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Medicine by Dr. Bruce, and Re-Adjusting

Well, the Day of Wallowing is over. So now begins the week/month/year/lifetime of trying to figure this all out. I want to thank all of you lovely wonderful people who commented, emailed and DMed me yesterday after my distressing/distraught post. I can’t tell you HOW MUCH those comments buoyed me up. Truly. I am grateful, so grateful, to every single one of you. Your comments made me well up with warmth and a sense of being truly taken care of. So THANK  YOU.

Last night it helped immmmmmmmensely to have tickets to see Bruce Springsteen. At first I really didn’t even want to go, I just wanted to – you know – WALLOW – but it seemed stupid to pass up such an event, and I am so glad I didn’t. It was great medicine.  When he started out with “Badlands” –

it aint no sin to be glad you’re alive

it gave me a big lump in my throat. And then he’d yell periodically into the audience, “Is anybody aliiiiiiiiiiive out there?” and I had to jump up and down and yell affirmation to that. I’m still alive! Hell yeah!

I got up in the morning and did my 2nd session, 2nd week of Couch-to-5k with my buddy Mary. It was a lot better and easier than earlier in the week, which was great. So it felt good to start the day with some affirming exercise.

Then later in the day I got down to some of the business of dealing with this diabetes thing.

  • I signed up for a bunch of diabetes-related blogs, forums and Tweets.
  • I registered for Diabetes Education classes, which begin next Tuesday. They said to bring my glucometer (blood testing machine). I have to say, this put a twinge of fear/resistance/oh noooooo into my heart. I had a moment of the heaviness of FOREVER. But then I breathed it through. I really do think this is going to have to be one day at a time.
  • I got an appointment to see the opthamologist this afternoon. I had just read this sobering account of Mary Tyler Moore’s (type 1, not 2) diabetes, and how her vision is really starting to go. This made me so sad and scared, so I was glad they had an immediate appointment.
  • The good news: I don’t have any “vascular complications” in my eyes.
  • The bad news: (watch out, I’m about to rant) The eye doctor asked for my family medical history. I said I didn’t know, because I was adopted. She said, “You’re adopted?? Oh, that’s so cuuuuuute!”  I almost launched into an Arlo Guthrie yell (a la “Alice’s Restaurant”) “Kill! Kiiill! Kiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllll!” but I refrained.
  • Rant #2: as if it was’t bad enough being told that being adopted is “cute” it reminded me ONCE AGAIN of the absolute wrongness,  indignity and danger of not having access or knowledge of my family medical history. Now maybe I don’t have a genetic family history of diabetes. But maybe I do. And if I do, and I had, say, KNOWN about it, five years ago, maybe I could have diagnosed/dealt with this even earlier. Who knows. But it just SUCKS so much to have no idea about these things. It is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG in every way possible.
  • I filled my prescription for Glucophage/Metformin and took first dose at dinner tonight.

So, I did everything on my endocroinologist’s check-off list. I bought a book about diabetes.

I’m a little thrown off in terms of the diet thing right now. I think my primary concern is figuring out what to do to keep my blood sugars “under tight control” which is what the opthamologist said I must do if I do not want to go blind. (OK! OK! I will!!!) Hopefully what is good for the blood sugars will also be good for the weight and it will all sort of work itself out. But right now I don’t have it in my to count the points or calories. I’m just sort of hanging on.

6

D-Day

Diagnosis Day. Diabetes Day. Depressed, discouraged, disgrunted, disappointed day. That’s been today for me.

I know I had some inner inkling from the awfulness of the glucose test on Monday, but part of me was also feeling so confident and happy and proud of myself for losing weight and exercising and just DOING GOOD since my last visit to the endocrinologist in February.

She came right in to the room and said, “Well, I’m sorry to say it, but you definitely have diabetes.”

Clunk.

Umm, what happened to “pre-?” I think that was probably wishful thinking back then. But I did have a few months to get used to the idea and during that time I did get significantly healthier in terms of my weight, blood pressure, cholesterol etc.

I was so shocked (well, part of me was, and part of me was not). And disappointed. And like, “Noooooooooooo!!!!!!! After all of my hard work!!”  Isn’t it supposed to go, that you get rewarded for doing well? This is not the result I was wanting or expecting.

I sort of plaintively, hopefully asked, “Can I make it go away?” and she shook her head sadly and said, “I’m afraid not.”

But most probably I had it all along but it wasn’t until the finality of the glucose test that it was objectively defined.

In January my fasting blood glucose (BG) was 123. (official diagnosis = 125 or over) So that’s where I got the idea it was “pre-.”  In February I had it down to 110 and I was feeling pretty damn good. So now it’s April. My fasting BG was a spectacular 101 (yay!) but that’s where the good news ended. My “postprandial” BG was 272 after 1 hour post-glucose.  (normal is 90-150) It was only a little bit lower after 2 hours. Which explains exactly WHY I felt so deathly awful. It was for real.

I know that millions of people live happily (?) and healthily with diabetes. I know it’s a lot better than other diagnoses one could get. But still, I didn’t want this. I tried so hard to prevent it from happening.

I didn’t much like it when she tested my feet and gave me a prescription to go to an opthamologist and called it a “progressive disease.” I hate the sound of that.

I started crying in the doctor’s office, and then sat in the car and cried for an hour (see my tearful Twitters) and then drove around mournfully for the rest of the morning. I cancelled my visit with my friend because I was just too glum to be able to cheer someone ELSE up. Now I’m going to take a nap. I do feel like I will eventually recover from this, hopefully as early as tomorrow, but today I feel sad and shitty and like rolling up in a little ball and whimpering “It’s not fair.” Which it isn’t, but nothing really is.

I hereby proclaim today Official Day of Wallowing, and tomorrow I get up and carry on.

20

Good Doctor

I had my first visit with my endocrinologist this morning. It was good!! I really like her. She’s very young but super friendly and seems to really know her stuff. She was easy to talk to. She took her time, didn’t seem rushed, let me ask all my questions and was overall just great. YAY!

So, my big question #1: do I have diabetes? The answer was, no, not YET but I am certainly at very high risk. The lab slip shows that I am no in the “diabetic” range but am in the “impaired” range. She gave me big credit for losing 12 lbs (yes! finally cracked that wall!) in the past month, and said that obviously made a big difference. I still have about 16 to go. (at least)

I have to go for an oral glucose tolerance test, which for those of you who have not had the pleasure, is one of the nastiest experiences ever. You have to chug a huge quantity (a quart?) of what is essentially SYRUP and then get your blood tested as you see how your body responds to this mass sugar intake. I am SO not looking forward to it, especially since I have had about zero sugar in the past month (except that teeny slice of chocolate cake) and I know my body is not going to respond in a pretty way.  I had to take this test several times while pregnant. Once I chugged too fast, trying to get it over with, you know? and ended up puking it all up and having to START ALL OVER again. I remember sitting down on the floor and just bawling my eyes out. Hopefully it will go better this time – but man, I am not looking forward to it.

But otherwise we had a good chat. She said it was more important to lose the weight than to actually do a diabetic diet at this point, and whatever combination of food plan/exercise/emotional support will get me to the weight loss, that’s the best plan. She did give a shout-out, however, to the Zone Diet and the Mediterranean Diet. I’m going to check out the Zone book.

So that’s the plan. Exercise every day if possible.  Continue whatever diet feels the most do-able, but most definitely try to stay away from anything high carb. Check back in five weeks. I am actually very happy to have this five-week appointment because it gives me a target date. I want to have lost weight in five weeks. I want my numbers to be even better.

It took a few minutes for her to come in to the exam room, and while I was waiting I looked at this big DIABETES poster on the wall right next to me.  What are the results of untreated Diabetes 2? Heart attack! Stroke! Amputations! Blindness and neurological problems!!!  With nice illustrations for each! Oh, boy. Yeah, I do not want these things. I am going to walk/row/pedal my way away from that stuff and fast.

I feel like I’m in a good place right now. I feel like I can do it and it’s not painful.

Oh yeah, I am excited because Biggest Loser is on AGAIN tonight! I’d love it if they could do two one-hour shows every week.

And LOST! And Top Chef!!

2

Better! Better! Better!

I just got a call with my lab test results. It’s only been a month since my first wake-up call lab tests. And while my numbers are not IDEAL, they are much much much better.

I am particularly proud of my triglycerides. Normal is less than 150. A month ago, they measured 240. 😦 And yesterday, they were 185. I am so definitely moving in the right direction.

My blood sugar was 110.  Moving further and further away from that diagnosis, YAY. I feel confident that if I keep this up, my numbers will be absolutely, completely normal.

1

Scare Tactics

I love certain kinds of foods so much. Mostly carbs and dairy products. I could easily give up sugar, chocolate, alcohol, meat. But the combination of carbs and dairy – ie wheat and cheese – are like heroin to me. Macaroni and cheese. Grilled cheese. Quesadillas. Pizza. Any kind of bread-and-cheese combo is good. Potatoes and butter. And sour cream. Mmmmm.

I also love rice. My mother made steamed white rice nearly every day of my childhood, and continues now. It is hard to resist. How will I resist?

I’ll tell you how. I did not eat one simple carb today. I saw the bread sitting on the counter. I saw the rice cooker half full of rice, and the leftover phad thai in the refrigerator. How did I not even want to eat it? I scared the crap out of myself.

Everytime I looked at something that could possible raise my blood sugar at all, I visualized a needle. With insulin. Going into my soft, tender skin. When I felt the hint of a temptation, I raised the stakes and imagined amputated feet and legs. This was not hard because I used to be a physical therapist and was actually an expert at wrapping lower-extremity stumps. The cause for 99% of these amputations was diabetes. I could take it even further and visualize blindness, which is one of my greatest fears. I’d gladly give up my legs to save my eyes.

But hopefully if I can keep focused around these, none of these things will be realities in my life.

1

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