when we last left our intrepid heroes....
Ahem. Anyway.
The last Friday of February I was scheduled to go in for my follow-up appointment to get my A1C checked, to see if any adjustments needed to be made to my meds, etc. It was a pretty standard follow up, with nothing out of the ordinary expected -- but it had been delayed by about two months due to various reasons, primarily that there were no appointments available on Friday mornings right when I'd get off work.
When negotiating my schedule with my superiors waaaaay back when we first went work from home, I made sure to keep my Fridays off, as those were the days that we saved for doctor/dentist appointments and the like, and Friday nights are the nights that Daisy and I generally schedule events and/or have things to do (though more often than not, we just stay home). Saturdays are our "day together," and generally we don't/can't do doctor appointments on Saturdays -- though we do almost always do our eye appointments on Saturday afternoons. Were I to try to schedule doctor appointments any other day/time of the week, I'd either lose sleep or I'd have to take time off work because, well, I wouldn't be able to sleep during the day and thus would not be able to stay up and work all night (remember this, it'll come back later in this story).
So, it had been eight months since I'd last visited my doctor for any kind of bloodwork. In between the last visit, I had:
- Gone to and from Canada and Maine for an extended trip, and had eaten very poorly/whatever I could get there that was quasi-or-actually-vegetarian and would fill my stomach (read: lots of energy drinks, Tim Horton's coffee, poutine, sandwiches, and ketchup/all-dressed chips)
- Gone to and from Chicago and had eaten extremely unhealthily while I was there
- Had two major holidays where food was a big focus -- three if you count New Year's, and four if you count the Super Bowl
I was not expecting my numbers to be good, but I had also been slowly, continually losing weight throughout this entire time. Part of that was that I was making conscious changes to my diet -- over the past few months, for example, I have tried to greatly lessen my caffeine intake and up my water intake to replace it and keep myself hydrated more. Most of the time, outside of special occasions and travel, I don't eat a whole lot, and I am relatively conscious as to what I'm putting into my body.
However, I wasn't eating salads every day like I had been at the time of my last doctor's visit, I hadn't been eating a ton of steamed vegetables like I had before the last doctor's visit, and we had been ordering in a lot and making/eating a ton of convenience foods, getting pizza or Indian food delivered, etc. I'd gone to the gym once since the last visit to my doctor and I had not been doing any home exercise at all. I was, and had been, sleeping more and sleeping better, though.
I'm saying all this because, again, I did not expect my numbers to be great, or even good.
The doctor's visit was pretty good, standard procedure, etc. Our doctor knew we'd had Covid (because, of course, he'd called in the Paxlovid for us) and we were delighted to tell him we were now over it and testing negative. I got a few vials of blood taken from me without fainting, and we had a good chat about what I should and shouldn't be eating, and how much/little of those things I could allow myself. He gave me some exercise goals, some competitive things we could do together as a couple to keep it interesting (exercise-wise anyway) and then he sent me on my way. I didn't think much of it; I came home and went to sleep for the day, Daisy went to work, etc.
And then by the end of the weekend, the results came.
My A1C had gone from a well-managed 6.7 to 8.2. All of my other numbers were elevated, some of them through the roof -- like my cholesterol and triglycerides. About the only good numbers I had were my blood pressure, which was 116/76.
Still, when your doctor tells you that your blood is basically gravy, that's never a good thing.
I was not happy with the results, obviously. My doctor, who had requested I go on statins before for my cholesterol, was pretty much like "yeah, you need to be on these now" and also called in a prescription for some weekly injectable diabetes drug -- like, I'd jab myself with it at home once a week. I was not a fan of that idea, and countered by asking why we weren't just upping my Metformin dosage, which I am on the lowest dose of currently. He relented and doubled the dose of my Metformin instead, but also reiterated that he wanted me on the statins and that he wanted me in for another nurse visit blood draw in six weeks. That appointment was set, later, for late April.
In the time since, I have procured the statins and have indeed doubled the dose of my Metformin, per doctor's orders, and have had zero side effects or any perceived "issues" with the medication. But I'll get to that more below.
Anyway, at the time I was pretty distraught and vocalized that to Daisy. It's like over the past 2-3 years, my health has absolutely gone to shit. If my A1C is going to go up that much with medication, what's the point of even taking it? It's apparently not working that well. How could I have such high cholesterol, especially when I'm a vegetarian and eat so very little of anything with cholesterol in it? I never had any sort of cholesterol problem before, and -- I will add -- I am still losing weight, slowly. How can all of these things affect me this badly, yet my blood pressure is nearly perfect? None of it makes any sense to me. It's like my body is staging a revolt to make me hate myself.
When we were in the doctor's office, he asked me what my weight was and what my weight loss goal was overall. I told him I hover around 325 to 335 depending on the week, but that's down from 376 five years ago. My goal is to get below 300 for the first time in over a decade. Just two weeks ago, I hit my lowest weight in a very long time, and that was 324.
"Yeah, how about we shoot for 200?" he said.
I think my bones alone weigh 200, was the first thing that came to mind.
Bless my poor middle aged doctor's heart, but there is no way I'll ever be 200 pounds. I haven't weighed 200 since I was in middle school. I would be a goddamn skeleton. I'd look like a cancer victim. I was 300-320 in high school and college. 200 is not feasible. Even 250 would be pushing it. 265-270 is the lowest weight I've ever had in my adult life, around 2008-09. I've lost over 50 pounds in the past five years and that seems to be a trend that's continuing.
In 2008-09, when I was my lightest weight, I was also working a manual labor job, walking or biking to and from work every day I could (a six-mile round trip), and my weight loss was helped by drinking at least one full pot of coffee a day and smoking a pack a day. I was also poor, and couldn't afford the kind of food that I can now afford easily. So, I mean, having some money now, a wife who is an amazing cook, and being able to live in a big city with a lot of food choices and varieties is really what's keeping me down -- as is the rise of food delivery services like GrubHub and UberEats, and just plain old grocery store deliveries. I can have anything I want to eat dropped off on my doorstep in less than an hour at almost any time of day or night (well, usually not the overnight, but you get the idea).
I vowed to get a "back to basics" attitude when it came to my health and to seriously attempt to move and exercise more, get back to the salads and steamed vegetables and occasional soups, cut most bread back out of my diet in favor of low-carb wraps (or just nothing bread-based at all), and to continue drinking as much water as possible while still lowering my caffeine intake. High protein, low carb, lots of vegetables, lots of fiber, watch for the non-vegan foods (like cheeses and stuff of that nature) that would contain cholesterol, and more than anything else, try to remain pretty consistent across the board with all of it.
To those ends, it was still pretty cold outside at the time, so I pulled up some exercise videos on YouTube on the big TV in the living room, and followed along with them. The first night of doing this sucked, but the second night was better, even though I noticed at the end of it that I was developing back pain.
Back pain is nothing new for me. I'm old and I've been fat all my life, and I was attempting to get up and be active after a long period of not being active and not exercising (read: the pandemic). I didn't think much of it and took some ibuprofen, and it eventually went away.
Later that night, I went to the bathroom to pee, and it was...darker than normal? Tinged with a little red, maybe orange. I felt fine, but that was a bit concerning to me. I drank a lot more water, thinking I was likely dehydrated, and it went back to the normal mostly-clear, lightly yellow that I'm used to.
The next day, the back pain was back, except it was higher in the back than it normally was, and isolated to one side. The darker pee was back too and looked, well, more red. Like blood. I told Daisy that morning that I thought I had a UTI or something along those lines, maybe a kidney infection, and if it got worse, yeah, we'd need to go to the doctor because I was becoming really concerned.
This was March 1. Only four or five days after I'd been to the doctor previously for my A1C and normal checkup.
What followed over the course of the next few days was nothing short of a legitimate nightmare, and deserves to be chronicled in its entirety in its own entry. Stay tuned for Part III.
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