diehn.net/blog

So, I used to pretend that I wasn’t really fat. “I’m just ‘beefy’ and solid” I’d tell myself. Even when I was listening to my doctor tell me to loose weight or else. He’d point at the chart, we’d find the row for my height, 6′ 2″, and scan across (way, way, across) to find my weight, usually about 288 those days, and then look up again at the column headers and seeeee…. “obese.”

Then he’d scan left along my row again to my ideal weight and it was a long, long scan to reach 195. And he’d start talking about the “else” he’d mentioned, reeling off disease after disease that obesity brings on … and while he jabbered on and on, I’d be thinking “well, those charts are for normal people and I have really big bones (nope, not really) and my family are all large (patently not true), so my ideal must really be like 220 or 230. OK, I could stand to lose a little weight – but everyone’s heavy in America, so… what, I’m special?”

And I’d conveniently blank out the many reasons to loose weight that my doctor was reciting. Again.

Well, my annual exam went more or less like that this year. Actually, a little less. I went in November, at the end while I was in the middle of a big, deep-blue funk. This time, I listened to him – don’t know why, but I did. I’d had a wicked pain in my right wrist a week earlier and was to see an orthopedist soon and I was worried about that, like, did I tear something or do I have RSI? Or maybe it was that during my physical they saw that my blood pressure was too high: 142/102 reliably measured during a number of recent appointments and Doc diagnosed that as Hypertension. That really got my attention.

Yeah, there’s another coming – hang on….

I saw the Orthopedist and she ordered an MRI and a uric acid test on my blood. First to see if there was any damage to the soft tissues (read torn ligaments, etc.) and the other to check for Gout. So, the blood tests came back in mid December: very high uric acid levels – Gout. Ouch.

My GP got a copy of the results as well – he’d ordered a battery of tests for my annual physical and shortly after the Gouty day, we got a letter from his office – come in, we need to talk about your … blood sugar levels…. Yeah, so, now I’m Diabetic as well.

The good news is that between end of November and early January, I lost 18 pounds or so – I’m 272 pounds now and going down. And my blood pressure dropped into ideal range: 114/76.

So, my diet and life style have changed a lot recently. I walk an hour at least three times a week and get in a few 30-40 minute walks other days. I eat no refined sugar, absolutely as little salt and carbohydrates as I can get and I am careful about my cholesterol. Interestingly, many niggling little problems I’ve been irritated by for years are fading away.

I’m pretty confident that I’ll survive this and have little long-term effect from it all, but I’m still pretty scared right now. I mean, Christ! I’m an ex-hypertensive, Gouty, diabetic!

But at least I don’t smoke anymore….