We had a health fair at work a few months ago and I attended. My body fat was 47 percent. That sounds gross. I don't look like I have 47 percent body fat. I look like a biggish type with a slightly generous stomach. Anyway, that revelation was enough to make my blood pressure sky rocket and it was quite high. The nurse who took it did not make things better, she began to panic and scream at me and ask if I had taken my blood pressure medication. Well, I don't take medication because I have proven to doctors that I can control my bp. I then did a blood test to test glucose and cholesterol and prostate something levels (psa).

The lab work came in on Monday last week and when my wife and I looked it over, we thought that I was about to keel over and die. My PSA reading, PSA is stuff released by the prostate and elevated levels imply cancer or enlargment, from what we saw, was off the charts and I was double the high end of the normal range. Prostate cancer runs in my family and I'm a black male, so my risk is already very high. The lab work also, from our reading, placed me at high risk for coronary problems and cholesterol was very high. Needless to say, I figured that I'd be keeling over in the next few weeks.

We went to see the doctor on Saturday and he walked in non-chalantly and sat down. He held the lab reports infront of him and announced, your prostate is 100 percent fine. What! I thought I was double the high normal range it was then we noticed that the normal range is 0.1-4.0, and my reading was 0.8. But because there was another range nearby that had 0.4, we had somehow read that the range was 0.1-0.4 and being at 0.8 put me at double the range. He also noted that my cholesterol was borderline high, high enough to be concerned. But here's the good news. My good cholesterol is very, very high and it negates the bad cholesterol, so I am in very good shape cholesterol-wise (that bought me a couple more years of Sausage McMuffins with Egg-my wife wishes I didn't hear that part). BTW, my blood pressure was 120/80, quite normal. I do have white coat syndrome which is another story, my bp tends to sky rocket when I'm in a hospital or there is visible medical personal, but when things are low key, I'm chillin'. I once worked at a nursing home and we were taking bps just for the heck of it and I was 120/110, talk about panic from nurses. I was in stroke range but I wasn't worried, I figure when Mr. Reaper comes, we'll deal with that then.