Health Fare

A REMINDER that the Raleigh State Employees Health Fair is today - Tuesday, May 23 from 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. at the Jim Graham Building at the State Fairgrounds. Attached is a flyer announcing the fair. There are over 100 vendors and great raffle prizes offered as part of this event.

A Reminder:
The State Employees Health Fair is tomorrow (May 23) from 9 a.m.-3-p.m. at the Jim Graham Building at the State Fairgrounds.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Damn. Do you think they wanted us to go? There were other reminders but I deleted them as they came in, back in April. I kind of thought that the signs on all the doors, all the doors; I didn’t know how many doors we had in this building until I started to notice they all had notices about the health fair attached to them. I thought that we had been pretty sufficiently notified about the fair.

So I went.

I like health fairs. I consider them my primary care physicians. I went last year and it was fairly lame as Health Fairs go, long on chiropractors and podiatrists and short on everything else. Also, very little free stuff.

This year, this year there was lot’s of free stuff. Good free stuff. I made out like a pirate! A pirate with a brand new walkmanesque radio! This is so much cooler than the pedometer I thought I was getting when I grabbed it. I grabbed everything!. I didn’t do any of the more hard core health stuff because the bastards were charging for it!, I mean, Dayum! If I wanted to pay for health care I don’t actually need, I would let my inner hypochondriac out and I would, you know, go to a real doctor and I wouldn’t be going to a health fair in the first place. I wanted freebie cholesterol screening, hearing tests, and lung capacity screenings. I wanted all the little non-invasive screenings that I have come to know and love and get for free.



The one cool health related thing I did do was an “ear canal screening”. I stood in line for it even. I saw it on E.R one time and I always thought it looked kewl. It was! They put a little camera thingy in your ear and you watch on a screen! You never get to see the inside of your own ear. It’s right there and you can’t look at it, you could ask other people to look in your ear for you, but who wants to do that? I don’t want to look into other peoples ears but I am very interested in my own. But anyway. I got to see what my ear drum looks like and It looks like a bubble – now I understand the whole “burst eardrum” thing! It’s like a bubble and it bursts! The tech said mine was “very clear” and that the bones behind my ear drum are “large”. Wow! I’m sure the screening had little or no health benefit but it was certainly a neat thing to do.

The only thing the fair was not handing out was food. Oh, they made half bags of popcorn available, and someone was handing out apples, but there really wasn’t food around. So I went to McDonalds. I blame the health fair. And George Bush. But mostly the health fair for not giving us free food along with the free finger nail files and Frisbees. I ended up with a Happy Meal, which was great because the current toys are awesome. They come with itty, bitty “Build-A-Bears”. Only you don’t “build” them as much as you “dress” them. Have you ever tried to put a one-size-fits-all one piece swim suit on a three inch bear?