Walking......

One of the blessings of my life is that I live in a small city with good sidewalks, parks, and streetlights.  Anyone of my patients who lives here and tells me they "can't afford" to exercise gets a fairly stern lecture from me about the affordability of feet, and the fact that absolutely everybody has the same amount of time in a day, and choices about how they use them.

When I decided to improve my health, I began with two very fat dogs (Simon and Garfunkel) and one morbidly obese human.  I began to walk a mile a day, which in my neighborhood is a circuit around the three blocks nearest my home, and it includes what, at the time, I considered to be a substantial hill.  A mile initially took me about half an hour, maybe a bit more. 

Garfunkel sadly died young, and I've walked Simon into senility, and have gradually increased my walks to at least three miles daily (about 40 minutes with a dawdling hound dog), more on weekends.  And that big hill?  Pah!  There are no big hills in my neighborhood, but there are steeper ones, so I make it a point to climb at least one of those every day.

One of my more judgmental hobbies as a physician is to take note of the patients who are closest to my age and see how I am doing against the pack, as it were.  This is grossly unfair, of course:  My patient population is poor, under insured, undereducated, and overrepresented by refugees and immigrants.  I look pretty good by comparison LOL.  However....many of my similarly-aged colleagues have died, of cancer or cardiovascular disease, or more frighteningly, suicide.  I'm not looking too bad against THAT pack either.

I have health issues.  But I'm still walking. At 60, it's something big to be grateful for.

DeeDee