My cold is still lingering, although I might say I am feeling a little better. Still after three back to back calls yesterday, I was getting tired of lugging my gear and lifting people. Everything seems heavier than it should be when you aren't feeling 100%. I hate standing at the top of the stairs feeling my heart pound, my breathing quicker.
On our last call, when we got there the cops were still trying to get into the house. I saw that a window screen was just barely open, so I climbed out on a ledge and jimmied it open, then I passed the flower pots that were on the window sill to a police officer and had called for my partner to boost me just a touch so I could get my arms into the window enough to pull myself up and in up. I love being a second story cat burgler man, but even as I was preparing to do it, I was thinking I was crazy. Maybe when I was feeling better, I could try it. Here I was with two fit police officers in the late twenties, and me a forty-seven year old man, getting ready to go head first through a high window. I think I was trying to prove something to myself. Fortunately, someone finally came to the door, just as I was getting boosted up. The patient had soiled herself during a syncopal episode, so her daughter was cleaning her up in the shower and hadn’t heard the knocks on the door.
I have been reading this book about Barry Bonds and steroids called Game of Shadows. It is a pretty amazing book about more than just Bonds. It meticulously details the drugs Bonds and other athletes – not just baseball players, but world class track and field athletes --were taking. They'd be over the hill, their careers on a downward slide, and then they'd get on this drug regime and start setting world records. They were taking up to 50 pills a day, but the main ones were undetectable steroids and human growth hormone. They'd also take insulin, clomid, a female fertility drug, and some stuff to make lean muscle in cattle.
I'm reading this book and thinking, you know I've been feeling run down and over the hill, maybe I could use this stuff. Let's look at the public good here. Barry Bonds takes steroids to hit home runs, Marion Jones takes steroids to run fast, I would be taking steroids to help people. And I could go for a world record, too. Instead of hitting 73 home runs, I could carry 73 millions pounds of patients and equipment in a year. And steroids would prolong my career. Of course, I wouldn't want to swallow all the pills, rub all the crème on, and stick myself with all the syringes Bonds used. Forget about the female fertility and the cow stuff, just give me the Clear and the Cream and HGB, along with the legal supplement ZMA -- zinc and magnesium.
Worry about getting caught? No, the state doesn't test medics for steroids. Not yet anyway. But, you know, I might be a standup guy anyway. What bugs me the most about these athletes is not that they took steroids, but that they lie about it. They deny what anyone with eyes can see. I wouldn't be like that. If someone asks me how I lifted that 400-pounder all by myself, I'll say, "It's the juice! man. It’s the juice!"
Anyway, tomorrow I start taking my daily vitamins again.
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My Vitamins. Not! Okay, I took them for awhile, then I was worried I was going to get mad cow disease due to the crushed cow pituitary glands.
