The Good, The Bad and The Silly

High Counts

"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world....!" crooned Jigneshbhai. Swami joined in, "I see walls of white and pearl organza too, some gold rust bloom for me and you,.." Jigneshbhai completed it. "And I think to myself, what a wonderful world...!"

"What a jolly good morning!" Swami said.

"Indeed, it is," agreed Jigneshbhai.

We were sitting in Swami's house after he had finished painting it. The effort was worth it. It truly looked good with the new shades on the walls and the windows. The paints and curtains brought a lot of colour into Swami's life. But that was a week back.

Life has a way to throw surprises at you when you least expect them. Not that I know anyone looking forward to those kinds of surprises, but Swami is least likely to be that anyone. Let us just say that handling surprises is not one of his strengths. Unlike Jigneshbhai who seems always prepared for them. Not just for the ones that life throws at him, but also for the ones that Swami throws at us.

"It is free. My company's health insurance provides it with the package," he said. "The health check-up includes 27 tests across 14 different parameters. Why not get it done?" he insisted. When there are 27 tests, at least a couple of them are bound to be a surprise.

"A few of them have turned up to be beyond the prescribed limits," Swami told us on the phone. Jigneshbhai and I left for his house. On the way, Jigneshbhai said, "Remember how Swami missed school due to some or the other pretext of health?" I recollected many such instances. "Most of the time, nothing generally came out from the tests done later," he added. "In recent years, Swami is an ideal first customer for any new diagnostic test that comes out in the market. Now, he tracks the values of these tests more than I track the stock market," Jigneshbhai said.

"My cholesterol has gone up. My triglycerides are also on the higher side," Swami told us as soon as we reached his home. He was reading out from his latest health check report in front of him. His face had a worried look, his lips locked along with a frowning forehead held in tight fists. We knew that the matter won't end there. But the surprise that he hadn't expected was the sugar level. "The sugar level is also not very comfortable. I am on the edge of being prediabetic," he announced.

Well, if this would have been someone else, Jigneshbhai would have taken it in all seriousness. But with Swami, he saw health related matters with the right perspective.

"That must be a pretty wide edge," Jigneshbhai said with sardonic smile. I gave him a questioning look. "Prediabetic is on the edge of diabetic. Being on the edge of prediabetic must be a wide edge, isn't it?" he said and asked. His cool rhetoric was piercing.

Swami slammed his fist on the table. He slapped his report down and said, "What the hell? Do you have any idea how serious this is?" He stood up from his seat and started walking around. "Do you know that cholesterol and triglycerides with high sugar can lead to heart trouble?" Swami revolted on the first sign of provocation from Jigneshbhai. "My ECG was also not perfect it seems," he added.

Jigneshbhai continued sitting without any problems. He had a smile on his face. "Did the doctor say that?" Jigneshbhai asked, still unperturbed and digging.

"No, I asked him about the ECG. He said currently it's ok, but we should see again after 6 months," Swami clarified.

"Ok. So that means you have heart disease, isn't it?" Jigneshbhai said. "Or are you on that edge too?" he added. His rhetoric was getting sharper. But Swami did not get the sarcasm.

"I am a ripe candidate for heart disease. So, I checked my homocysteine levels also," he declared.

"What is that?" Both me and Jigneshbhai asked in tandem.