My Lab Results Woke Me Up



Thankfully I have a modern doctor who uploads the full lab report to a secure patient portal.  Incidentally, I am also able to utilize this portal for questions in btween my twice-yearly HIV doctor visits, which makes me feel secure.

So I received my lab results back yesterday and they are not good.  Oh, the biggies (at least the labs I thought were the most important) were good.  My CD4 and CD% are both increasing and I am still undetectable.  But...then I looked further at my lab report.  My triglycerides were 385!! And my fasting glucose was 119.  These are terrible numbers.  I dug a little deeper and looked at my previous few labs for the past year and a half.  The numbers were just as bad, the triglycerides are much worse now than before, though they have been rising each lab.  My glucose is one point away from a diabetes diagnosis.

My doctor has chided me before on my triglycerides, cholesterol, and blood sugar.  For whatever reason I quickly tucked away this knowledge into a dark corner and did not think about it any more.  Well, my neglect shows, and now I am worried.  Not worried as in "OMG I am going to die!" but more like "OMG what have I done to myself??"

When I was first diagnosed with HIV I also contracted a bad case of tunnel vision.  I thought if I just tackle this one thing (HIV), then my life will be perfect and I will be healthy.  I am educated enough to know a side effect of HIV meds can be elevated cholesterol/triglycerides, but in my smug sense of "this would never happen to ME" attitude, I assumes such dire warnings were for those "other people".  And I figured if I could conquer HIV, then these trivial other health landmines would be a piece of cake.

It is so easy to minimize negative information or risks.  Much harder to do is to face the reality of the risks when they actually happen to you.

These lab results jump started my thinking about the very thing I have avoided for years now: my lifestyle.  In the back of my head an occasional thought would rise to the surface that said "maybe you shouldn't be buying yet another box of Cocoa Pebbles" or "maybe you should take a walk outside instead of binge-watch Netflix".  Yet, I somehow convinced myself that I deserved to pamper myself.  I had a stressful job (I am laid off now, thank God), my mother died a couple of months ago; I let myself believe it was OK to eat what I want, do what I want (or more accurately, not do much of anything at all).  Denial and indulgence has become my hallmarks and now they have caught up to me.

I guess I have some hard changes to make and fast.  I look into my pantry and see so much processed food.  So much of it is in boxes.  So much of it has incredibly high amounts of sodium and long lists of ingredients I can not pronounce.  I look in my refrigerator and see soda pop, lots of cheese, and not much else.  My freezer is full of processed ready-to-eat crap.  I am not a vegetable exists in my house and that is sad.

Well, tomorrow is a new chance to do something different.





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