fluffy rambles: The joys of being alive

The joys of being alive

August 15, 2023 6:39 PM (9 months ago)

So, yesterday I had my 6-month followup with the cardiologist regarding the heart-related stuff and got the usual litany of obnoxious hand-wringing around my labs (evne though they were now very out-of-date) and yet another lecture about lipids and triglycerides, which, yes, this is why I am seeing you. Meh.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that he did order new labs for me (which I have no issue with, of course, just with how he talked about ordering them), and this morning I figured I’d go get them done. And before doing them I figured I’d use my OTC blood glucose meter to get an idea of what to expect with the blood sugar results.

It came back with 296 mg/dL.

That is… high.

Anyway I started to worry that perhaps I was in a diabetic state (which Repatha can cause). I took a few more measurements to confirm, and emailed the cardiologist to say, hey, y'know those side effects I was complaining about? Uh, I might have another reason to get off the Repatha.

The lab happened to be in the same building as urgent care so I went to the lab, got my labwork done (after waiting an hour to be seen), then to urgent care, where I spent another 90 minutes waiting to be seen. The nurse did a glucose test on me, and it came back… 105 mg/dL. Which is pretty much normal.

So, either my glucose meter is wildly off, or all the time I spent waiting around while extremely hungry was enough to burn off a bunch of blood sugar. The first one makes much more sense.

Anyway, since the labs included blood sugar and A1C, it won’t be too long before I have a properly calibrated result that’s at the halfway point between my meter and the quick test the nurse gave me, and any indication of whether I actually have anything to worry about in terms of chronic blood sugar levels (per A1C).

My A1C has been pretty borderline for the last 10 years (always flip-flopping between being either just below or just above the arbitrary threshold that counts as “pre-diabetes”), and of course that’s another thing I keep getting a Fucking Lecture™ about, as if me being lectured about A1C levels will suddenly make them go down or something.

Oh, and bonus: getting lectured about how I need to calibrate my meter, but my meter not coming with calibration supplies, and also my meter is something I bought and paid for out-of-pocket because doctors don’t consider me to be diabetic enough to prescribe me one and suggest that I not have this tool for monitoring my blood sugar for some reason. But then also wanting me to be aware of the levels I’m at.

Anyway the cardiologist already replied to me with another lecture about my A1C levels and how I need to trust in the labwork and how it’s “highly unlikely” that Repatha is responsible for a blood sugar issue if I am actually having one (never mind that I always experience the uncommon side effects in medications and that lecturing me about blood sugar and triglycerides and A1C has no effect on those things, because you can’t fucking shame my body into being a functional piece of meat).

Fuck I hate dealing with doctors. Is it any wonder so many people give up on so-called “Western” medicine and go with dubious alternative courses of treatment?

So. I was going to work on music but now my left hand is turning arthritic, so, that’s another fun thing on top of my existing fun things. I swear, it’s a wonder I’ve made it this far in life.