My Week

Friday: Stayed at the Café until closing. My lovely bride got off a Harbour Air flight after a day trip to Victoria to monitor a site for the latest groundbreaking clinical study she’s working on and walked the three blocks from the seaplane terminal to catch a ride home. 

“I technically can’t expense dinner”, sweetie says over Death Cab For Cutie’s Little Bribes cranked to 16 on our new favourite radio station The Peak, “and I don’t feel like cooking”. 

“Pick a persuasion and order in”. I’m nothing if not decisive.  

She scrolls through her Blackberry for one of a handful of trusted meal replacement numbers and orders sushi from Ogenki for delivery. It’s always our standard order, but this time with extra wild salmon sushi for me. I’m looking to top up my Omega 3’s. 

Saturday: Working on a stomachache, but that doesn’t stop a family outing to MacDonald Beach to give the dog some exercise. Twenty minutes to walk the dike and then over the small footbridge across the protected wildlife habitat, and we’re on a beautiful sandy beach that, regardless of whether the tide is high or low, is perfect for little Levi to break out his sand toys and get the dog in the water.

First launch of the Chuck-it and the ball sails too far out for Shayna to be interested in chasing it. I feel like the loser dad who gets the kite tangled in a tree on the first go. “Maybe a touch of food poisoning”, I opine. 

“Lame”, she quips. “You just threw it too hard. Don’t blame it on dinner. I ate what you ate and I’m fine”. 

Sunday: Googled the nearest walk-in clinic, thinking I’ll get some antibiotics for what is obviously a 24 hour stomach virus I picked up from my seemingly healthy 18 month old child, who obviously brought something home from play gym/library/Lara and Brad’s. 

“Your pee has blood in it”, the very nice Russian immigrant doctor says to me as she’s writing a letter to the emergency department at VGH with her findings and conclusion. “Go straight there and good luck”. 

I make a slight detour downtown to check on the store, grab a coffee, and then drive myself to the hospital. It’s busy in triage. I sure feel like a wuss. 

Twenty minutes after presenting with what is now an excruciatingly painful abdomen, I’m on a gurney, giving blood draws to a young guy with highlights. An hour later I’m on an IV drip, in an examination room listening to a mild-mannered doc tell me I’m going to have a CT scan. 

He thinks it’s my appendix. My honey-bunches-of-oats has now made her way down with child, and after the doc leaves, says “I think he’s fishing. Can you trust a middle-aged man with unsightly eyebrows who tucks his scrubs into his corduroys”? 

Later that afternoon the scan proves a perforated appendix. I’m going under the knife immediately. Except that there are three appendectomies ahead of me, so it’s more like as soon as possible. 

Monday: My first meal in 30 hours is a glass of water. The surgeon is on rounds and comes in to check his work. “Will I find my used organ on Craigslist”, I ask, more for the benefit of the interns than him. “No, we sent it to pathology. Stay off your feet the rest of the week, no heavy lifting for two weeks, see me in four weeks”. 

Good surgeon, no sense of humour, lives in seven day increments. Fine with me, I’m thinking. I’m here to tell the story. That’s all the matters. 

Wednesday: Discharged with a script for painkillers, and anxious to get home to a bed that doesn’t have plastic sheets underneath the flannel, grateful to the legion of dedicated professionals who did their jobs so well. 

Friday: Feeling like a million damn dollars. Had a few hours in the Café today. Staff did an admirable job running the joint in my absence. Looking forward to the weekend. Maybe get the dog out to the beach tomorrow for a little exercise. In the meantime, my honey is on deadline for report writing, and doesn’t have time to cook. 

“Are we ordering in or what”? she texts me from the other room. 

 Hey, I’m thinking, what could be better than fish on Friday? 

“Sushi”, I type back. “With extra wild salmon”.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464
Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Shop: www.minkchocolates.com
Tweet: www.twitter.com/minkchocolates
Join:http://www.facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: http://blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: http://www.youtube.com search mink chocolates
In Person: 863 Hastings Street West, Vancouver, BC V6C 3N9

Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
– Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Waiting for my Ship to Come in.

I’m envious of my chocolate counterparts in America. The United States Postal Service has implemented a strategy called Priority Mail Flat Rate Boxes which allows for whatever fits in the box to ship anywhere in the US for one low flat rate.

This is pure genius and a perfect solution for on-line shippers like Mink, if only it was available in Canada. No more zone maps. No more length x width x height x weight, and the myriad number of possible combinations that yields.

Conceivably, someone in Sydney, Nova Scotia could pay the same freight charge as someone in Sidney, BC. That levels the playing field for everybody. The customer in the Maritimes doesn’t feel so geographically undesirable and the Mink online store has a fighting chance of doing electronically what we’re used to doing in bricks and mortar.

If we sold and shipped more products through our website, the carrier would handle more volume, which should theoretically make them more money and keep more people employed. Kind of like a stimulus package without the government actually having to write a cheque. What a concept.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.
863 Hastings Street West,
Vancouver, BC V6C 3N9

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464

Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Shop: www.minkchocolates.com
Tweet: www.twitter.com/minkchocolates
Join: http://www.facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: http://blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: http://www.youtube.com search mink chocolates
Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
– Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Taking the ‘die’ out of diet

If for no other reason than both my parents each had more than their share of medical ailments in their later years, I’ve been diligent about seeing my doctor regularly. Within a week or two of my birthday every year, I schedule a complete physical. It’s a two part process that involves an exam, and a visit to the lab, then coming back in a week to discuss the results. 

Over the course of my 25 year relationship with my GP, I’ve had back surgery, been referred to a dermatologist, maintained excellent blood pressure (120/80) and gotten grey hair, although technically the latter is not a medical condition that falls within her scope of expertise. 

She counseled me when my best friend drowned, and was right that nothing is a more powerful motivator to quitting smoking than the birth of a child. She also noted, in her gentle way, that when I first became a patient in 1985, I weighed 185 pounds and that in the ensuing 24 years I’ve gained more than the one pound a year that would have made this statistically coincidental. 

Now there’s nothing terribly wrong with entering middle age a few pounds north of my passport stats when I was single and had itchy feet. My blood work however, begged to differ. 

“Your happy cholesterol is happy,” my doc says matter-of-factly, clipboard in hand, reading glasses perched authoritatively on the end of her nose like she was auditioning to be a TV spokesperson for an ED drug,  “but your sad cholesterol is sad”. 

What was odd about this exchange is it was the first time she’d resorted to speaking like a pediatrician. 

“Give me the straight goods, doc.” I say, knowing full well she’ll tell me to exercise more and eat less. 

“There are no goods to give. I’m referring you to a lipidologist”. If there’s one thing of many that she is very good at, it is being connected and having privileges and getting me to an appropriate specialist, stat.

And so it was that within weeks I found myself at St. Paul’s hospital taking part in a three day clinic to learn how to make good eating and lifestyle choices and send my plaque packing. 

The clinic runs with a doctor, a nurse and a dietician. I meet the man in the white lab coat first. 

“I’m starting you on Lipitor”, he says without looking up. 

“But 52 is the new 38”, I offer in mild protest. “I can’t seriously be a candidate for an old man drug?” 

“You have a family history, and you need to lose weight”. 

“But elevated levels of LDL don’t necessarily mean a lot of cholesterol is sticking to my arteries. Maybe I’m that rare guy with Teflon veins and it isn’t accumulating”. 

“You make, sell and eat chocolate. Go see the dietician, then see me again in three months”. 

I walk over to room 482 and take my spot to the left of the whiteboard. The handouts start coming fast and furious. Meal planning. Carbohydrate targets. Nutrition labeling. This is the one that catches my attention. Diets don’t work. I eat to live and live to eat. I can’t not eat Mink. It’s quality control after all. 

I pull a Mink Signature 70% organic dark chocolate bar out of my bag, and peruse the nutrition facts. Servings per package: 1. Calories: 10% of my daily allowance. Cholesterol: 0. Sodium: 0. This is all good. My happy cholesterol is giddy. Fibre: 6 grams. Things are looking up! Trans fat: 0. Yippee! 

I do a quick calculation on how this chocolate bar will affect my blood sugars, and see that it is equal to one carbohydrate portion of the 3 – 5 I’m allowed per meal. If I balance my diet, veggies, grains, protein, and eat proper portions, the bar is a midday snack guilt-free. I may even do what I espouse to others, namely, eat half and save the other half for another time. Things are looking good. The diet won’t kill me, and I don’t have to change professions.

Sincerely,

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.
863 Hastings Street West,
Vancouver, BC V6C 3N9

Call the store: 604.633.2451
Call my mobile: 604.376.3464

Call toll free: 1.866.283.5181

Shop: www.minkchocolates.com
Tweet: www.twitter.com/minkchocolates
Join: http://www.facebook.com/mink.chocolates
Read: http://blog.minkchocolates.com
Watch: http://www.youtube.com search mink chocolates
Nine out of every ten persons say they love chocolate. The tenth lies.
– Anthelme Brillat-Savarin