I know I’ve been sharing a lot of my writing lately, which I hope you are enjoying. It also seems I’ve been like a “broken record” playing “Whoa is me!” in almost every other post I’ve made: with my fall, stomach “bug”, self-inflicted back irritation, and yet another cold/virus setting in on me. But it occurred to me that I had forgotten to post an update from my last doctor visit/on my health, which I said I would do. So, let’s change gears a bit for a post or two and get away from haiku and poems and injury and illness and such and on to the update, shall we? Okay, then, here we go!
To begin with, in my last post, written while in the waiting room at my primary care provider’s office, I wrote a haiku about her/their new policy; I know, I said no more poem-stuff in this post but this is pertinent. Well, I was a bit hasty in my skepticism (read the post linked in the first sentence of this paragraph if you want to know more): my wait time was less than five minutes from my appointment time. It seemed longer because I arrived early due to the new no-late-arrivals policy, but it really wasn’t. Now that I have made amends (with myself if no one else) on that jumped to conclusion- on to the results!
As I expected I had gained a few pounds back; I don’t recall the number but it was within a pound or two of what I figured: that was okay news. The good part was about to be revealed; my nurse wouldn’t tell me anything, purposefully playfully toying with me , except that she was printing something out for the PCP to show me. Well, this was not what I was expecting; I figured that, along with my weight, my other numbers had gone up. The wait to find out what this good news could be was almost unbearable – for the entire five minutes I had to wait!
When my PCP came in the exam room she was all smiles, holding a set of printouts in one hand and her tablet in the other. Brimming over with pride for me, she handed me the printout of my lab work and began to explain it; many of the numbers I knew and understood but some I wasn’t too familiar with. All of my numbers had improved again, even my A1C had dropped a bit more, bringing it down to 5.1! And while a few results are still not quite where they need to be, all showed significant improvement and should, she said, continue to normalize as my body keeps adjusting to its new regiment.
Part of the reason I had been concerned with my labs not being as good as they had been, let alone dropping and improving further, is that I’ve released some of the tension of the “stranglehold” I’d put on my diet. When I first learned of my disease I knew I had to make dramatic changes to gt it under control. But these changes were so dramatic I was having a hard time staying within my self-set parameters all the time. I finally realized this is not a diet I’m on but a total lifestyle change and in order to stay with that change I would need to adjust my parameters to ones that I could live with day in, day out, for the rest of my life. And apparently the modifications were not too liberal as I had feared.
If it’s The Lord’s will, I have a lot longer on this “road of life” I’m on. And I know full well that there will be plenty more potholes and detours to avoid or take. But with His grace and leading I’m confident we, He and I, can navigate through it, though the bumps and lumps will inevitably still be there along the way.
Potholes in the Road of Life 