doctor visit

[ritaxis]

The good news first: the doctor's scale calibrates with mine: liver and kidney functions are good: HDL is good: LDL is good: blood pressure is good.

Bad news: triglyucerides and total lipids are pretty bad. Worse news (and not wholly unexpected, which is why I've been tryingto lower carbohydrates): I've got borderline diabetes measurements. Just over the edge, so we're going with higher dose of the statin, and diet adjustments.

I did this before, when I was pregnant and had gestational diabetes. The difference then was that I could use blood sugar measurements to gjuide my eating -- not eat until the number was low enough, and check the number later for information on how it was going. I did an excellent job of controlling it that way. I can't use that now because my blood sugar will not vary enough to be any use as a guide. I just have to follow a regime. I can't check how it's doing for three months at the minimum. The doctor was going to give me a six-month recheck but he said I could choose, and since it's hard for me to maintain my concentration on this kind of thing I think I'll go for the sooner measurement.

He also said that I could probably drink a tiny glass of wine every night and get to a point where I could drink it without getting all drunk and stuff. He thought it was likely the interaction of the buproprion and the gabapentin that made me so vulnerable. And he didn't even bat an eye when I described getting drunk by sitting around in a wine bar. I'm not sure I'm up to dealing with the initial phases of getting drunk all the time.

Also he thought the lightheadedness might easily be from drug interactions but as long as it's mild and I don't actually fall down it's up to me to decide whether I want to tolerate it or tweak my medicines or dosages.

Considering what happens with my various aches and pains when I don't get my prescriptions filled in time, I think maybe I'll live with it.

On another front: no writing today (yet), but I have been reworking the last chapter in my mind, figuring out which details are important to me and how they can be used. The smell of burned paper is important, even though my guy does not burn his sketchbooks. I think maybe he cuts out the most incriminating picture and burns it -- what would he think was most incriminating? Something that indicates a longing for the long haul, actually, probably, since his position is that he's accepted that he's the perpetually unsuitable lover, and is therefore not going to inflict himself on any more people. (the hidden agenda there is that he doesn't want to get dumped anymore, the coward) Of course, if he really accepted this, he wouldn't be avoiding relationships, because he would think that there were people who could only find their suitable mate by having gone through an unsuitable match with him. He toys with this, but I haven't developed that idea sufficiently: I think that's tweakable in the second draft. It's one of the things that leads my other guy to think he might be insane: since my guy is doing the whole avoidance thing and suddenly offers himself as a "temporary, unsuitable lover, destined to be dumped when my other guy realizes what exactly is unsuitable about my guy this time."

Comments

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

I was at the doctor's today too, and I also got medication tweaks and good news and bad news!!

The bad news is that (surprise!) my breathing is currently, erm, poor. And so prednisone. Boo, hiss! I can't WAIT for the side-effects.

The good news? My *sickly* pulmonary functions results were about unchanged from my *well* pulmonary functions results six months ago. So all of that exercising really IS expanding my capacity and improving functionality. Go me!

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Good news about your lungs! When mine were first kicked into autoimmune disease by general anesthesia, I took prednisone full time and it took more than a year to get off it once there were better meds for me. My big problem was that my jaw would get sore when I ate. Now I just get prednisone dosepaks when I'm wheezing.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

In a way, you're both lucky: prednisone is off the list of things I can have, because it causes me to have free-floating rage and insomnia. The last time I had predisone, it was driven into a joint with sonophoresis, and it still caused the free-floating rage. I was working with toddlers at the time, but I suspected it would be coming, so I didn't have any trouble controlling my behavior (the other times I snapped at the nice fellow a couple times before I figured it out, nothing terrible but I don't like it)

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Yikes! I know it does away with the fight or flight choice, which doesn't bother me since I try to make rational decisions in dangerous situations, but I hadn't heard of mood changes!

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

It's not even moods, really. I'm going around feeling normal, and all of a sudden there's this rage, which goes away again as fast as it comes on, and as far as I can tell, with no trigger. Then I go back to feeling normal, except for being kind of shaken by the moment of rage.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

That must be very scary. Sudden rage and then nothing. At least if you have to take the med, you know where it comes from.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I just don't take prednisone. I'd take it to save my life, or to combat serious illness, but not for anything less than that.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I get labs every two months, so I have a better idea what's going on. We seem to both be sliding over the edge into diabetes and I'm much larger than you are and have the renal disease to give a push. It doesn't seem fair, does it? We're careful about what we eat and the blood sugar is still over the edge.