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Hitting myself up with a needle gives me the incentive to stay healthy

These days I try my best to keep from a regular routine of insulin shots. My PCP, or primary care provider, said a half-dozen months ago that I was on the edge of requiring insulin. I didn’t like that idea too much so I worked and dropped my weight by about 15 pounds and lowered what is known as my A1C level. The A1C is the HbA1c, or glycohemoglobin, test. Says the Nation Institutes for Health:

 “The A1C test is a blood test that provides information about a person’s average levels of blood glucose, also called blood sugar, over the past 3 months … The A1C test is the primary test used for diabetes management and diabetes research.”

The normal level is below 5.7%. Over 6.5 percent is diabetes. My level during my last check was 7.1, which was down from 7.4%. My goal is to get it to normal. You got to have a goal.

What really drives me to keep my A1C at sane levels isn’t all the really bad things that can happen to you from diabetes. I have peripheral neuropathy, caused by diabetes, which makes it difficult to feel my feet. My feet can also hurt like hell, feeling as if someone is shooting you in the foot with a nail gun. I have the pain in my feet controlled pretty well with medications. That is good because I have a lot of other pain to deal with. There are much worse actions diabetes can cause: blindness, gangrenous skin tissue requiring amputations, death, to name a few. But it is the desire to not have insulin shots several times daily the rest of my life that drives most of my activities designed to keep my diabetic numbers in check.

I don’t fear the shots or the pain. I have been giving myself monthly B12 shots for about five months. My doctor says she wants me to take B12 the rest of my life. The injections are not painful or if they are the pain is like a nanosecond long or shorter. Usually it is pain free cause I jab it in my arm and cannot feel the needle. The shots are a pain in another way.

The juice in the vial always wants to come out real-ll-ll-y slow.  It could give Heinz ketchup a run for its money. I always worry about getting bubbles in my syringe and hitting some pathway through my blood stream that would cause an aneurysm. Of course, you have to sanitize with alcohol wipes beforehand. Wipe the top of the vial. Create a sterile field on your arm. Then I have to go check to see if my arm is bleeding after I give myself a shot. So far it has usually taken about 10 minutes from start to finish to self-inject with B12. It was longer that that when I first started “hitting up.”

The reasons I take B12 is more complicated than taking the injections. The easiest way to explain the need for the shots is that I have a B12 deficiency, supposedly.

Naturally, I want to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible so I give myself the B12 injections and watch my diet and blood sugar levels as well as the old A1C. But shots are what give me the incentive to try and stay healthy. Getting older requires higher maintenance, just like your classic car. I don’t know if I would say that I am a classic though. I know some folks who would say that. And I know some people who would argue like hell with you about such a statement.

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Daylight Savings Time. Time to sleep.

It is best that today was an off day for me at work. The time change really kkkkkkkkkkkkkk. Sorry, it’s like some type of temporary narcolepsy.

The time change to Daylight Savings Time received quite a bit of press this weekend. A good bit of it was bad. The time change had all sorts of negative reaction which are brought out like more heart attacks and traffic accidents happening. The morning after reading that I woke up around six and tossed and turned until about 9:30, only to realize after waking up that it was Saturday morning and not Sunday when DST began. I got several pains in what felt like my chest but rolling over my back made me realize that it was my ever bothersome neck for which I am treated with methadone for pain. It helps but it mainly keeps the severe pain away. I have some kind of referred pain from my worn out neck discs and adjacent bone spurs that can sometimes feel as if it is shooting right through the middle of my chest. I have had these pains since before my second neck surgery 12 years ago. It makes for tricky self-diagnoses.

So, actually I got a lot going on and I really don’t need to be seeing news like this. Besides, the study was done on hospital admissions in Sweden. Sweden?, Okay.

Ooopps. I took a 20-second power nap.

Of course, I know folks got to fill the news hole. And it isn’t just “to sell more papers.” It is to sell more advertising. It was kind of like the lady who called me up at my last newspaper. She was complaining about something — what else? — she made a demanding remark that “you work for me.” Now unless she was one of the billionaire sisters who ran the company who owned the paper of the time, she was dead  wrong.  I explained. “No ma’am. I work for Blahblah Nissan Dodge dealership or the Jawjaw Furniture Store or one of the stores which bring in the big bucks of advertising.”

I am sure the lady didn’t like it. My editor would not have been pleased either. But sometimes you just had to let things go where they were supposed to go, just like the after effects of Daylight Savings Time. I’ll wake up in a few days, alert and ready to ride.

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Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. … Justified.

Since I have learned that what I write may end up who knows where — be it here, for Facebook, or on bathroom walls — I have found that it isn’t a very good idea to compose something when you are drunk or mad or both. I am not drunk right now, nor particularly mad although that doesn’t mean both states are impossible to attain.

I felt I should write something as that is the whole reason for this exercise. One of these days I shall decide whether I should write on the Web, strictly for money, as a mind-to-finger-to-mind exercise, or all of it. My part-time job has taken on more of a full-time feel even though I get paid far from full-time and on a much less consistent basis. Then, there is the whole pain thing. Hopefully, some day I will find out whether anything can heal me or nothing but the state of disability.

This mind o’ mine has a lot to think about, and more. So, I think I will get ready to watch “Justified.” It’s a really great show.

 

 

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¡Ay! ¡yi! ¡yi! ¡yi! ¡yi!

Yuck. That pretty much describes how I feel at the moment. The whole right side of my torso hurts when I move. I don’t know why. Either I have a pulled pectoral or the bulging disc in my cervical spine is acting up. Or it could be something completely different. I shouldn’t make myself laugh. I will not need to return to work until next Wednesday, thus I have a chance to recover hopefully. I suppose I shouldn’t have taken that walk this afternoon but that is what people keep telling me I should do to lose weight. In summary, my aching torso accounts for my brevity in writing as well as the occasional absence. Oh well, probably 99.9 percent of the world doesn’t care. But in case someone does care, then there you have it!

Peace!

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Who will win POTUS? Go ahead and make your prediction.

A very painful hangnail on my right thumb is making typing an uncomfortable chore this afternoon. I could show it to you. I’ve got the technology to do that. If I played around with it enough I could probably take the picture even though it is kind of difficult to shoot since I am right-handed. It is just as well I don’t show you because it’s kind of gross. Hopefully, the nail problem won’t get any worse before my scheduled doctor’s appointment on Tuesday. I can also use the side of my thumb to type the Space Bar on my keyboard even though that takes a bit more effort.

So as I shoot on into my weekend, sore thumb and all, I thought I would share something that might be of interest. Well, it might not be of interest but you might just learn something. I found this explanation of the Electoral College provided by the National Archives. It actually is part of the U.S. Electoral College Home Page, which is provided by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. Yes, even the Electoral College has a home page.

In addition to explaining just what the heck this Electoral College is and who really elects POTUS, one may even make their state-by-state prediction as to who will win. Go ahead and give it a spin, or a click. You’ve got nothing to lose here unlike with the real thing.

Have fun!