A year-and-a-half ago, almost to the day, I got out of bed feeling out of sorts.

“Out of sorts” is an old-timey way of describing infirmities ranging from a gurgling gut to blood gushing out both ears.

My out of sorts that morn was a light-headedness. It had started two days before and while it hadn’t gotten worse, it hadn’t gone away either. So I did what I usually do in such cases — tried to ignore it and hoped it’d go away. But since it hadn’t, I decided just for the heck of it to check my blood pressure.

I scrounged around looking for my blood pressure cuff and finally found it under a pile of Freak Brothers comic books. After I’d excavated it and brushed off the dust and detritus, I put it on and took a reading. And when I did, I about stroked out. The numbers were off the charts and looked less like someone’s blood pressure than respectable bowling scores.

In a flash I grabbed the blower and called the office of my cardiologist, Tony Tramontano. Hearing the panic in my voice, I was given a same-day appointment.

A note about my blood pressure. All my life it — like all my other functions — had been fine. Then, when I hit my late 40s, it started creeping up, bit by bit, ’til it was officially “high.”

My doc at the time was Jay Federman and he put me on BP meds. That lowered my BP for quite a while, but then it was back in the danger zone. At that point Dr. T was my doc and he doubled my med dose, which helped … again, for a while. After that, he prescribed an additional med. The result was the same: Good … for a while, then not good.

So why couldn’t my BP be controlled?

There was only one reason — me.

In addition to meds, I’d needed to do two things to lower my BP — cut back on salt and lose weight. And it should go without saying, I did neither.

So why didn’t I?

Any Freudian analyst worth his goatee — after my spending years on his couch — would’ve attributed it to my passive-aggressive anti-authoritarian anger issues, combined with a grandiose sense of invulnerability. My mother, on the other hand, would’ve just said I always cut off my nose to spite my face. Take your pick.

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No escape

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Once in Tony’s office, I was given a bunch of tests and then met with the lad himself.

Lemme tell you about Dr. T. I may goof on him — especially to his face — but he’s 24 carat. He’s sharp, caring, thorough, has a dynamite sense of humor (that is, he laughs at my jabs) and he doesn’t mince words. Not mincing words is vital to me, since the last thing I want is a doctor so diplomatic I have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. With Tony there’s never a doubt.

After exchanging greetings, he pored over my chart and then got down to bizness.

“OK,” he said, “other than your blood pressure, everything looks fine.”

He paused for dramatic effect, perhaps channeling Richard Chamberlain as Young Doctor Kildare, then went on.

“I could increase your meds again,” he said. “But that’s not the way to go, especially since I’ve already done it twice. The only intelligent option is for you to cut back on salt and lose weight.”

He stopped and gave me his trademark boyish smile.

At that moment, I hated his smile, hated his advice, and hated him. And the reason I did was because he was right and I didn’t wanna hear it.

But there comes a time when The Truth will penetrate the skull of the most pig-headed eejit on God’s Green Earth. And that was my time.

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A whole new Dope

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High blood pressure is called The Silent Killer, and for good reason. Symptoms don’t present themselves ’til it’s too late. I left his office chastised, and changed, determined to get my act together. And, against all odds, I did.

Cutting back on salt was easy. See ya later, chips and fries. Adios, deluxe nachos. Shalom, kosher dills.

Losing weight is a simple equation: You need to decrease caloric intake and increase caloric expenditure. A simple equation, but a difficult reality. That said, I had a two-prong plan.

Prong one was to burn off more calories with exercise. My exercise weapon of choice is walking, so I only had to increase my walks, in speed, distance and frequency, and I managed to do that.

When it came to decreasing caloric intake, I had only one target in my sights — refined sugar.

As far as I’m concerned, refined sugar is less a food than a drug. It has only empty calories, no nutritive value, and it causes immediate changes to body and psyche. In my case, as soon as I woof some delectable morsel like a Russell Stover Pecan Delight, every cell in my body breaks into a wall-to-wall grin.

So what’s wrong with that, you ask? Just this: I am a Sugar Freak’s Sugar Freak. And as a SF’s SF, I have no control over it. I can go without sugar, and in fact I have, for long times. But after, say, six months of no sugar, one mere spoonful of ice cream and I’m off to the races. And I’ll stay off to the races, scarfing every sweet I can get my tofu hooks on, every day for months, if not years, till I go on the wagon, yet again.

So the chastised and changed me said, “No mas sugar!” Not only did I mean it, but I actually stuck to it.

Awright, it wasn’t exactly no sugar. I had three slips. Two were birthday treats at Joe Keegan’s — a chocolate cream pie, and a cheese cake, both of which held a place of honor in Dante’s third circle of hell. My other slip was a chocolate double thick malted at Bokie’s. And let’s get real, if you’re in Malone and don’t go to Bokie’s for something, you’re a half-step away from the bone yard — at best.

I don’t have a scale, so I always measure my weight by how my clothes fit. Previously, if I found I couldn’t zip up a pair of jeans that’d had breathing room the year before, I took immediate action. Which meant I bought bigger jeans. But that was the old, in-denial me. The new, reality-based me was not about to play such games. And luckily I didn’t have to, since as a result of my exercise, I took off weight … and kept it off.

I didn’t know how much weight I’d dropped till a few months later I went in for my follow-up appointment with Dr. T and found out I’d lost the equivalent of two toy French poodles. And that, combined with my salt restriction, had lowered my BP to a healthy level. I’m here to tell you it was smiles all-around in the examining room.

That was over a year ago, so you might wonder if I managed to stick with my regimen, and the answer is I have. I’ve gained some of the weight back, and I’ve had some slippage with my salt intake, but I just made my New Year’s resolution and am hoping to to get back on track post haste.

All in all, I consider this an excellent learning experience.

What I learned was this: It’s easy to do the smart thing for your health when you’re poop-sick scared of dying. And, conversely, it’s even easier not to do it when you’re not.