Lucky number thirteen

I started out my day with going to get some lab work done at Kaiser since the neurologist wanted to run more tests on me.  I'm so glad she's being thorough because then we can rule out absolutely everything and (hopefully) just leave me with a diagnosis of fatigue.  When I went to the lab, I was so busy chatting with the person drawing my blood that I wasn't paying attention to how many empty tubes she was pulling out that would be filled.  I looked down to the spot where she placed them and did a double-take ... there were thirteen vials laid out in front of me.  Good Lord, thirteen!  It's a good thing I brought an Optifast bar with me and put it on my purse to have on the way into the office.  I've never had that much blood drawn at once.  The test results are starting to come in through my Kaiser account online.  Most of the results are things I don't understand, but I know they'll be contacting me soon once everything is back.

Speaking of Optifast, it has been a nice adjustment switching from the 70 to the 800 product.  One of the things that is interesting to me is now I understand why they don't allow diabetics to be on the 800 ... it will raise your blood sugar and if your diabetes is not under control, that can spell disaster.  I was looking on the package and the carbs are twice what they are in the 70, same thing for calories.  Given that I suffered with out of control diabetes for twelve years, my first response to seeing the amount of carbs on the box was, "Oh no, my blood sugar is gonna be high."  Never mind the fact that I no longer have diabetes, strange that that was my first reaction, isn't it?  I did check my blood sugar and it was 82, even after I had one of the bars.  I am perfectly fine, although I think it's going to take awhile for me to convince myself of that truth.  It's a work in progress, though.  The normal blood sugar level is 80-120 when you haven't had any food in your system for two hours (I believe it is).  It's even higher when you've had food, I think up to 140 or 160, something like that.  Mine was 82 even after having a product with carbs in it.   It's just a weird thing.

I saw a dermatologist today and she looked at my legs to see how things were healing after being given the topical cream.  Given my history of melanoma, she did offer to biopsy my legs.  Since she feels that, given the look of them, they don't appear to be cancerous and that I'm healing, we decided to wait on doing the tissue biopsy.  I've never seen this particular dermatologist before but I noticed that she was looking at me strangely, but I couldn't place why.  I asked her about the hair loss I have been experiencing and if there's anything I could do about it.  Sometimes people do lose hair while on low calorie eating plans.  So when I was talking to her about the fact that I've lost almost 190 pounds since the beginning of February, she then explained why she was staring at me funny.  In my chart, I am labeled as Super Morbidly Obese.  Isn't that absolutely lovely?  Here comes Kathy, the Super Morbidly Obese woman.  She admitted that she was looking at me funny  because she was wondering how I could possibly fit in that category since I'm "so small".  I am finding that at almost every turn, I am having to deal with living life now out of the 417-pound body, as strange as it is to me most of the time, let alone someone else.  I'm no longer Super Morbidly Obese.  No longer a diabetic.  No longer do I have hypertension.  No longer do I have high cholesterol.  Wow.  All I can say to that is wow. 

Last night I started taking the new medications that are supposed to help with my pain before I went to bed.  Since two of the pills will make me drowsy, the doctor advised me to not wait too close to bedtime before I take the pills otherwise I will be absolutely exhausted in the morning.  I ended up sleeping about 6 hours, got up about halfway through but then went back to bed.  However, she was absolutely right about the grogginess ... I was beyond exhausted today.  Driving in the car was a struggle and staying awake in my class tonight was a challenge!  I was taking notes and I could feel my head bobbing forward every few seconds, as if I was nodding off.  Of course, my professor picks tonight to be long-winded.  So, as soon as I came home from class tonight, I popped the pills so I'm hoping it will be early enough where I won't be dragging tomorrow.  It's absolutely dangerous to be that tired, especially getting behind the wheel of a car.  I don't want to jeopardize anyone's life while on the road. 

Thanks to those of you who have reached out to me in your support of the medical stuff I am going through right now.  There are times when I'm a bit hesitant to post all of what's going on with me in terms of the medical stuff because I just don't want to be a downer.  Yet, it's important that I talk about what's going on because these are things I'm going through and I don't want to eat over them.  I know you all support me, just as I support you.  Writing about them and sharing them with all of you is such a release for me and I'm hoping other people can relate to the challenges I'm facing right now on some level.  Not feeling well can be very frustrating, causing anger, resentment and even some sadness.  I think my struggle is that I just want to find out what's wrong with me and move forward with some sort of treatment plan that feels like something is being done.  The not knowing is driving me nuts, although I am doing better tonight.  I will know something soon I'm sure.