Monday, July 31, 2006

If I Had Something To Say

Boy would I say it well! It would knock your socks off, I’m telling you!

But I don’t have anything. I’m sitting here and, just like Friday, I’m pretty much blank.

I can’t talk about work. So, that’s out.

Stuff in the news? Just makes me want to preach or freak out, and you wouldn’t want to read either of those.

Any personal news lately?

Well, just one thing. I went to the Dr. last week and my cholesterol is at 166, which is the best it has been in YEARS, so that’s some positive news. And considering the amount of heart disease in my family, I’m probably a genetic time bomb waiting to go off, but I’d rather not dwell on that.

But the cholesterol thing is pretty good news I guess. I took Crestor, one of those cholesterol lowering thingies, for a year and my cholesterol went from 250-something to about 220-something, but the real action started when, at the beginning of this year, I started eating low carb.

I’ve been pretty much a good boy on this diet all this year. And as soon as I started having cholesterol tests done a couple of months after starting the low carb eating, my cholesterol had dropped dramatically. So Crestor, in a year, dropped it, say, 30 points or so, but the addition of low carb eating has brought it down 55-60 more points.

I never remember which is which, but even my good vs. bad cholesterol ratio was really good as well. In other, words, the Dr. was very, very pleased.

I have lost about 40-45 pounds or so this year too. I wish it were more, but at least the trend is downward.

The five notches I’ve ‘gone up’ on my belt tells me the best though. You know how it is. You can step on the scale and be disappointed, but how your clothes fit, and change their fit, tells you the best story.

So, all in all my health is a bit better, and I’ll take any gains I can get.

Plus, my back Dr. is trying me on a new cox-3 inhibitor (whatever the heck that means) called Mobic. It is for arthritis but has shown to give people less trouble in their guts than other asprin family medicines. And I am one of the unfortunate ones who, if I take asprin or ibuprofen or something like that a couple of times a day, it just rips up my intestines. To be totally blunt, ladies, I know how your cramps feel, ok?

This Mobic has seemed to really help. This will sound weird, but it has brought my back pain level back down to where it used to be. It never goes away, but it has really helped a lot. The only problem is that this is one of those medicines like celebrex and stuff that has everyone freaking out about. Some say this type of drug can cause heart attacks.

So what’s a guy to do? I guess for now, I’ll take the low cholesterol AND the Mobic and hope the gains in lowering my back pain are worth the risk.

And that’s just the beginning of my medicine story. I just make sure all of my doctors know EVERTHING I take, and I always ask them if any of the stuff I take will conflict with other stuff. So far the answer is no, from three different doctors and I guess I just have to trust them on that.

Let’s just say I’m a walking drug store, and I'll leave it at that.

And that's all you're gettin', at 5:30 on a Monday morning anyway. It ain’t much, but it's something.

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