Off With A Bang Or A Honk Or Something...

I feel like a creep starting a blog and pecking away like I don't have an inbox at GMail that's looking mighty populated and a message file at Facebook that's getting pretty chubby. If I owe you email, snail mail, a phone call, compost or a blood sample, please be patient. I've spent the last few weeks getting my sea-legs, no, make that D-legs so that things can get back to normal.

Here's the short version: I had been feeling really cruddy for six months and reached the point where my main occupation when not working was sleeping. I finally went to the doctor. I have hypertension and diabetes.

Here's the digest (and yet still longish) edition for those of you who don't read my main blog, "Confessions of a Cheese Grits Fiend": It started with an abscessed tooth. I went to the dentist who agreed that it needed to come out. After taking my blood pressure, he told me he couldn't touch my mouth again until I'd gotten it under control. Repeated readings on his and a borrowed BP cuff showed that it was 191 over 74. Scary.

I made an appointment to see my GP who rightfully tsk-tsked the lack of attention I had been giving my health care and ordered a blood workup during the next visit and recommended a 2D echocardiogram of my heart.

You know how you can get so used to things being a certain way that even if the situation is less than good, it's still familiar and you're used to it so it's okay? That's where I was. My weight was higher than it had ever been, when I wasn't working I was sleeping, I felt horrible. My emotional state had gotten as low as my physical state and writing and creating art was pretty close to impossible. The blood test she took during my second visit showed that my FBS (Fasting Blood Sugar for those of you playing at home) was 258. Before we even addressed the blood sugar issue, she scheduled another appointment and after that put me on a BP med to get it out of the scary range.

Medication ads always have a block of tiny print at the bottom while the VO actor quickly runs through the risks and side-effects. Pay attention to those. I knew my med could cause dizziness and constipation, but it wasn't until I did some homework that I found out it could also cause a severe depressive reaction in some people.* The day before my birthday, I took my BP med and spent the rest of that Friday cold and nauseated. My BP, probably my blood sugar and everything else just dropped. I felt like I was alternately being dipped in ice water and a hot tub. By that evening, I just wanted to not ever have to deal with life and the thought of erasing any trace of myself online and in my immediate local life popped into my head the way walking the dog or doing the laundry or any other chore would have occurred to me if I wasn't sick. I deleted logins, said goodbye to the world on my blog and contemplated piling up every piece of art I'd made and burning it. The next day, I felt better and very stupid. I have never been intoxicated, but I have friends who, during that state have confessed their undying love to people, thrown up in public and danced shirtless at too-public parts of Memphis State University's campus at wee hours of the am. The next day they always looked like they were contemplating a transfer to Ole Miss or UT or the closest monastic religious community. That was kind of how I felt the next day.

So Doctor W. put me on another BP med, took another blood sample and then determined that I was a diabetic. My FBS was 230. Still too high. We sat down for The Talk and she loaded me up with pamphlets, a folder full of information about "taking control" from Bayer, a meter and a box of test strips. The Talk consisted of things like not wearing constrictive clothing, being careful of extremes in temperature due to nerve damage, how serious diabetes is and what my options were at that point. She mentioned surgery for weight loss. I told her I'd rather not do that unless she thought things were so bad there was no time for me to lose weight and possibly get things in control. She seemed relived and a little surprised.

"I think you can do it," she said, "but a lot of people talk about losing weight, eating right and doing what they should but then they never actually follow through. Let's see how things go."

So that's where I was on October 15th.

Coming up next: Shut Up Bitch! No, Not You, I'm Talking To My BG Meter!




*I'm not going to name the med because 1.) I don't want to get sued and 2.) having looked at fora for people with hypertension, I've noticed that many are resistant to taking their meds, losing weight and doing what they're supposed to do. If this med could save someone else's life, I don't want to give them a reason not to take it.


copyright 2008 jas faulkner