Brother, Can You Spare $185 a Month

Edit is now big into game shows, so yesterday I turned on Wheel of Fortune for us to watch while I made dinner. The man won $100,000.

"Now he can buy cable," she said.

Worth & Worth's Jakob hat. It costs $425, and doesn't appear to be anywhere online, just at 45 West 57th Street. I had so fallen for this one, but returned to my senses, at least until I spotted Ralph Lauren's New Mexico Blue Label line. I could do this look. Even in the horizontal stripes. Even at $1,000 for the outfit, sans shoes and bag.

Although maybe I have to start with a horse.

"Cholesterol is at 172, and your HDL is 85. Great," the doctor says. "But your liver enzymes are ten times the acceptable top limit. What kind of medications are you on?" Apparently the anti-liver ones. This means I'm either an alcoholic with liver cancer or I have hepatitis, neither of which seems very likely since I don't mingle blood much and drink less now than my last work-up. In fact, as my cholesterol count is so good, I think the one-a-day wine has been helpful. But it doesn't matter. I have been instructed to stop all drinking and all OTC painkillers until further notice.

I'm still waiting for further notice. I'm getting crabby.

Oddly, I had just started seeing a wholistic practitioner. I have been killer exhausted ever since a ski trip to Italy. I was thinking it was simply menopause making its rounds, but when I mentioned this to a girlfriend, she gave me the name of the new age doctor and said simply, "You know, life isn't always our ovaries." This doctor studied six different medical systems. I thought there were, at most, two, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Darfur. The nurse hooked me up to two electrodes that in the span of 4 seconds reported in a print out that at a rest my body burns 1600 calories a day and I'm a Libra. The questionnaire had asked me about my faith, the office was filled with George Harrison music, and all the hot drinks were un-caffeinated. What am I doing here, I wondered.

"It's your adrenal glands, I suspect," the doctor said to me at the end of our two hour session. I thought she was going to pin it on my thyroid, a popular diagnosis here where thyroids wear out faster than winter tires. So I was pleased she had something unique for me. "What's an adrenal?" I wanted to know, but instead of an answer I got licorice supplements. Back home I tried to look up information about faulty adrenal glands, but I was three quarters down my first hit before noticing the term "Veterinarian." Then I had the bloodwork done that had been authorized by my Western doctor. The Eastern doctor seemed to be in the ballpark without so much as a single needle or machine. But now certainly the Western MD's are going to step in and get aggressive.

I was happier thinking it was my ovaries.