I spent yesterday morning sitting on crinkly paper, looking at an exploded illustration of a urinary tract — at least, I really hope, for the poor model's sake, that it was an exploded illustration — and worrying about my future. I had reason.

A few months back I had a transient ischaemic attack, or TIA, or "ministroke," or "all the fun of a stroke without the crippling part." From my point of view, it was like being whacked in the side of the head with a factory, one of those big industrial jobs; blurry vision, inability to think coherently, bricks falling everywhere. I spent the next 35 hours experiencing the joys of morphine, the latest in medical imaging tests, and the magical wonders that are only available in an emergency room in Daytona Beach during Spring Break.

As it turned out I was extremely fortunate. Ministrokes are warning shots, like your car's transmission slipping occasionally to let you know you need to get to the mechanic before the engine falls out in a comical fashion. I hied me hence to my doctor immediately to find out how to fix my carburetor, as it were, and there I was told many silly things.

First, I was going to have to start using math. On a daily basis.

There's this stuff in your body called cholesterol, a waxy substance that floats around in your bloodstream. Some of it is "good" cholesterol, which builds cell walls and produces certain hormones and, in the dark of the night, sneaks out of your body and fights crime. Some of it is "bad" cholesterol, which smokes and gets tattoos and hangs around in your bloodstream blocking it and daring your blood to make something of it. I had enough of the bad stuff to start a cholesterol prison farm. The way to get rid of it, aside from medication, is to reduce or eliminate all the foods that have dangerous levels of fat, cholesterol, and taste. And that meant math.

Numbers bother me, especially when they gang up, and more than three numbers in a row cause me to lie down with a cool washcloth on my forehead. But now I would have to start reading nutritional information and adding up my meals to meet specific daily limits. Does this chicken have saturated fat? How much fiber is there in a Dorito? If I starve myself for three days, can I save up for a chimichanga? (Answer: No.) Did I see me carefully tallying up my intake like Rain Man to see if I could safely eat a cookie that day? Nope, not really. Fortunately my wife Teresa reads those little nutritional information boxes on food and she roamed the grocery store to find healthy alternates to most of my favorite foods.

Second, I had to give up Cokes. I'm not a big sweets eater, apart from an almond roca now and then and the occasional office birthday cake. I don't drink alcohol, don't chow down handfuls of chips, and I even ate vegetables voluntarily before I had to. But when the doctor asked about soft drinks I suddenly became fascinated by a cross-section of a spleen.

Cokes — and the physical activity of a houseplant — are responsible for my current pear-like shape. I have single-handedly propped up the corn syrup distributors and the entire bottling industry with my regular and near-constant consumption of Coca-Cola for 35 years and this has resulted in a proud gut, a manly gut, a gut that a hippopotamus would be honored to call his own. If I were to get serious about my health, I would have to wave goodbye to the Coca-Cola company as a symbolic gesture of cutting all ties to an unhealthy lifestyle and because their diet product tastes like swallowing a chemical set. If I were to get serious, that is..Teres picked up a variety of drinks for me to try until I found a substitute I could addict myself to.

And I had to eat right, several times a day, smaller portions, yadda yadda yadda. Thing is, I felt perfectly fine. Despite a minor little, horrifically painful incident it hardly seemed necessary to subject myself to such sacrifice because I know, deep in my heart, that nothing I eat has any effect whatsoever on my health. I know it. I've known it since I was a teenager and used to eat anythng I wanted, including raw lumber, at any time of the day. Future health concerns were too nebulous to me to affect my dining decisions now and I saw no reason to change just because I had a little stroke. An early death just wasn't important enough for me to stop buttering my steaks. But for two months I went along with the joke. read the charts. I added the numbers. I bought the healthy food. I ate smaller portions. I took my meds. And yesterday I waited for the results.

The nurse told me I had lost a pound and a half since the last visit, but she had me remove my shoes last time and didn't this time so, assuming my sneakers weigh roughly 26 pounds, I felt pretty good about it. And then I waited, and worried.

As I said, not about my health. But I did worry about Teresa.

I realized, right there and then, that it's not fair to her for me to treat myself badly. It's not fair to put her through another 35 hours of sleepless terror in the ER, especially if the ending isn't as happy this time, just so I could eat what I wanted. She had been tirelessly hunting for ways to make my change easier, more painless, more convenient. My health was no longer just my concern. There and then, waiting for the results of my new test, I vowed to do whatever it took to prevent her worrying, even if I had to eat tofu, have fat removed by commercial vacuums, or even go to extremes, like exercise. Because nothing is more important to me than my wife's happiness. With that realization my life changed forever.

And then the doctor gave me the word. My cholesterol, previously in the danger zone, is now very nearly healthy. The meds and my altered diet are working.

I high-fived him, did a victory lap around the examining room, and left to go eat an egg and cheese biscuit the size of my head because, you know, too much health at one time isn't good for you.