I’ve been walking daily with my dog for almost seven years now.
I have to. Not much for weight loss, as I am still overweight, but just to regulate my blood pressure.
You see, after quitting my biking regimen in 2007 for a variety of reasons, I started to gain weight, and my BP simply became erratic.
I have been admitted in the hospital three times for hypertension, and even became partly deaf. I was taking seven different maintenance medicines daily. And to think, I wasn’t taking even a single medicine for at least three years prior to my abrupt suspension from mountain biking activities.
My sister-in-law, a nurse, warned me my kidney would eventually suffer with the continuous intake of various medicines.
So in 2011, I decided to go walking everyday, alternately with my Labrador retriever and my Doberman.
My four-year-old Lab has since passed away in 2015, and now it’s just me and my Doberman.
I have been walking since then until now because by 2013, or after two years, my prescription dramatically dropped to just one maintenance medicine for hypertension, from a daily intake of seven maintenance medicines.
My cardiologist Dr. Susan Ozoa-Denura told me I have to take the hypertension medicine for life.
But who’s complaining? My BP is now normal at 120/90, except on days when I had eaten too much fatty foods, slept late, when the temperature was just too warm, or when something stressed me out.
So I actually know what to avoid if I want to enjoy quality life longer: fatty foods, late nights, warm temperatures, stress triggers.
I can not yet, however, give up my smoking habit, so I take a double dose of Cecon daily. At least to help me combat the urge to smoke, I had to quit playing mahjong and card games as I was puffing around three to four packs of cigarettes each day during my gambling heyday.
I now consider that period in my life — and which I choose to call — My Lost Years.
I’m now down to a pack a day, which I intend to reduce, and eventually, quit as soon as I find the will to control this addiction.
I’m on my way there, I know, although as to when exactly, only time can tell.
I bought a bicycle last year, and I have resumed biking since. It’s been great biking once again after a 10-year hiatus.
Last week, my high school Paulinian ‘88 batchmates and I went on a 25-kilometer bike ride. We started at the intersection of Larena Drive and Rovira Road, passed through trails, and came out in the town of Bacong. Makalingaw.
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Atty. Jun Remollo, 45, is the eldest of three boys of the late Atty. Proceso Remollo Jr. and Carmita Martinez. He has been a Paulinian from kinder to high school. At Silliman University, he finished Business Administration in 1992, and Bachelor of Laws in 1996.
His grandfather is Atty. Proceso Rendon Remollo Sr., who went to Stanford University (batch 1918) in California, to become Negros Oriental’s first lawyer ever. Remollo Sr. was also the first Negrense to pass the American Bar. Such feat inspired Jun to go into the same profession.
He says a distinction should be made between those who took up law with the intention of practicing it thereafter, and those who took up law merely to know the law, and to fulfill family tradition.
He says like Tom Hagen, he only lawyers for the Martinez and Remollo families. (Hagen is the fictional consigliere of the Corleone family, serving as the voice of reason in the family.)
Jun does not actively practice law to avoid unnecessary stress, but does pro bono documents for constituents in the northern town of San Jose where his brother Rino was #1 councilor, and his youngest brother Carmelo was mayor until last year.
Jun accepts “rare cases” once in a blue moon. He says if the case gives him nothing but headaches, he can choose to refuse clients. He is confident he is well aware of his kryptonite. “Life is way too short,” he says.
As of presstime, Jun is single “until further notice”, he adds.
