Adventures in health care

Well, here we go again.

Blood glucose is up. The A1C is basically a continuous 3-month average of your blood glucose. 7.9. Normal is 4-7. Previously I'd been down around 6.4. This isn’t surprising, since in Toronto I wasn’t really taking care of myself, and not really being careful with my sugars. Belgian waffles and all. So I can work on that.

Iron is down around 129, which is lower than it was when I started the iron supplement (and started the adventures in health care with the multiple colonoscopies, gastroscopy, abdominal CT, etc.). I’m told one of my drugs may cause false lows with the standard iron tests. On the other hand, my ‘total iron bindability’ (in scare quotes because I’m not sure what it is or how you measure it) is elevated, which is associated with anemia and not caused by the drug. So we’re going to have to have another look at that somehow.

Two liver enzymes elevated. Will check for hepatitis (argh) and if that’s negative they’ll have to do an ultrasound on my liver. I’m told that fatty deposits in the liver can raise your enzymes. I’m also assuming odd masses and whatnot can do the same. Not worried, but this could be a serious adventure. I had an echocardiogram once. That was ultrasound. And every pregnant woman I know has had several. And of course people are starting to use ultrasound as a research tool in phonetics, so I should add it to my research profile, I guess.

Meantime, and speaking of fatty deposits, the weight is up. I’ve gone from too fat to way too fat, so i’m working on that. Being careful with portion sizes and veggies and so on—like I should have been doing all along, but, well, I was distracted in Toronto.

Two pieces of good news in all of this. The cholesterol looks really good. Total about 4.7 and LDL down at 2.9. I assume that makes the HDL something like 1.8. For my American readers, I have no idea what those numbers look like in American. I know that normal is below 4.something or 5.something, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember what the normal range is in American. Something in the back of my head is chanting ‘<134’, but I don’t know.

Also my wonderful doctor always gets low blood pressures. The last time it was in it was 100/65. Low enough that she quizzed me about lightheadedness (almost never) and talked about possibly adjusting my meds accordingly. At home, when I check, I usually get something like 125/85, but whatever. The CPAP therapy (for the sleep apnea) is supposed to help with the blood pressure (i.e. the OSA is implicated in raised BP, so treating the OSA should moderate the BP), so maybe that’s what’s going on. It certainly isn’t adjusting the appetite or peeling off the weight like it was supposed to.

But dwelling on the good—the cholesterol and the BP. Yay me. Now to get the weight down, get the blood sugar back under control, and whip my liver back into shape.