I don’t know why I was overthinking this. There was a fly in my house. I think it may have been one fly. Maybe I’ve been vegan too long, but I didn’t want to kill it. Rather, I tried to get it to leave the house. I opened the veranda door. I opened the front window. When it was in the genkan, I opened the front door. I tried to get it to leave, but it wouldn’t leave. It was annoying. And they’re not healthy, right? I saw it whenever I moved around the house. It even did flybys in the office.

At the store, I saw various things for sale. Some were just repellents. A few were insecticides. Friends on Facebook recommended this and that. I do have a spray that I just push once a week in each room to keep away tiny flies. That seems to work for those. My neighbor says the only flying insect she kills are mosquitoes. And there are some bugs most people like: ladybugs, butterflies, dragonflies… But this one regular fly didn’t get the hint.

It seemed to be making itself at home.

I did check about fly health issues. From what I read, flies can be dangerous as they carry various bacteria and pathogens that can lead to illnesses such as food poisoning, dysentery, and diarrhea. They can contaminate food and surfaces by landing on them, making them a potential health risk.

I’m better lately about dealing with spiders. I used to kill them without hesitation. My feeling was, if they weren’t up to some evil why do they need so many eyes? But I started giving it more thought and the last few years I’ve been managing to catch spiders and put them outside.

That was my first preference with this fly. But health was also something to consider. I mean, you should see some of the stuff that attracted it with Pao in the house.

My Own Health Checks

All this concern over a fly may have had to do with my own health checks. There’s nothing of real importance — I am usually not the type to dwell on personal health issues, and I think everything is basically ok. But since I turned “a certain age” this year the ward office send me a packet of notices to get all sorts of free and heavily-discounted checkups, with a list of nearby hospitals which can do them. One of the hospitals was one I go to regularly for prescription refills, so I decided to go over in July.

I had a bunch of tests, and had to wait a month for the results. After a month, the doctor said most of the results were fine (all blood tests normal, all the other tests normal) except…. there was something on the X-ray. Perhaps a shadow. He recommended a CT-scan to be sure. So I got that and then the doctor recommended an ultrasound. After seeing the results of everything he basically said he was 90% sure it was fine, and recommended getting everything checked again in a year.

The whole thing made me feel nervous though. Since the results did not indicate I need to do anything I guess that should be reassuring.

I rarely talk about my health — except for my healthy eating (see https://lerner.net/tag/whole-food-plant-based/) which cured my Type II diabetes and brought me down from extreme obesity to normal weight, and brought my blood sugar and cholesterol, etc., down to a completely normal range. I’ve been off all blood sugar meds for over 7 years now, and off of statins for about 3 years now. And my blood pressure is normal. All the new blood tests confirmed everything in that regard looked fine.

So it feels “not like me” to obsessively worry about health. But as an old childhood friend told me recent, “we are entering the home stretch.” So I guess at some point it becomes natural to start thinking about things like that.

The Fly

Meanwhile back to the fly. A couple of days ago, after washing breakfast dishes, I saw it floundering in the leftover water in the sink. A friend from college pointed out their lifespan is just 26 days anyway. And they land on unseemly stuff and they are prolific breeders. She said, “the only good fly is a dead fly..”

I felt sorry for it, in its home stretch, and euthanized it to put it out of its misery. I tried to dispose of its remains in a thoughtful manner.

Epilogue

This morning I had a regular monthly visit to a small, nearby clinic. I’ve been visiting them for almost 20 years now. The doctor has followed my weight and other health journeys over the years, enjoys practicing a little English, and I keep him up-to-date on test results. He looked through mine and said, “Great! Very good!” and other reassuring things he probably says to everybody. I saw him write in his notebook, in English, “almost normal.” He said I’ll just have yearly checks from now on, which everybody should do anyway. He told me he and his wife were waiting their own results from the same hospital.

After leaving his office I continued on my morning walk, through back alleys, and ran into this dragonfly. That was nice of it to drop by.