2 months down, only an infinity to go (hopefully)

No info today, but I had my blood tests and doctor visit today.  At this point, I’m loving Kaiser.  I take my blood tests Saturday morning, and they’re available online Saturday night for me to look at online with information on what each test means.  Pure awesomeness.  My A1C, which is a measure of my blood sugar over the coarse of 3 months was a little high, 8.6 on a scale of 15.  The norm is 4-6.  However, the good news to that is that 2 of the 3 months was before I was on medication and was a measurement of my nasty, McDonaldsesque blood.  So, overall not too bad.  The lipid panel was insanely low.  The lipid panel measures my cholesterol and breaks it down into the different types.  My overall dropped from a 206 to 86, my Triglycerides dropped from 255 to 55, and my LDL dropped from from 106 to 38.  Great, great, great.  However, interestingly enough, my doctor told me that those might actually be too low and it might be time to adjust my medication (YES!).  Overall, he was impressed and happy that there had been such good changes.  The only downside is that my morning blood sugars seem to be a little high, and it needs to be under better control.

The other thing that my doctor confirmed for me is that this isn’t my fault.  In the plainest of terms, I was dealt a genetic bad hand.  For the past 3 months I’ve been blaming myself and my diet, thinking that I caused all of this.  Today, he confirmed for me that that’s just not the case.  There are many people who are in much worse shape than I, and their hearts are doing just fine.  For some reason, my body is extremely sensitive to these fluctuations and I need to monitor it closely if I want a long life.  This revelation all came about because I asked him if I could get a time table for getting off my medication.  My though process was, “what’s the point of working this hard at my diet and exercise if I’m going to be stuck taking medication anyways?  I might as well eat what I was eating before!!!”  He then told me that I will probably never be off my medication…ouch.  In his words, my diet and exercise will keep me healthy and safe, but the medication will greatly help my situation, especially since many of my problems are heart related.  I think what I realized was, things could get much, much worse for me if I’m not proactive about my lifestyle, and pills will be the least of my worries if I’m not careful.

Overall, it was a good visit.  Cardiologist comes up on the 10th of March.  I am hoping that at some point they’ll at least taking me off the cholesterol medicine.  The less things I have to swallow, the better off I’ll feel.