Well, with remarkable timing, The Wife's new job's health insurance kicked in yesterday, the very day we would have needed to have paid the other insurance five grand. To celebrate this, I managed to get myself a doctors appointment today. I had a list of about a half-dozen "issues" that I'd been saving up (and I'm currently kicking myself that I didn't get down far enough on that for my cold/flu symptoms), but the main reason for my going in was to follow-up on the blood pressure meds the doc had set me up with following the vertigo episode.
I was amazed to find that I'd lost twenty pounds (and that was with shoes, clothes, wallet, keys, assorted pocket fillings, etc.) and my blood pressure had dropped 20 points (the lower number was now 80, which is "normal"!) ... so I guess those little pills (which cost $2 a pop) are worth it.
I am, unfortunately, likely to need to have some vein surgery to get my legs taken care of, but I had all sorts of stuff that I was "worried about" that he assured me were simply "normal side effects of getting older".
I ended up coming back and taking an (unplanned) 3-hour nap, which should be a good start on a "laying low" weekend which should certainly help with the cold/flu thing.
Yay, good medical insurance!