Expandable Pants

In my closet, I have two or three pairs of expandable pants. You know the kind I'm talking about, right? The kind with elastic cleverly disguised in the waistband. I'm assuming they are designed for old guys whose waistline is expanding ever more rapidly and who want to avoid buying a bigger pair of pants every six months or so; or maybe it just appeals to one's vanity. Think about it - if you keep on buying pants with the same waist size, you don't have to admit you're getting fatter. It also means that you can go to an all-you-can-eat buffet and really get your money's worth without having to unbutton your pants midway through the meal.

Of course, there are alternatives to expandable pants... for example, some men just move their pants lower and lower as their girth expands, so that they end up buying shorter pants, but not bigger around. I guess that serves the same purpose as expandable pants, but it means that you run a few risks. If you are wearing your pants underneath your belly, they tend to keep sliding down and you have to continually hold them up or they'll fall down around your knees at some inopportune moment. Also, as you move your pants lower and lower on your torso, you have to buy your shirts longer and longer to avoid the notorious crack exposure syndrome with which plumbers are famously afflicted.

I bought expandable pants because, well, I am getting older, my girth was increasing slowly but surely, and above all, they were cheap. Cheaper than any other pants in the store. Even cheaper than jeans. Not that I really needed more pants - I already had a dozen pair or so of perfectly good pants in the closet - but it was getting to the point where most of them were tight enough that I really couldn't wear them comfortably. Actually, it had been a few years since some of them were wearable, but they weren't worn out, so I was keeping them just in case. Pants last a long time if you leave them hanging in the closet. They only wear out if you wear and wash them. Sure, they may go out of style, but that's not a problem for me, since I am... well, let's just say I'm stylishly challenged, but fiscally aware. I'm more concerned about cost than chic.

So I bought expandable pants partly for comfort, partly to boost my vanity, partly to mitigate risk of me reaching up and my pants suddenly falling down, partly to avoid the added cost and inconvenience of wearing suspenders to hold my pants up, and partly as insurance against having uncomfortably tight pants which are left hanging in the closet and not being worn. You see, I had plenty of good reasons... and to top it all off, they were cheap. A wise decision on my part, don't you think?

I smugly wore my expandable pants while feasting on burgers, fries, Skittles, donuts, cookies, and other delectable and delicious things. For a while, as my girth and pants automatically expanded, so did my feeling of contentment and well-being.

However, long before my expandable pants began to show any wear, my contented, smug reverie was shattered by a trip to the doctor for a yearly checkup. I am not one to go to the doctor of my own volition. However, as I have aged, I have yielded to increasing pressure to have yearly physical exams. I am told that once you reach a certain age, there are some things that need to be monitored closely. I am told that my colon must be periodically examined via a rather invasive procedure called a colonoscopy; my prostate must be examined using a procedure which I don't know the name of, but which involves dropping your pants and bending over in the presence of a doctor wearing a surgical glove on his raised index finger; my blood pressure must be monitored for signs of hypertension; my blood must be regularly sampled and tested for signs of various improper levels of things like cholesterol, blood sugar, and triglycerides. This is only a partial enumeration of a long list of things that must be checked yearly, according to people who know about these things. I resisted the pressure for a while, but finally yielded when I discovered that these yearly checkups are free as part of my healthcare plan.

I was escorted to the examining room by a nurse who took my blood pressure, then left, saying the doctor would be in shortly. Eventually the doctor came in and probed various orifices in my head and nether regions with an assortment of tools and probes, including the gloved index finger previously mentioned. Once this examination was complete, he sat at his desk, opened his laptop, and entered some information. He then told me that my blood pressure was a little high, and he could see that in the past, my cholesterol levels had been a little out of whack. He asked me to go down to the lab and have some blood drawn, printed out a copy of the DASH diet, gave it to me, and said "Try following this diet, and go easy on the salt. You could stand to lose a few pounds."

I went into the doctor's office feeling healthy, smug, and content. I left feeling sick, deflated, and anxious, thinking that maybe expandable pants weren't such a good idea after all. But the real blow came about two weeks later in the form of a lab report and a note from the doctor, which said something like: "Your lipids are high. I am ordering a prescription for Simvastatin. Begin taking it, then come back to the lab after three months for a follow-up." I was devastated. I envisioned myself a few years from now, sitting down at breakfast time with one of those weekly pill organizers to take my assortment of prescription drugs every day. Simvastation was only the beginning, I thought. Next, it would be blood pressure drugs, then diabetes drugs, then who knows what else. I wasn't ready to start down that road just yet.

I ignored the prescription, changed my eating habits in accordance with the DASH diet, lost 25 pounds, and went back for another lipids test. This time, the results came back with a note from the doctor which said something like: "Your lipid levels are responding well to Simvastatin, and your liver function is normal." I then sent the doctor a letter in reply, telling him that I wasn't taking Simvastatin, but had changed my diet and had lost some weight. That was almost a year ago. I never got a reply from the doctor. He's probably not very happy with me. I'm not sure if I have the courage to go in for another yearly checkup and face being chastised for not following orders. Maybe I'll just skip the checkups for a while.

I'm not so proud of my expandable pants any more. I don't wear them much, and when I do, I don't have that smug, contented feeling like I used to. However, the good news is that I can now wear any of the pants in my closet, and I won't have to buy any new ones for a long while.

Meanwile, back in the cubicle

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I apologize for not including any subject matter on cubicle life in this post. Let me just say that the cubicle drama continues. Last week, my walking buddy becamy my boss, and another of my peers with whom I have often clashed fiercely, became my boss' boss. More on that in my next post. It's a story you won't want to miss!