Seeing my Endicronologist and Taking a Long Walk in Southport/Westport with Leslie

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Fairfield and Southport, Connecticut

Seeing my Endicronologist and Taking a Long Walk in Southport/Westport with Leslie

Today was a quieter day as I am now in Return Mode. After an early wake-up during which I blogged, I made my breakfast and drove off for an 8.20 am appointment with my endourologist of at least 15 years, Dr. Glenn Rich in Trumbull. I feel really blessed to have the use of her car as Leslie starts work only at 1.00 pm most afternoons. This allows me to do all my jobs in the morning at great convenience.

Seeing my Doctor Again:

All went well with Dr. Rich although we did talk about checking my arteries for any blockages in light of the fact that my cholesterol is borderline. I tried to get the scan done at Advanced Radiology but they had no appointments available for the next few days and since I am leaving soon, I will get it done in India. This, of course, is only precautionary as the US bases its heath care on preventative medicine. My ECK was clear, my blood pressure is normal, so the chance of heart disease is minimal. Still, you can never be too sure and Dr. Rich wants me to stay on top of my heart health. He was delighted to hear that I work out six days a week, have followed a low-carb diet for 25 years, have never smoked and drink alcohol very sparingly. Hopefully, this will augur well. He would like to see Scan results and asked me to fax them to him. Meanwhile, he gave me an appointment for a year from now.

It is amazing to me that I still have the ability to see my doctors, thanks to Medicare and NYU’s Supplemental Health care benefits. For as long as we can swing it, I will make these annual medical pilgrimages to the US. Of course, a time may come when that will no longer be possible…but, for the moment, I revel in the knowledge that I can.

I stopped at CVS for one quick errand: buying OFF Mosquito repellent (as per Llew’s request) to deal with them in India. I also stopped at Stop and Shop to buy my stash of marinated olives as this is something I cannot get in India—I can only find the bottled variety which are usually used in martinis. I then drove back home and went straight for a cofree as it has turned pretty chilly already. In fact, I think that late summer-early fall is probably the best time to be in the US—you avoid the possibility of truly burning up in the summer heat and you do not get the awful brutality of winter. Maybe it might be best to plan future trips at this time of year.

Getting Packing Done:

I spent the rest of the morning worrying about my packing and taking out all heavy stuff so that I could include those things that urgently need to be transported to India. I will leave those things that are not urgent in my friend Mary-Lauren’s basement. They will be transported to India at a later stage. We stopped to eat Lunch (I ate leftovers of my British Breakfast Plate of a few days ago—it was still quite quite delicious) and then I had a nap.

By the time I woke up, Leslie had returned from work and we sat down chatting. It was quite grey outside and looked very gloomy but a thought suddenly occurred to me. I asked Leslie if she was too tired and she said she was fine. I then suggested we go for a walk and I take her to a place she had never been to before—I told her that it was a favorite walking trail for Llew and me, especially during the pandemic, when we enjoyed being out in nature talking about our future plans to relocate to India. She said she would love to go for a walk and so off we went.

Walking Again in Southport/Westport Meadows:

The area I call the Southport Meadows are actually on the border of Westport (as Leslie found out by using a satellite map later on). It is just past Southport Beach and is a vast acreage that has been in the possession of the Audobon Society as part of their conservancy project. Llew and I used to enjoy walking here as it seemed we were always far from the madding crowd in a protect environment where we could enjoy wild flowers, towering trees and, if we were lucky, much wildlife too.

And for Leslie and myself too, it turned out to be a splendid walk. Leslie was utterly charmed as she had no idea such a place existed and she absolutely loved it. She found out that it borders the playing fields of Green Farms Academy (Llew and I used to often walk around the periphery of their football and baseball fields too). We saw a cute little rabbit on our walk as well as a pair of deer. We stopped by the little lakes and the fountains in the private properties and multi-million dollar homes that form the periphery of the meadows. We took pictures and had a really wonderful time as we plucked wild raspberries and blackberries (reminded me very much of the plucking of wild blackberries that I used to do in England when I would take them home and eat them with ice-cream). Oh, the happy past times of rural summers in the West!

When our walk was done, we had a couple of errands to run: I had to pick up mail from my home and so met the Kennedys again briefly, we went to Stop and Shop to return the aerosol mosquito repellent I had bought as well as the Pledge furniture polish as Leslie told me that aerosol containers are not allowed on the aircraft and we stopped at CVS to get something else I needed to buy—clip-on sunglasses as I simply cannot do without them in India.

Dinner and Ted Lasso Back Home:

Once home, we discovered that Sunil had taken over the cooking and had prepared grilled chicken with vegetables for us. We had a lovely dinner while watching Ted Lasso (I am determined to finish the third and final season before I leave from here as we do not have Apple TV at home) and also following the TV coverage about Donald Trump getting booked and having his mug shot taken in Georgia.

Dinner done, we sat chatting for a while before I excused myself to take a sbower and get ready for bed.

Until tomorrow…cheerio!