Two years on...

At 7:05 EDT exactly two years ago today, I began a completely new phase in my life. After having my last sugared coffee and black-bottom cupcake at Starbucks and some of my last regular soda and whatever else I used to eat before, I started down a path that I've been traveling now for two years.

I don't have a whole lot to congratulate myself for. Not that I haven't rallied to the cause - to the contrary. I simply managed to do what I should have been doing all along, and what everyone should do and is well within everyone's ability to do, which is simply take a moment and think about what they're eating or doing, and start taking the long view.

I'm now aware - painfully aware, perhaps at times even too aware - that what I do, the personal choices I make, are going to have an impact now and twenty or thirty years from now. I have lived with a very intimate knowledge, an intense realization that I am temporary, at least from this physical world's perspective (I'm still working on the rest of it). And I have good days and bad coming to an acceptance of that cold, hard fact.

I feel that in the past two years, I have a much clearer perspective on certain things, and a much lower tolerance for others. I no longer suffer fools very well (a group that has an ever-growing population in my eyes), but I am much more careful to automatically assume the worst in people. Well, at least I try much harder not to make that assumption.

Two years ago I was granted a different perspective. Not an entirely new one, but certainly one I did not have on June 27, 2005. Along with that, I acquired many new demons. I fight them on an almost daily basis these days. I feel the need to constantly and almost without abandon throw myself into whatever it is I'm doing. I feel like I've lost my ability to appreciate the moment, the Now, and perhaps am overcompensating. It's what I do in lieu of letting my mind wander to the scarier realms where I profoundly feel just how small and temporary I am.

Materially, my life is much better than it has been in a long time. Jenn and I are in as good a place as we have been since we've been dating. That's not to say we're in a great place in the grand scheme of things, but at least they're better. Two years ago today, I was a failed freelance lighting designer. Now I run the box office for one of the most energetic theater companies in the country. I have a position in my chosen profession, the one I spent all of my time in higher ed preparing for, earning recognition and respect for my ability within an industry I love. The last two years have been about rebuilding, and rebuilding correctly.

There's really no point to this except to check in, thank the scant few who check in here, and maybe relay some sense of where my scattered thoughts are at right now, in the midst of preparing for a new season, selling out the final show of the current season, and just living life in the midst of another summer in Washington (now my 8th).

Oh, and to let y'all know that I'm seeing the Transformers movie tonight. Yep, 5 days before everyone else gets a crack at it.

Health Matters: a followup visit

So I just realized that I left you all on pins and syringes with my update last time and the ongoing saga of Sasquatch (see here if you've forgotten already, it's in Part 2).

Well, truth to tell, it wasn't much of a cliffhanger. In the world of cliffhangers, it was unfulfilling. It would be like if we'd just seen Best of Both Worlds, Part 1, with Cmdr. Riker having just ordered the Enterprise to fire on a Borged-out Locutus-of-RSC, then we had to wait four months for the second part.

Then, finally, we get to see Part 2, and just after Riker says "Fire!", Picard takes off his Borg headgear and goes, "Ha ha! Just kidding Number One, gotcha! Happy Birthday!" and then the rest of the episode is about Worf's son Alexander's witless quest to befriend one of the animals in the ship zoo. Or whatever.

This latest incarnation of the Sasquatch phenomenon was exactly like that. Exactly.

Health Matters

Some have called January 23 the "saddest day of the year," what with the psychological effects of shortened days and all that. Indeed, last year on this date we lost Johnny Carson. However, the 1/23's of my life over the past five years have been anywhere from neutral to excellent days (it was 1/23/01 when Ian first asked me to be the SM for Poona). This year's 1/23 falls nearer to the latter category. In short:

6.1

That number, my friends, is my current A1c level. A1c will mean nothing to most of you. It is, however, one of the most important numbers in my life. Basically, the A1c is a measurement of blood glucose levels over a roughly three-month period. The goal that type 2 diabetics are told to strive toward is getting that number under 7.

To give you some perspective, my A1c level the day I was admitted to the hospital last year was over 15, more than twice what non-diabetic levels are. A1c tests don't even work above values of 18. The A1c of 15 means that for the three months leading up to my stroke, I had an average blood glucose (BG) level of between 270 and 300. Non-diabetics seldomly get above 130, and are normally between 80 and 105. (Some more perspective: when I was admitted, my very first BG reading was 460.) My current A1c level corresponds to a 90-day BG average of about 120.

My doctor, who was somewhat astounded to hear of my experience at Veselka back in November (chronicled here) was thrilled with the A1c result. I was ecstatic, to the point of pumping my fist in the air in celebration.

This is not the end of the story. It's just the beginning. I can't write the rest. The rest of the story comes in the next decades, as I continue to find that balance of loving food (which I do) and enjoying the right kinds of food (which I'm doing).

Part 2 of this entry comes as yet another confirmation of several things I've come to accept as true over the past six months:
1) My family doctor, who I valued so much for 20 years, has fallen into incompetency or, at the very least, a dangerous complacency.
2) My old GP actually was a quack.
3) I continue to receive the best health care of my life in my socialized-medicine environment.

The reason I went to see the doc today was because the problem I've had with my left arm four times over the past two years (two of which are chronicled here and here) started recurring last Thursday. The lifespan of this thing has become predictable: Three days of increasing amounts of pain, followed by four to six days of unbearable pain, sleeplessness, inability to move and a humongous dose of crankiness. So, when I realized that the cycle was starting up again, I made the doctor's appointment.

When I went in to see her last December, I let her know that we were in the Season of Sasquatch (what I've come to call this affliction, for lack of a better term), and she indicated that should it reoccur to get to her quickly and we'd set up surgery consults and get the core of the infection removed.

It was progressing over the weekend more or less as expected. However, last night I was somewhat surprised that I still had some mobility in my arm (usually by Day 4, that's not the case). This morning when I woke up (Sleeping through the night on Day 5? How odd.) it didn't feel any worse than it did the night before.

Goldie gave me a prescription of antibiotics, which she told me not to fill unless and until it got worse. She gave me a referral to the surgeon, whom she said not to see if it didn't get worse. She is of the very firm opinion that this Sasquatch thing has been a complication relating to my DM (physician shorthand for type 2 diabetes), and now that it is under control for the moment, the severity of this complication is likely to become lower or possibly disappear entirely.

For the moment, I still have some pain, especially when I try to move my arm too much. The next 48 hours are going to be very telling, and are something of a cliffhanger for me: Will Sasquatch Return?
More later....

The fact that I'm not in excruciating pain when I fully expected to be, and the 6.1 thing both have made this particular 1/23 one of the better ones. Hey, you take the good news when you can, right?

How a diabetic enjoys Thanksgiving

Ok, so it's been a week since we got back from New York and Thanksgiving, so most of you don't care anymore about whether or not it was good. But it was good.

The take at this year's table:

• Turkey (free-range)
• Cranberry sauce (sugar free, by Jennifer)
• Stuffing
• Mashed Potatoes
• Gravy
• String Bean Casserole (love this stuff!)
  
• Turnips
• Glazed Carrots
• Brussels sprouts (yes, this is the correct spelling)
• Desserts galore!

Most significant about that list is the last item. How, you may be asking, can a diabetic possibly enjoy desserts?

One word: Splenda.

One of the very few things I miss about the things I used to eat is cherry pie. I've been craving it nearly non-stop for two months. But my body reacts very very poorly to refined sugar. So no cherry pie for me.

Except for this occasion. Jenn - the master genius baker that she is - figured out how to make a cherry pie for me. It was easily the best piece of pie I've ever had in my entire life.

The thing with that is, it's true. I've had lots of good cherry pie before, but now that I really can't (without suffering some ugly complications down the road), this one was incredibly special. Anything I used to eat with impunity that I no longer can, like red meat, or cherry pie (especially cherry pie) tastes so much better to me now.

I was concerned that this particular indulgence would send my sugar higher than it ought to be (130 is a comfortable range, 180 sends me to the insulin supply, and I was estimating the latter). When I took my glucose level about two hours after dinner, it was 133. I was stunned.

What was even more stunning, though, is what happened to my BG (diabeticese for blood glucose) level after a trip to the fantastic Ukrainian restaurant Veselka, in East Village. Jenn and I met up with Ian and Sung to see Jarhead (a movie about how boring war can be, that is itself boring), then went to Veselka for dinner afterwards. Against my better judgment, I ordered the beef stroganoff. You're warned as a diabetic that stuff like regular pasta tends to send BG through the roof. My experience has been somewhat contrary to that, and I decided to take this measured risk. (In my two major trips since achieving freedom on July 5 (Discharge Day), I've allowed myself one major indulgence, and since Thanksgiving Dinner hadn't turned out badly at all, I called this one the Indulgence.)

It was a positively fantastic experience. This was the sort of food I grew up on... recipes my mom cooked because she learned them from her Slovak forebears. Man, what a great place. And it's open 24 hours!

Anyway.

The four of us hang for a while longer, then Jenn and I head back out to L.I. I take my sugar as soon as I get home (it's lingo... "take my sugar" to me means "check my BG level"), about 2.5 hours after we've eaten (still in after-meal BG prime time) and my level is...

115.

It seemed such a ludicrously low number that I checked it again on the spot.

117.

What was so shocking about this was that I did not take my usual pre-meal injection. The type of insulin I use for that is of the fast-acting variety, and I need to eat within about 15 minutes of taking it or risk some nasty hypoglycemic symptoms. I didn't want to be carrying a syringe with me all evening (perhaps not the best practice for a diabetic), so I didn't inject at all that night.

Nonetheless, 115 or so.

Overall, though I haven't been testing as much as I should in some cases, my sugar's been largely stable. I'll occassionally overdo it on my low-glycemic cookies, but I've never come anywhere close to being in a dangerous area (200+) since my first month home.

Before the holiday, I was a little apprehensive about the holiday. I used to really enjoy the turkey coma, and the over-full feeling, and the nap. I was afraid those things would go away. As it turns out, if you're smart about it, and you have a group of people around you, like Jenn and her family, who are supportive and are willing to play along, you can still have those things. At least, I could.