovered it was for Monday, not Friday. After seeing how forlorn Charlie looked, the vet agreed to see him and advised he probably had acute haemorrhagic diarroea syndrome and needed to be put on a drip of fluids, antibiotics and painkillers for the day.

Estimated cost: $650.

Sigh.

I went home and dealt with all kinds of work hell from 9.30am to 4pm, then rushed off to a medical appointment for me.

After decades of putting my kids’ health first, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get myself sorted out.

The youngest’s doctor has been amazing over the past few years, so I made a long appointment with him on Friday afternoon, which turned out to be a very, very long appointment. Like 80 minutes long.

He was super thorough. Soooooo many questions, including a mental health assessment. He checked my height. He checked my weight and calculated my BMI, which confirmed I am clinically obese, although he was kind enough not to say that word out loud.

Fortunately my chest sounded good and my blood pressure was excellent, despite the stress and anxiety that I subject it to.

I was given referrals for blood tests, urine tests, a heart scan, a breast screening, a Freddie the Fibroid screening …

And I have three months to get fit and lose weight – ideally he wants me to drop 10kg or he will be advising more drastic action.

Sigh.

I paid the fee and raced off to the vet to collect Charlie, who was looking very morose (I was too after handing over my credit card).

He was still too ill to walk so I carried him to the car and up the stairs to the apartment, where he promptly desecrated the lounge room floor (after politely holding it in at the vet all day).

Sigh.

As for the weekend, I resolved that my plans to make massaman lamb shoulder were ill-advised following my health assessment. So I took myself off to the supermarket to shop for healthy food and made the most deeelish Recipe TinEats Vietnamese Chicken Salad.

I didn’t want to leave Charlie alone for long, so I stayed pretty close to home, but I did treat myself to a screening of Project Hail Mary on Saturday evening.

Its storyline features light-eating alien microbes that are sucking out the sun’s energy, threatening life on Earth with extinction. A school teacher played by Ryan Gosling heads off on a mission to save the earth, encounters an alien nicknamed Rocky and they fight to rescue the stars together.

Watching Ryan and Rocky in the feel good/feel panicked drama reminded me how much I love going to the movies. It’s an experience that has dropped off my radar in recent years, but I really enjoyed settling into a theatre seat for a few hours of escapism.

Following on from my delight at seeing Baz Luhrmann’s EPIC Elvis documentary last month I’ve decided I need more cinema in my life.

The rest of the weekend was spent dancing to my new Elvis CD, writing booze news, going for a walk with a friend, washing clothes, tidying the house and cleaning up after Charlie.

It was very unlike me.