busybee fluffy rambles

I finally replaced my blood sugar meter and, after verifying the new one’s calibration, my blood sugar is back to normal-ish, which is to say, 110 mg/dL after waking up, which is still “prediabetic” but not even remotely “go to the hospital.”

I’m not sure if it’s the meter or my test strips which were bad, but either way doing a refresh on the whole kit was a good idea, especially since I only do occasional testing. The included sample strips and test fluid always last me way longer than the “discard after” time, and I also was never great about closing the test strip vial after taking one out (which I guess can affect the chemistry), and given how infrequently I need to test, it just makes more sense for me to buy a new test kit bundle when I need to.

I wonder what the useful lifetime on a blood glucose tester is supposed to be, anyway. They sure seem to be made to be disposable. (But also that’s probably a function of how they work to begin with. Reagents always degrade, as do chemical detectors.)

But at least we can take blood sugar off of my immediate list of concerns.

• Cholesterol: Within normal range (thanks, Repatha)
• Triglycerides: Still a little high, but not nearly as bad as they used to be (I’m guessing that them being a bit high means the doctor is still going to lecture me)
• Blood glucose: 102mg/dL, which is technically a little high because of the law of round numbers, but c'mon
• A1C: 6.0, which is right in the middle of the “pre-diabetic” range, which means I’m going to get a lecture about that too
• MCH: 25.6pg, indicating I might be slightly anemic

Anyway it’s pretty clear that my home glucosimeter needs to be recalibrated or replaced.

Update: Doctor’s office left a voicemail which was surprisingly lecture-free. They just told me the same thing I wrote above and said there wasn’t really any change to make for now.

A couple weeks ago I traveled to Albuquerque to visit my family, and now I’m sick with some fun respiratory gunk. It may or may not be COVID (again). Hard to tell at this point. So far it’s at least not as bad as when I got it a year ago. But I’d still rather not be having it at all, y'know?

Anyway I think air travel is Bad, Actually.

Annoyingly this got in the way of all of my pride plans; I was meant to perform with the choir at Trans Pride Seattle last night, and today I was going to go to brunch with friends, and even if I didn’t feel like complete ass I also wouldn’t want to spread this crud to anyone else.

Come to think of it, I can’t recall any time in recent history that I traveled by airplane and didn’t end up getting sick shortly after. Like, even pre-COVID, it was pretty much a given that any time I traveled for work or whatever I’d end up with some awful crud.

I guess in more positive health news, there’s some promising research into new fibromyalgia meds, and also some pretty interesting advances in understanding what fibromyalgia even is and what treatments might help with the underlying issues. So that’s hopeful, at least. Solving fibro pain wouldn’t fix all of my problems but it’d at least make it easier for me to do the things I want to be doing.

So it turns out I didn’t have anything to worrry about. The angiogram showed no blockage whatsoever and hopefully this means I’ll stop having heart-concern panic attacks. No angioplasty, no stent, etc.

The most annoying thing right now is I’m not allowed to use my right hand until Sunday, and also cannot shower until then, since that could potentially cause a hematoma or arterial rupture in my right wrist artery (which is where they inserted the probe). So I’ll be stinky tomorrow, and also I can’t do any of my fun activities. At least I have a lot of prepared foods available.

The whole experience wasn’t too bad. The entire team felt supportive and friendly, and we joked around a lot during the whole thing. During the procedure I was given a small dose of midazolam, which helped me to relax, but wasn’t enough to get an amnesiac effect, so I remember the whole thing. The only really painful bit was at the very end when my forearm started to spasm while the probe was still inserted.

Also I asked for souvenir pictures but I think they thought I was joking. Maybe I’ll get them on MyChart? I dunno. It’ll go nicely next to my esophogeal endoscopy photo from when I was having stomach problems a decade ago.

They seemed to be really surprised that I understood most of the medical terminology and that they didn’t need to coddle me or the like. One of the consent forms asked me to write, in my own words, what I thought was going to happen and I wrote “angiogram w/ potential angioplasty” and this was really surprising to them.

Anyway afterwards I got hospital food for lunch. I ordered the salmon. It was pretty okay. Hard to eat one-handed though.