Take my mind and take my pain

I visited the doctor last week.  The shortest version of this post is this:

I'm healing

Obviously that doesn't cover everything, so let me dig a little deeper.  This started with my 6 month lab work.  My main focus was on my diabetes.  My A1C last time was 6.7.   My goal is to get that as low as possible, but that isn't a bad number.  If it goes much higher, I'd have to add a different medication... and adding medication is the road to adding insulin.

NO NO NO

Thankfully my A1C was at 6.8.  That's a good number and according to the doc, one worth holding pat on.  There were two alarming numbers in my lab work though.  My cholesterol and my microalbumin. I'm sure I don't have to go into what cholesterol is, but let me say that it's broken up into four numbers.  Total Choletserol, Triglycerides, LDL, and HDL.  You want Total Cholesterol, Triglycerides, and LDL to be as low as possible while you want your HDL to be high.  Now I've been taking fish oil capsules twice a day for about a year now as that raises HDL, but it doesn't do a damned thing for the other three numbers.  My last lab results showed that I was 'borderline high' on all of three bad numbers while my HDL was in the 'good' range.


Well something happened over the last 6 months that took my borderline high numbers to 'oh fuck, you're going to die' area.  Not really die, but really bad numbers.  We discussed my diet (the easiest way to change your cholesterol), and both of us agreed that I should continue focusing my diet on controlling the diabetes.  So I've now added a drug to help with my cholesterol.  I don't really have an opinion on which drug to go on, and the doc seemed to like Lipitor (generically named atorvastatin).  I'm on a low dose of it for now just to see how I react.  More than likely it won't do enough and we'll see no side effects.  If that's the case then we'll start upping the dose until we get the numbers we want.  The bad side of Lipitor is that it can elevate both blood pressure AND blood sugar.

Yeah.

My A1C will probably rise up.  The doc says we can look at how to counteract it once we see how much it rises.  The blood pressure is a little more problematic.  I was borderline high the first time I saw the doc.  My systolic blood pressures (the high number in the standard 120/80 format) were in the high 130s to low 140s.  The medicine the doc put me on for my migraines though (propranolol) brought that down to the low 130s, so we  just considered that a bonus.  Sadly we can't just up the propranolol dose as we're already at the high end of the migraine dosing and it's just not a great blood pressure medicine.  So I'm also on a very low dose of lisinopril just to make sure my blood pressure doesn't go back up to the low 140s.  More than likely it will stay the same.

Yes, I now have medicines to counteract the other medicines I take.

Speaking of blood pressure.  My older brother R went into the hospital about a week ago.  He had been experiencing abdominal pain for awhile.  It was manageable for awhile, but it just got bad enough that he went in to get checked out.  While he does have insurance, he has not yet set up an appointment with a doctor so his first stop was one of the local aid stations.  Medi-clinic type things.  The nurse practitioner did an exam and when she palpated R's upper right abdomen it felt like she broke something.  When she saw the type of pain he was in she told him to go to the ER.

That's not a good place to experience pain.   That's your liver.  You don't fuck around with your liver.  After some blood work and some scanning, they found out that R had some major gall stones.   Now pain can certainly raise your BP... but only by so much and it's often temporary even if the pain isn't.  R's BP was 205/120.  That's not just bad, that's "HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU ARE GOING TO STROKE OUT" type bad.

I won't go into all the details, but R was in the hospital for just under a week.  He had his gallbladder removed and is now on a large daily dose of lisinopril.  The dose he's on only takes him down to the 150/90 range though... so he still has to go see his doctor to get it better managed.  Oh, and that entire week I was spending almost all of my spare time up at the hospital with him.

OK, back to me.

I figured as long as I was at the doctor's office, I needed to come clean about my depression.  As I mentioned in my last post, I don't feel this is just a passing mood.  It's lasting too long.  It's not grief or mourning or sadness.  It's depression.  He immediately agreed with me.  We decided to go ahead and get on a dose of Wellbutrin (bupropion).  It's the same med I took last year in an attempt to quit smoking.  The advantage is that since I've been on the med before I know what I can look forward to.  I didn't experience any side effects, but I did experience an almost total elimination of 'sad' feelings.  I was still able to be happy, just not sad.  If this works out as I expect I should start feeling it in about a week (I've been taking it for a couple days now).  It will chip away at my 'low' feelings.  The sadness, the desolation, the isolation.  I should regain my ability to feel happiness and joy again.  If it doesn't start showing positive signs, we can up the dose.

I'll tell you one immediate thing I've felt is relief.  I don't think this has anything to do with the meds.  Instead it's the first time I've told someone that I was depressed.  I had a medical professional listen to me and agree that I shouldn't be feeling that way.  I've told some online people about my depression and they were kind... but I knew deep down that there was nothing they could do.  They couldn't even diagnose me.  I couldn't tell my family as I wanted (and continue to want) to be strong for them.  Now with this doctor's help and with this one little pill, I should be able to be strong without it being the only thing I do in life.

YAY for healing!