I know I haven't been around for a while so i'm just checking in today. Still sticking to my plan, weight is coming down, 258.5 this morning which I haven't seen in over 5 years! My FBS have been hanging in the low 90's-100's. Today it was 121(114 after eating) but I had a large dinner last night, which included basmati brown rice, and ate much later than I normally do. I seem to be staying below 130 all the time. My doctor sent out a letter notifying his patients that he is retiring in June. I have seen him for the past 17 years and I hate having to find someone new. I was supposed to go back to have my a1c rechecked in late May or early June. I made an appointment with an endocrinologist for this week. I am a little nervous about it because I don't want them to try and put me on medications. The NP was giving me 3 months to see if my a1c would come down before doing so. I don't want to be rechecked until then. I also am going to see an allergist because now eggs are making me sick and throwing up and I cannot eat them at all. The same thing is happening with almonds. Don't know why i'm developing these at this point in my life but it is very frustrating! Over a week ago I ran out of my muscle relaxers which I take for an old neck injury and lower back pain. Big mistake, I was in so much pain I couldn't do all of my workouts for a week. I did shortened versions with lots of modifications. Thankfully now things are back to normal and i'm back on track and lesson learned, don't forget to fill your prescription on time!
Wannabehealthy I noticed that you also learned this lesson with your foot pain. Stay on top of those meds, it's not worth the agony of missing!
pattygirl I saw that you are considering doing interval workouts. That is what the online boot camp that I do use as their exercise model. I do 3 days of cardio interval and 3 days of strength training per week. Each workout is anywhere from 19-35 minutes with 17 coaches to choose from. I like it a lot since I hate the gym. Plus I have accountability because we have daily missions to complete and record. This is one part of my 34 l. weight loss since January!
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Hi Momtopands! Good to see you here. I understand what you mean about staying on top of the pain. I am letting it go a little longer than I should because I want to know if the foot is improving. So far it is not and I know I need to see a podiatrist sooner rather than later. I'm procrastinating because I hate seeing new doctors.
Today, I have been wearing a soft slipper rather than a slip-on shoe. All that has done is delay the pain a little bit. DH has been doing the shopping but he's getting the wrong brands on some things. I don't complain because then he will not do it. I buy generic aluminum foil. He bought HeavyDuty Reynolds Wrap. $$$$$$ Too much money for something I just use and throw in the garbage.
You are right about the endo. He will most likely want to put you on meds. Remember this. You are the boss of you. You pay the doctor to advise you, but the final decision is yours. You say firmly "I want to continue controlling this with diet at exercise at this time." They can write a prescription, but they can't make you take it. It is my opinion if a diabetic starts with exercise and diet as soon as they are diagnosed with pre-diabetes they will not have to progress to meds. If a person is diagnosed with a very high blood sugar, it might be a different story. Once you start to take meds, they become a crutch. You think to yourself, I can eat XXXXXX, and the meds will take care of it. Then gradually your meds need to be increased. That's m opinion, and others may disagree. If you are comfortable with what you are doing, continue doing it. If you A1c goes up, you will need to change your plans at that time....either take meds, or adjust your diet to bring it back down. The decision should be yours, not some doctor who thinks you should take meds. Having said that, I know I should be saying the universal disclaimer....."do what you're doctor tells you." LOL
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I held out all day not taking the pain meds. My foot swelled like it usually does, but the pain wasn't too bad. I put my orthotics inside a pair of soft slippers and I think it helped that there was nothing rubbing against my foot. The shoes I normally wear are very big and loose on me, but they get a little more snug with the orthotics inside. They are a slip on with a very low back, and I take my shoes off when I'm just sitting. I started back taking the Turmeric, so maybe that is helping with the pain. I just took the pain pill for overnight.
DH wanted pizza for dinner so made myself a salad and scraped off the cheese and pepperoni and chopped it in the salad. So I got the taste of the pizza without the carbs of the crust.
I think I would like to make a real meal tomorrow. Maybe meatloaf with potatoes and a vegetable. First time since before my heart attack. It's hard to believe that was 2 weeks ago. I feel fine as far as that's concerned. Just the ding dang foot!!
I got a notice for jury duty for May 09. I don't know if I can get excused based on this foot pain since I can barely shuffle around. It would be very hard. The cut off age is 75. I think it should be lower.
Some of the ads are back.
Last edited by Wannabehealthy; 04-23-2018 at 09:38 PM.
Location: Home of the Pirates, Steelers and Penguins
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S/C/G: 217/179/142
Height: 5'2
Weight is back down to 191.5 and FBG back down to 143, so things are improving. I slept good, and that is one nice thing about the pain meds, they help with sleep. I will miss that. I know there are other things to take to help with sleep, but I don't like to take them.
DH is making my scrambled eggs now. Boy do I have him trained. LOL
Weight is back down to 191.5 and FBG back down to 143, so things are improving. I slept good, and that is one nice thing about the pain meds, they help with sleep. I will miss that. I know there are other things to take to help with sleep, but I don't like to take them.
DH is making my scrambled eggs now. Boy do I have him trained. LOL
Location: Home of the Pirates, Steelers and Penguins
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My foot is improved today, and I'm thinking the Turmeric may be the reason. I've been taking it again for about a week now. Today, with no pain meds, I went to Walmart and walked all over the store with little pain. More of an achy feeling. The ankle is a little puffy, but the foot part is not swollen. I walked slow using a cart. I have been holding my foot stiff trying to avoid irritating it, but today I walked rolling from heel to toe, bending the foot abit. That seems to be helping. We'll see how it feels in a couple hours. I stood to put my meatloaf together and now I will sit down while it bakes. I don't know what I will do if the pain goes away. I don't know if I will still go to the podiatrist to see what they say, or just try to keep the pain from returning. I don't want to put the cart before the horse.
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Weight is up a lb today and FBG is up to 164. Foot hurts, but is not swollen at all. I think the swelling comes when I walk on it too much.
DH was happy to have a normal cooked meal yesterday. He ate a lot. Counting the lasagna I have only cooked twice since the hospital. I will get back to it more. I like to cook as long as it's something DH will eat. His choices are limited. There is meatloaf leftover. I will slice it and freeze it to have on days when DH is eating something else. He won't eat leftovers.
Well I went to the endocrinologist today. She was actually pretty good. No medications, she prefers to control diabetes with diet and exercise, which i'm doing. The only thing she offered was for me to see their nutritionist. I am needing some help with breakfast, I really struggle without being able to eat eggs. Otherwise it seems i'm doing well. She did draw some labs, including an a1c to see if i've come down. She says she still won't suggest medication even if it's not down yet since my sugars are good and i'm doing all the recommended things. The only thing I didn't like was possibly adding a medication for decreasing cholesterol since my cholesterol levels are low, very low. It's a preventative measure from developing heart disease but i'm still not sure i'm on board with taking such meds at this time when my levels are already low. When I asked her why/how this is supposed to help she had to answer honestly that they don't really know why it works. I'll have to look into that, I am fine taking medication when it's needed but not just because. We'll see when my labs come back.
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I called and made my appointment with the cardiologist. They tried to put me in with the PA again and I refused. They weren't too happy, but I think I should be able to choose who I see and I want someone who went to medical school. I need to discuss my faulty heart valve, and I want the answers to come from the person who has been checking the valves for the past 10 years.
I ate a lot of junk food today and I feel terrible.
Trish, that was an interesting article. I read it, then bookmarked it so I can come back to it again. There were some other articles listed on the right hand side that I would also like to read. I do a lot of my reading early in the morning while DH is still asleep.
Momtopands, I'm glad your new doctor didn't recommend meds. I think you will do well without them. I can understand how you feel about the cholesterol meds. Diabetes and heart disease DO go hand in hand they say, so maybe there's something to it. There's a lot of contraversy about statins, if that is what she's suggesting. I don't know who's right and who's wrong. I take them, but then I already have heart disease. They keep my cholesterol very low, and I still had a heart attack with a blocked artery. So maybe there is something else I'm doing wrong or statins don't help as much as they think they do.
There are probably a lot of other options for breakfast besides eggs that will still not spike your blood sugar. I really like eggs so there's no question about it for me. But there are low carb pancakes for one. I don't know how much time you have to be messing around with a lot of cooking at breakfast. I have also heard people say that you don't have to eat breakfast food for breakfast. Maybe you could google "low carb breakfast" and see what is suggested.
momtopands Glad you had a good visit with the new doctor. It is so important to find a doctor you like and who will work with you. My doctor gave me a prescription for a statin because he said it would protect me from heart attacks and strokes. I took it for a while, but refuse to take it since my fbs went way up while on them. I have read that statins can cause diabetes. No one in DH family ever had diabetes and he didn't have it either until he was put on statins. He takes a ridiculous amount of diabetic meds and still has trouble getting his diabetes under control. I am convinced the statins are the reason. I'm not going to do anything to make my diabetes uncontrollable. I'm not saying don't take it. I'm just saying you have see how it works for you.
Carol Sue I didn't have time to read all the info either, but I will read it later and I also saw a few other things that I want to read. Although I don't want to go keto low, I thought that some of the info would help me to feel better while doing low to moderate carb diet. My problem has been the fact that I am so tired. I know when I did Atkins that I was almost always tired although they claimed you would get over that. I realize from just scanning the info that I have a tendency to be exhausted and have leg cramps. I have always had to take potassium in the past and realized that is probably my problem now. I bought some potassium today at Walmart and took one today.
My FBS has been really pretty good until this morning so I think it was because I over did the fiber. BS before dinner today was 113. So that is really good.
I bought some avocados today. I really love eggs, bacon and toast with avocado spread on it in place of butter. The amazing thing is that it lowers my bs. I read that you could puree the avocado and use it as a spread. I'm going to try adding lime juice to it hoping it will keep it from ruining. Also I won't be using a whole lot of it at one time.
We got Chinese food for dinner so bs and weight probably will be up tomorrow.
Facility called DS this morning and said Daddy had fell in the bathroom. She couldn't get me so she and DBIL who had to take off work, ran over there and couldn't find him in his room. He was in rehab exercising. He said he didn't fall. He was trying to put himself on the toilet and slid off into the floor instead. I hope he doesn't start trying to do this stuff on his own.
DS talked to the man from the VA who used to work with Daddy when he was Chaplin of VFW. Remember he had given Daddy his card for her to call him. He told her that when it is time that he can help us get help for him and it won't cost us anything. So there must some sort of VA benefits he is eligible for that we don't know about. So this is a blessing.
I may try to do a lower carb not keto if I can use that article to learn how to do it without going through those flu stage. I am so exhausted as it is and I really haven't tried to do low because I just don't have time to go through those flu like stage. Hopefully getting on potassium will help too.
Carol SueYou just got out of the hospital with a heart attack and told you have CHF etc. I don't think a PA can tell or give you the answers you need to know. Daddy saw a PA when we went to cardiology office for the pacemaker reading instead of seeing the doctor. The doctor was there, but talked to us through the PA. The PA wasn't qualified to see that Daddy had had a stroke which the cardiologist would have know if he had taken the time to see Daddy that day. We had already lost time with the therapy without a proper diagnosis at the Rapid Rehab center and we lost almost another month after we moved to this facility which we would not have lost if the doctor had seen him that day. I read the sooner you get started with therapy after the stroke the better it goes.
I think you are wise to insist on seeing your cardiologist rather than a PA. PA's are good but sometimes you need more.
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Trish, you just reminded me of another thing I wanted to discuss with my cardiologist. I think I should make a list. I want to ask about the CHF. They told me that in the ER because I had so much fluid, but then it seemed that they changed their mind once they got the fluid off and it didn't come back. They did not put me on Lasix at home, so I think I don't have CHF, but I want to be sure.
Part of me thinks the lower you keep your carbs the lower your blood sugar, but we are all different and don't all need the same level of carbs. What works for you might not be low enough for me. The same with Momtopands. She seems to be able to handle a higher level of carbs.
I ate very poorly today. I envision the numbers on the scale going back up and I have to nip this in the bud. I go to the cardiologist on June 4 and I would like to be firmly in the 180s by then. That will take some diligence on my part. I am the only one who can make that happen. I want to get back to exercise tomorrow.
I am hoping the VA will be able to help your dad with placement. I know he wants to do things himself but he needs to understand that he has limitations right now and should not risk injury that can give him a set back. I pray for him every night, Trish.
Carol SueI agree you need to make a list of things to ask your doctor. Thanks for your prayers for Daddy. I really appreciate it. He was discouraged for a few days because he was experiencing spasms in his legs and pain in the right leg as they wanted to just jump around. PA and therapy didn't seem to know what caused it although I read online that it happens and the main thing to do is keep doing therapy to keep it from freezing up. He wasn't able to pull himself up or anything just so weak. However, today he was able to pull himself up and do some squats. So not sure what the problem was but seems to have passed.
You probably don't have CHF. I'm not sure why you had the swelling, but sometime ER jumps to the wrong conclusions. Look how the hospital swore Daddy wasn't having a stroke, but he did. We do have to be on top of our own health.
I do seem to need some starchy carbs to control my bs, but I still don't want to go too high. I think I'm going to just try to keep them below 100 grams most days. Today was a rare thing with the Chinese food. Calories and carbs were higher, but less than 1800 although I don't have the 1800 calorie limit any more. I only show my calories on MFP to be 1530 they gave me so I did go over my calories today. Tomorrow I will be back OP and I want to start my exercise again tomorrow too. I haven't done them this week because I have been so wiped out that I just didn't have the energy. All I've wanted to do is sleep when I'm home. I have to make myself do what I need to do and no more.
Up late tonight so I'm headed to bed. I would sleep late, but I just don't seem to be able to. I don't have to go any where tomorrow so I could sleep late but will probably be awake and up by 9. Just not a late sleeper. I sleep good when I go to sleep at night even if I sit and sleep in my chair most of the evening, but when I wake up I can't lay there any more and if I do go back to sleep I feel crappy all day. Plus I lose my "me time" before DH gets up.
Location: Home of the Pirates, Steelers and Penguins
Posts: 12,397
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Height: 5'2
Trish, I got very little sleep last night. I has some issues running through my mind. I know I shouldn't let that happen because the issues are always less pressing in the morning. Last night I was reading about the Aortic Valve Repair, called TAVR. It is not done at our hospital, only at 2 hospitals in Pittsburgh. We don't have any experience driving to Pittsburgh. It's quite a nightmare for people who don't do it regularly. Reading about the TAVR, it is so much less invasive than standard heart surgery, but is only done on those who are not a candidate for standard heart surgery. I might be included in that because I have already had one standard heart surgery. But this is bothering me and will, until I get to talk to the cardiologist and as him if my valve has really advanced to that critical state. I know I should put it in God's hands since there's nothing I can do about it until I have answers from him.
I like my early morning me time too, Trish. sleeping until 9 is really sleeping in for me, but I am in bed much earlier than you are. I go in to watch TV and usually fall asleep with the TV on before DH comes in. We both got up around 7 this morning, and I sometimes get up earlier than that. I HATE lying in bed awake for hours. My chair in the living room is not really comfortable enough for sleeping. DH usually has the TV on, and the commercials and laugh tracks are louder than the actual programming and wakes me up. My best sleeping time is in my bed, before DH comes to bed.
I'm going to try to get a few things done so I can go downstairs later for some gentle exercise.
Just catching up, its been a busy week. Am going to bed soon.
I am eating more carbs, but calorie counting. Having a bran muffin daily.
Seems my "gluten intolerant" is more like a sensitivity, dose dependent. So a muffin is ok, but not bread with all meals, etc.
I am trying to have some meals that have carbs, and others low carbs, and see how that goes.
Weight not coming down, but not successful sticking to low carb, so will try this.
Momtopants, it must be difficult to have your doctor retire. I was fortunate, before mine retired, her practice of four doctors had a few locum doctors doing vacation relief, and my favourite was the one who took over for my doc when she took early retirement. So the transition was smooth. We don't always agree, but have mutual respect.
