The Bloody Truth

Hello again. Three weeks or so since I blogged last. Reasons for that are many and silly, but mostly bound up in a) weight gain, and b) arsery. Arsery which has seen me notsomuch fall off the wagon as leap off and burn the fucker to the ground.

Here's the thing though - that ends right now.

First thing's first, it's Tuesday. Ermmmm, last I recorded, I think I'd gone back up to 19 stone dead, or 266 pounds, which was irritating.

Following week I went up to 19 stone 1 pound.

Week after that, up again to 19 stone 2.25.
Clearly, there's drift going on, but given that I've done bog-all exercise and have been slugging and slothing my way through life for the past three weeks, it was going up alllllmost as slowly as it was previously coming off. But not quite, obviously.

Today, weighed in at 19 stone 2.25. Static from last week. Right now, I'll take that.

Now. Have been, as anyone who reads this will possibly remember, getting set up with the doctors in this area. Did the usual HBA1C blood test for long term blood sugars a few weeks ago. No sooner had I done it than they sent me a letter to say 'Balls. Need you to come and do that again.'

The image of course went through my mind of the diagnostic machinery going into overdrive, lights flashing, warning messages flashing, and then the whole kit and caboodle exploding in a puff of smoke when trying to process my blood. So I went and had it done again. Alllmost immediately the letter came back to say 'Yyyyeah, we can't afford to lose another machine. You need to get your ass in to see us, cos this shit ain't clever.'

Went today.

To explain the HBA1C, they like you to have a reading of under 50. I've previously managed under 50, but over the last few years, I've had a tendency, as the weight's crept back onto my bones, to hover in the low to mid-50s. Turns out last October, when we moved here, I had quite a bad result of 76.

Latest scoors on the doors? 117. One hundred. And then another 17. So, over twice what it should be.

#BadTony.

Badder Tony than the slow-ass drift of a pound a week here and there ever lets you know.

The nurse gave me a simple finger-pricking blood sugar test today. Again, in the UK, you're looking for numbers between about 6-8. Yyyyeah - 22.8. So - roughly three times what it should be.

'How are you not walking around with a huge dose of thrush?' she asked.
'Erm...should I be?'
'I'm surprised you're not, yeah,' she said, a touch too breezily for my liking.
'Oh, well, I won't panic when that happens then,' I muttered.
'I'm surprised your skin's not dreaful too,' she added.
'Oh it is, it's more or less turning to ash in the sun.'
'Aha!'
'We're happy about that, are we?'
'Visible symptoms,' she explained. 'Thing is, while your blood sugar's shot through the roof, your body's adapted to it quite well by the looks of things.'
'Thank you,' I said.
'But what we can't see is the untold damage it's doing to your systems inside,' she added.
'Oh.'
'First thing I'd be worried about is your heart.'
'Oh. I've already got an atrial fibrilation...thing going on,' I told her.
'I see that,' she agreed - I like to think she saw it in the notes on the screen in front of her, rather than being possessed of some weird and wonderful NHS juju that could let her spot fibrilation cases by eye.
'There are extra pills I can give you - we've got lots more stuff than we had even just five years ago,' she enthused. 'Weightloss injections and suchlike. The one I'd like to really get you on is for people with good kidneys. You have excellent kidneys.'
'I know,' I smarmed - back a decade or so ago, my mother, who at the time was more of a Tory, had shelled out to get me a BUPA head-to-toe check. They told me I had platinum-level kidneys. It's absurd, but it turns out my kidneys may be my best feature.
'The pill would let you use them to maximum efficience, so you'd pass the sugar out that way. Lose you about 300 calories a day. Also, your current pills aren't really touching the sides just now.'
I came clean that I'd been taking them with screaming irregularity pretty much since we got here - at first because there was a delay in registering and a month when I wouldn't have been able to get any prescriptions from them, and subsequently because I'd just gotten into bad pill-forgetting habits.
'Hmm,' she considered.  'Alright. Take your blood sugar measurements every morning. Some evenings too if you like, but essentially mornings. We'll see what you're like then. Oh and take the pills as prescribed, eh?'
'Will do,' I promised.

So, the stupid shit stops here and now. She gave me a testing machine to take away with me, so now I intend to bore you on a slightly more regular basis with measurements of blood sugar. Just because I can. More water, more walking, the bike is uncovered and just waiting for me. Less carb, less batter, less altogether stupid shit. The plan is to live here at the seaside. That means LIVING here at the seaside, and that in turn means doing what's necessary to stay alive as long as I can here at the seaside. So. Stupid macho posturing face on, and let's do this thing.

The False Hope Factory

Never, ever, ever, weigh-in the day before an official weigh-in.

Never.

Ever.

I did that yesterday.
I'm here to tell you, it's a crock, and it's made me Captain Crankypants today, ready to kick stones and break ankles and butt heads with everything and everybody in the world.

Yesterday - unofficial, just-for-laughs yesterday, I weighed in and saw my first 18 this year. 18 stone, 13.5.

This, mind you, was after a recumbent Easter - I'd spend Easter Saturday in Cardiff, sitting in a Starbucks, growing carbuncles on my ass, drinking big milky coffees and one ill-advised but delicious mocha frappucino. I ate chips that day too. And Easter Sunday involved a Sunday lunch out with the family, followed by a 'Oh go on then, seeing as it's Easter' dessert. So I rather expected to have put on when I weighed-in yesterday.

Zoiks - there's my 18. A loss of three-quarters of a pound which took me under the 19 stone barrier. All was light and joy and potential, hoorah - all I had to do to celebrate today was to maintain. I had a simple cereal dessert, a relatively straightforward Scotch Egg, and a small bowl of rice and beef.

Woke up this morning, did all my usual things, took a quick uphill walk to the doctors to sign some paperwork, came back, weighed in.

19 stone 1.25!

Up a pound from last week, I could understand. Up a pound and three-quarters since yesterday can get to all kinds of holy ungovernable fuck.

I'm off to the corner to kick pebbles and feel sorry for myself in a wanton display of 'No No, I'm FINE!' Syndrome.
Grr.

The Catchup Confusion and the GBL List

What ho, chaps and chapesses, as Bertie Wooster would probably say, were he a) not fictional and b) here today. And indeed, what ho to all my non-binary Mx's too, because why the devil not, eh?

Apologies - missed quite a few days of entries, including, least forgiveably, a weigh-in day. Irritatingly, the Nazi Scales on weigh-in day were, sahll we say, fairly non-binary themselves, inasmuch as whenever I stepped on them, they refused to settle on the same figure twice. I woke up and they told me I was 18st 3.5. Hung aorund a bit, went for a fairly considered pee, and they put me UP to 18st 4.75. A few hours later, having still neither consumed anything nor notably expelled any more, they had me down as 18st 3.

So, really, who knows? I'm going to go with the first number they thought of, and say that irritatingly, I was still 18st 3.5 on Tuesday.

Since then, they've been doing some fairly similar things, varying by up to two pounds depending on, for instance, which foot goes on them first. We may be due a battery change, but certainly the news is not what I'd call conspicuously good. It's been one of those 'chained to the desk' weeks, though I have been pretty good in terms of going, like an automaton, for my 10,000 step walk every night, come rain, wind, sleet, snow and frankly just having a laugh. Still haven't plugged either the exercise bike or the treadmill in, which can't possibly go on much longer. What needs to happen is another big push, another system shock - a couple of days of double-walking, maybe, just to wake up a system that's now expecting 10,000 steps a day. Hmm. Will try and restructure a couple of days this week.

Pal of mine had a talk with a bariatric specialist today, and aparently had the whole 'Welll, you could be dead in ten years' talk. Believe me when I tell you, that'll put some rocket fuel in your Disappearing ass. It was being almost begged to have the procedure because otherwise I could be dead in ten that made me first decide to try to Disappear. That was something mad like six years ago now. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Four years away from notional deadline, where the hell am I? I'm trying to do it again the non-surgical way, and I'm only really a couple of stones lighter than Zoiksy McLifeThreatening was, six years ago. Still, whichever way you go, this fight for health and social normalcy is a bastard, so at the risk of dissolving into crappy quotes, you've either got to get busy living or get busy dying.

Of course, being able to feel like you're living helps. I'm struck by the urge to whinge and moan about how actually little I've accomplished, and whenever that urge comes on me, my Inner Working Class Bastard slaps me silly. I have an urge to whinge about how I'm not a published novelist yet, which would feel like getting busy living, and my Inner Working Class Bastard gets up in my face to say 'Best fucking write then, hadn't ya?' - I have a novel that I think needs a tweak to its ending and maybe one more go-through, but instead of doing any of that and sending it out, I'm editing like a mad bastard. I have two separate people who've given me writing gigs on Who audio plays, and instead of doing either of them, I'm...editing like a bastard. Have a feeling soon there will be a chart in my life - a GBL chart, which, rather than seeing all these things I want to do as part of my ordinary To-Do List, and so, sort of turning them into chores to be done, will turn them into temporal rewards: edited like a mad bastard for a whole project? Right - send off the novel to five agents. No really, fuck you, this is what this time is to be used for. Ring the bell when it's done and go back to edit another project.

In terms of Disappearing, it's the well-known idea of effort and reward. Get under 18stone - take a day to write for yourself. Get to 17st 7, take the day to rearrange the bejesus out of your website. And so on.

Yes - I like this plan. A GBL List, to get more stuff actually DONE, in more areas of life, and feel more alive. Feeling more alive=a bigger incentive to put the work in to do more Disappearing, and so on.

Now excuse me, have to just go and edit like a bastard before taking my 10,000 step walk in the frozen pissing rain.

The Lone Arrhythmia

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it boys and girls?

First of all, let’s cop to this – I’ve been a complete hypocrite today.

Nono, I mean in addition to my usual hypocrisy. Thing is, I’m a socialist by inclination, and a liberal by nature, and I’m not remotely ashamed of either fact. I regard the National Health Service as one of the best ideas of the last hundred years, on a par with feminism and equality. The idea that no-one should die or suffer unduly for want of medical care or the money it takes to get it is, to me, a statement of political will for the benefit of everyone, something we barely recognise in this jaundiced, politically fuck-weary age.

I have a mother, though.

A Valleys mother, who is about as far from being a socialist as it’s possible to be while still recognising that UKIP is a party for Martians, and who, having worked for much of her adult life in the NHS, knows what’s what with its inner workings.

 After my recent double cardiac palaver, she called some people.

‘You’re seeing the cardiologist Wednesday,’ she said. ‘It’s all sorted. Shut up – you’re not waiting nine months.’

I pointed out that I was on the non-urgent waiting list, so clearly I didn’t need to see a cardiologist Wednesday, and that in any case, there’d be nothing he’d be able to tell me that we didn’t already know, because unless I presented with a chest cavity doing the rhumba, my heart seemed to function perfectly normally.

It was however forcibly impressed on me that I wasn’t so much going to see a cardiologist Wednesday for my peace of mind, as I was for hers.

You’d think that by the age of 43, I’d have worked a way around that one, but I haven’t – d can still do it to me too: by making me believe, however briefly, that the course she wants me to take is doing her a boon, she can make me take better care of myself:

‘You can’t possibly be warm enough.’

‘I’m fine, honey.’

‘Well here, take another blanket.’

‘I don’t need another blanket.’

‘You’re making me cold just looking at you. Take another blanket.’

‘Well, OK…’

Idiocy of the highest order, I know, but part of the desperate-to-please kernel of my character.

So anyway, I was going to see a cardiologist – privately (ptui!) – on Wednesday.

Today was Wednesday. I saw a cardiologist.

He was useful, in all fairness.

For the first time, I had an explanation from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Everything conceivable about my heart, it turns out, is just fine and dandy. Except I have a ‘lone’ Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation.

 ‘A lone one?’ I asked, trying not to smirk as the image of a heart with a mask on, riding a white horse into the distance took centre stage in my mind. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Means there’s no reason for it,’ he explained. ‘None at all as far as we can see. It’s just blech – a thing you have.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘T’riffic. So what happens now?’

‘Well, you’re on the Betablockers. The arrhythmia is one of those things that grows more and more dominant over time, until eventually it’ll be permanent.’

‘And what the hell happens then?’

‘Oh then, it’s just normal. With the Betablockers, you probably won’t feel it.’

‘O…k,’ I said.

‘The real danger is a stroke,’ he explained. This had been mentioned to me before: it’s why I’m taking the Betablockers. ‘You know what a stroke is, yes?’

I thought I did, but it turned out I didn’t, really.

‘In your case, what’s happening is that instead of the atria of your heart doing this-’  He squeezed both hands in a downward motion. ‘-they’re doing this.’ I swear as d is my witness, he did jazz hands.

‘I have a jazz heart,’ I muttered under his continued explanation.

‘What that means is that the blood that should be going from the atria to the ventricles is kind of sitting about getting bored. D’you know what happens when blood sits about getting bored?’

Monopoly? I thought, but didn’t quite say. Pizza Hut? Finally cracking open Game of Thrones, Season One? I dismissed the thought – if my blood was that bored, I think I’d probably be dead.

‘It clots,’ he said. ‘Which means when our atria finally stop doing this-’ – Jazz hands again – ‘-the clots go down into the ventricles, and then when the ventricles pump, the clots go out into the body. Now, they can go anywhere,’ he said, and I thought I know they can, I’ve seen House, ‘but if they go to the brain – that’s a stroke.’

I blinked for a second. ‘And that’s why I’m taking the Betablockers, yes?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re taking those to minimise the effect of the irregular rapid heartbeat.’

‘Right,’ I said, not following.

‘You need an anti-coagulant to stop the blood from clotting.’

I raised a hand. ‘Erm… I’m a klutz,’ I mentioned. ‘I bang into things pretty much all the time. I also have a close personal relationship with the floor. I fall over really more than you’d think was possible.’

‘I’d try to avoid doing that in future if I were you,’ he said, as though under the impression I had some say in the matter. He explained the joys of Warfarin to me, by the end of which, the best that could be said for the pain in the ass blood thinner was that it wouldn’t actively come and punch me in the balls when I wasn’t looking.

 ‘Or there’s this bright shiny new thing,’ he said, not in fact adding that I’ve taken a massive kickback from a pharma company to get you to be dependent on for the rest of your life. I swear I heard that in my heard though.  He explained it was virtually side effect free (if you didn’t count the potential to bleed out of every known orifice, and some places that are barely orifices, like my eyes), and that it didn’t carry the ass-pain burden of regular blood tests that Warfarin did, and that, best of all, I could continue to eat green vegetables on it.

‘Gee. Thanks,’ I may have actually muttered.

So as of tomorrow, my blood will be as thin as a politician’s promise. Should you punch me, I might fill up like a black pudding full of blood. Should you cut me, I will not only bleed over your ass, I will geyser like a Tarantino extra. I like to think of it as training to be Russian royalty (though I’m guessing that’ll be an allusion that’s lost on some of you?)

‘Plus,’ he added, enthusing like he was going after his bonus, ‘the really good thing about this new drug is that there’s far less likelihood of it causing a haemorrhage.’

‘A what-now?’

‘Well…’ he said. ‘It’s blood, you see. If it clots, you can get a stroke. If it’s too thin, you get the risk of haemorrhages.’

‘Brain…haemorrhages?’

 ‘Well, haemorrhages anywhere, really, but yes, brain haemorrhages tend to be game over. But you sort of have to decide what you’re more scared of, strokes or haemorrhages.’

‘Ah,’ I said.

‘But I can’t make the choice for you,’ he said, smiling and sitting back, knowing he’d made a sale.

Still, at least my impatient relative is happy. Disappearing-wise, have walked round the lake several times today (five, I think, though to be honest, the revolutions really do tend to blend into one) and have walked 8800 steps, amounting to 592 calories. Foodwise, have had a McDonalds porridge and an apple. Will be getting on the bike after dinner – oh yeah, Heart-Boy also confirmed the earlier GP assessment – all sorts of moderate exercise, good and groovy. Insanity – hell no!

‘Overexertion could trigger the fibrillation,’ he said.

‘But I’ve only ever once had an event after exertion,’ I explained. ‘The rest of the time it’s been walking into places. Walking through places. Sitting on a tube. Walking out of places. Bending slightly over.’

‘I know,’ he said, smiling enigmatically at me. ‘No real cause, but you might as well avoid the risk.’

‘But-’

‘Solo,’ he said, nodding. ‘On its own. Without cause.’ I swear he shrugged.

Normally, when you go to a specialist, you expect to understand your condition more thoroughly and draw comfort from it. And to give him his due, I feel I know more about the thing, and if anything it’s given me a sense of fatalism – there are risks of heart attack, risks of stroke, now, apparently, risks of brain haemorrhage, but essentially, the fibrillation will get more and more, and eventually, it’ll just be my own little bucking bronco, Hi Ho Silvering away inside my chest – but for the most part, I’ll neither know about it nor care. This is what we call a pathway.

Oh and finally, one little tip for any fellow socialists. Pay. But pay once – my next appointment with this consultant will now be on the NHS, but if I have any issues with the medication, I’ve got a named consultant, and can go and see him. It’s evil that we should have to do this kind of thing, but if you pay once, it sort of works to get you eventually the sort of treatment on the NHS that you should be able to get without paying at all.

Fight the power, comrades! Or, if you can't fight it, at least sidle up to it slyly and kick it in the shins.

The Day of the Doctor

Weighing in public - yay!

Had a letter last week from my doctor's office. Well, I say my doctor's office, it's kind of like a roulette at the moment - the doctor who was my doctor is currently off long term sick, so the last twice I've been, I saw some guy who mumbled and really just wanted to shoot all his patients, and some locum guy who didn't understand why I was there, but saw I was diabetic and ordered me to have a blood test I'd had not long before. I had it.

The letter was one of those two-line jobs - 'come and discuss your blood results.'
Always fun, those letters.

Deciding I was done with Wheel of Healthcare, I booked to see a named doctor who I'd never seen before, so this morning, having walked round the lake about five times, I dropped in to get what I assumed would be a ticking off about my cholesterol level - which has been up a whopping 0.1 percent the last twice I've taken this test (and yes, that's how it feels - like an exam it's up to me and my blood to pass).

But no.

Turns out this was a whole different thing. My diabetic control's not as good as it has been, apparently. Well no shit, Sherlock, I've put on nearly 5 stone. But the doc was cool - I told him I'd started Disappearing again, having done it once before.
'What went wrong?' he asked.
'I came home, and now I work from there.'
'Ah,' he said, nodding sagely. 'Sitting on your bum, with access to all the biscuits in the world.'
'Bingo,' I agreed.
He said if I was Disappearing again, there was buggerall else he needed from me at the moment, though he did suggest I weigh right there.
I was emptying pockets like Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor when he said 'Ach, just take off three kilos for your clothes and shoes and stuff.'
Alrighty.
He reeled off a number in kilos.
'What's that in Old?' I asked.
'About 19 stone 1,' he breezed, casually destroying my hopes and dreams.
'And minus the three kilos?'
'About 18 and a half,' he said.
I nearly choked. I should be so lucky as to have clothes that heavy! Mind you, I took some comfort that the 19st 1 was in clothes and shoes.

He also gave me a proper heads-up on what I should and shouldn't be doing.
Walking, any distance - fine.
Biking, regular - fine.
Biking, Insanity Principle?
I saw him blanch at the question. 'Errr, quite a bit less than fine,' he said. 'Don't do that, your heart'll go nuts.'

Check. Strictly sane exercising from now on.

The doctor was a particular delight because, as I say, of late my experience with GPs has not been great. So it was good to find one I could not only have a conversation with, but who appeared to have read my notes in advance of the meeting - he knew about the heart malarkey, and was reassuring about it. All in all, haven't left a doctor's appointment feeling quite so positive in a long while.

Now we'll see what happens with the other two such appointments I have this week - Diabetic review on the one hand, and Cardiology on the other. Fun fun fun.

Went out for a light-ish lunch later - scrambled egg on two rounds of toast - and by 4pm was barely conscious. Went to take a nap at 5, thinking 'Oh so that's what he means by the diabetic control being out of whack.' All of which is fine but it's rather knackered my schedule for the evening - as I write this, it's 8.15, and I have yet to get on the bike, which, the night before weigh-in, I am loath to let slide. Dinner will be happening sooner than that, but it's one of those marks of discipline that I not only want to get on the bike, but absolutely will do, before I next go to bed.

But the lesson of the day seems to be 'Named Doctor Good.' So that's a lesson learned for the future.

Right - to dinner, to bike for strictly sane pedalling off of ass, to probably more snoring before it all starts again with walking and weighing-in tomorrow.