In which I wig out

You know what I love?  Normalcy.  Things that other people take for granted as being ho-hum.  Such as, this morning Paul & I took my car over to the mechanic so that they could flush my radiator and refill my coolant (because my car has been acting stank at times lately).  After that, because I was carless for a while, I rode around with him while he ran errands.  Most people would love that.  Me?  I ate that shit up.  I love just being in his presence and doing "normal" shit.

While we were out, I got a call from my rheumatologist's office about the lab work I had drawn the other day.  They said my glucose was in the 140's (crap), my c-reactive protein is 17.2 and my sed rate was 26.  My first thought was, "Nah brah, I'm not even trying to be diabetic.  I need to lose some weight and get that sugar under control quick."  The other two tests measure inflammation in your body.  26 for a sed rate is high, but mine is usually like 35, so I was happy with a 26, that means some improvement.  The crp test, I knew measured inflammation, but I couldn't remember the normal values for that, so I didn't wig out about it.  Until I googled it, that is and then google fully convinced me that some wigging is in order.

I learned that it is a protein that is released from the liver under periods of acute inflammation.  I also learned that they aren't sure whether this is also a marker for heart disease, or if chronic high levels of it in your blood help cause heart disease.  It said that people with high crp levels (especially women) are TWICE as likely to have a heart attack or stroke than people with high cholesterol alone.  TWICE!  And what do they consider high?  Well, the "extremely high" category stopped at THREE.  Mine was 17.2!!!!! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

*sufficient wigging out ensued*

So, google got a fierce workout today.  I learned that healthy eating, especially fresh fruits and veggies & high-fiber foods, can lower the levels.  The other way to lower them is by getting rid of the root source... inflammation.  Yeah, fat chance that will happen with having lupus and fibromyalgia and all.

So you wanna know what my man did?  My so far, over all wonderful man?  He said, "Then we're gonna make some changes together.  I need to make them anyways, but we can't have you being sick.  You have little girls that need you."  And then he drove me all the way across town to this little herb shop that he knows up in Biltmore to get me some things that are supposed to help with inflammation.  And he's already been talking about changing our diets, and by "our" diets, I really mean mine.  See, he's been on this healthy eating thing for quite a while now and is pretty good at it.  Me?  I'm a pretty hard sell.  He mentioned salad and I felt the crease in my forehead show up meaning I'm furrowing my brow in deep thought (yeah, thoughts of how nasty salad is).

This is going to be one huge learning curve for me.  Seriously, I'm BAD at this stuff.  My mom sent me an email talking about diabetic diets (thanks Mom) & she said, "you probably already know this stuff, but...".  Well, nope.  I don't really know that stuff.  I know technically on some level I do because I'm a nurse and all, but it's something my brain resists wrapping around.  Yeah, I'm gonna need help with this. lol

Maaaannnnnnn................

That's me pouting like a toddler.


xoxo veronica