Don’t Take Your Health For Granted
Yesterday we went to see our old landlord. He is a nice old Shanghainese man who was always good to us when we lived in the appartment he rented to us, before we bought our own.
We were sorry to hear that he has not been well recently since suffering a stroke three months ago. The word stroke doesn’t mean very much when you just say it, because you hear about people who have a slight limp and are otherwise unaffected.
Our landlord is over 70, but we always remember him looking young and energetic for his years as he replaced bathroom fittings and lightbulbs. We were quite shocked to see our former landlord receiving treatment in a local hospital bed. He was almost unrecogniseable. His voice was weak and he had become very thin. The most noticeable thing was his transformation from jolly vigour into sad timidity.
The circumstances leading to our landlord’s stroke and dramatic deterioration should make everyone pay attention to their own health. Three months ago, our landlord drank two cups of black coffee and two cups of strong tea before going to bed. He suffered a stroke in his sleep, because his body could not take such an onslaught of caffeine.
This does not mean that you will have the same experience if you drink too many espresso shots this afternoon. Our landlord is at the age when things can go wrong with little warning. The coffee was more of a catalyst than a principal cause. He was a heavy smoker and being from Ningbo, he liked to eat very salty meat.
We feel sad to see such a nice old man suffering in this way. We know it happens to lots of people as they grow old, but we were shocked to see such a rapid change in our landlord’s health. We wish we could have seen him under better circumstances.
It also made us take stock about the health of our parents and ourselves. We need to watch our diet and get enough exercise. I’ve been trying to find my own personal equilibrium about stress, because I tend to worry about work too much.
We hope that our landlord is much better the next time we see him.