I admit it: I'm largely oblivious to the messages my body tries to send to my over-active intellect.   "I'm hurting" gets ignored until I'm in serious pain.  "I'm hungry" gets ignored until I'm shaking because my blood sugar is nearing empty.   "I'm tired" gets ignored until I'm about to fall asleep, within five minutes, no matter how inappropriate that act might be.  This confession is by way of introduction: I've never been all that tuned into my health.

As I've aged, I've tried to pay more attention.   It would be helpful if more of my body's responses to things contributed to what my life partner calls "self-correcting mistakes".  That means I'd remember that when I eat X, I get acute stomach pains, and I might avoid eating X again.  I've not mastered this new attention-paying behaviour, but I'm working on it.  Honest.   But that still leaves me far short of that proportion of the North American population who are considerably more concerned about their health than I am.

Because I'm at one extreme, I don't know what comes close to qualifying as the other extreme.  But this thought was raised by the presence of my in-laws, who are way closer to the end of obsession than the end of oblivion.  As my sister-in-law says of her mother and her mother's sister: There is no disease that my mom hasn't read an article about, and my aunt doesn't know someone who has died from it.  These people pay attention to their health. Which may explain how they got to be in their 80s and still vital and largely unrestricted in their activities.

So, what triggered this?  We felt compelled --- actually, my life partner felt compelled, and I was persuaded that he was not wrong to be so inclined -- to tell his parents that several members of the refugee family we're involved in sponsoring have Hepatitis B.  Not infectious, mind you, but they have it.   It's never cured, it's only treatable.  In them, it's been treated successfully, but it could still be transmitted through saliva, blood and semen.   Based on this information, my in-laws asked me not to invite the family to Thanksgiving dinner. 

Since we had invited the in-laws before we even knew the refugee family, I felt compelled to respect their wishes. But they really piss me off.   More than I expected.  So much that I waited three days to calm down before writing about it here.  I was furious.  Now I'm merely annoyed and bemused and generally disappointed in the situation and in them. 

I realized that how people feel about this issue -- the extent to which people are to be excluded because they might pose a relatively minor risk to our health -- is a "litmus test" for me.  It's like guns.  If you want to own guns and keep them in your home, I don't want to stay in your home.   Period.  If you want to remain distant from anyone who might pose a risk to your health, then I'm unlikely to invite you to join me for dinner in my home.  I don't want to sleep in a house with guns.  And I don't want to preclude who else I might invite to dinner because one person invited doesn't want any health risks. 

It was a surprise to me to find out I felt this strongly about this particular issue.  Inclusiveness is pretty important to me.   I have friends who are HIV-infected. I have friends who have Hepatitis B.  I have others who may have other diseases that I know nothing about.  What all this means to me is that if people bleed in my house, or vomit in my house, I'm going to use gloves to clean up.  Of course, I might want to do that anyway.  Not only are blood and vomit pretty disgusting, but how do we know who might be infected, including those who don't know they are infected?  In other words, I'm willing to take reasonable precautions.  I'm not prepared to exclude people for these reasons.

And, going further, I suppose I'm saying that if you are prepared to exclude them on those grounds, I would question how compatible your values are with mine, and what degree of intimacy might be possible between us.  Who knew I cared so much? We all keep learning.

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