Yesterday I got some pretty good news, but I'd already set my heart on making fun of Elon Musk some more, so I put the good news off until tonight. I'd already read the articles I was going to use as a source, anyway, and I didn't want to forget it, which I would if I didn't get it down last night. But there's good news!
I'm trending in the right direction. Yesterday I visited my primary doctor and discovered that my suspicion was correct. I did, indeed, put more weight on! My jeans are still loose on me. I suffer from Nobuttatal, so the seat of my pants always sags. But I can still pull the waist away from my belly pretty far, and I'm back to the final hole on my belt. I currently weigh in at 235 lbs. It was 222 when I left the hospital. Schwarzenegger says that the reason weight is so easy to put back on after taking so much off is because the body hungers to be whole again. My body is snapping back pretty fast.
Not only that, but it's been more than a week since I had bloody stools, and my blood test yesterday morning confirms that my blood count is picking up again. The lowest it was at was 7 out of 13, which is the exact point one needs a transfusion. When I left the hospital last it was 7.5. Now it's almost 9, so I'm not out of the woods, but I'm in much better shape than I was in after the horrorshow hospital visit.
So I followed up with my GI doctor later yesterday afternoon, and he says right now all we can do is observe and hope that my usual illness doesn't come back, and that my stools continue to look normal. If my blood count drops again, he wants to redo the colonoscopy. I really don't want it to come down to that, so I hope when we test my blood again in August that the trend will continue.
Near the end of the appointment my GI doc asked me an odd question: "When did they take you off your diabetes meds?"
A hospitalist did that. She said to continue with both insulin pens, but to stop metformin and glimepiride, my two oral 'Beetus meds. She said, and I quote, "I don't want that kind of chaos in your blood right now."
The reason he asked, it turned out, was because side effects of both drugs could cause the symptoms I was feeling whenever my usual illness took me over. I tried thinking back, and I'm pretty sure that I never had this illness before I was diagnosed with diabetes. With that diagnosis I was prescribed both of those drugs. Is it possible that my usual illness is caused by the side effects of these drugs, and no one thought to investigate that?
I went a year and a half without getting that sickness, and I thought it was because I'd quit drinking. But maybe, just maybe, it was caused by these two drugs this whole time. The only way to know for sure is if I get sick again. We'll have to see.
Just to keep me honest, when I wrote that paragraph my lizard brain whispered to me, "See? It was never the booze. Let's celebrate! Go to Williams Liquors and treat yourself!" Yeah, maybe, but even if the sickness was never caused by the liquor, I still had a pretty bad problem, and I was pretty clueless about it despite everyone's best efforts. I'm a fairly smart person. I'm not a genius, but I'm smarter than the avera . . . oh no! Whatever that word is that I pondered last night? The one I want to apply to Elon Musk? OH DEAR GOD, IT CAN BE APPLIED TO ME, TOO!!!!!!
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