Compli(gly)cations

As a side test while chasing something else, the doctor at the Empire’s health center ordered an HgA1c check for me, to see where my diabetes control was.  The answer was a bad one—8.8%, when normal range is five to seven.  In short, I haven’t been paying any attention to what I eat, I’ve been eating too much of the wrong things, and I haven’t been exercising at all.  That can’t go on.

The upshot was that the physician assistant raised my Glucophage dose from 500 milligrams to 1,500 milligrams, and wants to raise it to 2,000 after a week for my body to get used to the first increase.  She also arranged for a consult with a nutritionist, which I was able to squeeze in today because of a cancellation.  The nutritionist gave some pointers on things I should mostly avoid (she wasn’t foolish enough to tell me to leave off anything altogether), things I can to do change diet and get the best effect, and how to assess where I’m going.  She also wants me to gather a month’s worth of data on 2-hour PP glucose readings, to find out how I tolerate processing carbohydrates, which are the big bad actors for me (and many other people).  (I remarked to her that I was blackly amused by her speech on reducing carbohydrates.  When I was a kid, my mother always nagged “Don’t go filling up on starches at the dinner table!”  Then the Eighties came along, and suddenly carbohydrates were supposed to be the Wonderful Thing that would cure cancer, bring world peace, and make you a two-pants suit for a hundred dollars.  Now, fifty years later, I’m right back where I began, getting speeches about “don’t fill up on starches!”)  Naturally, she recommended finding some kind of exercise regimen I think I can comply with, and start doing it.

The dietary changes are going to be the hardest parts to do, because both L and M like almost no cooked vegetables whatever although they’ll eat green salads, and I’m bored completely to tears by the prospect of green salads at dinner EVERY SINGLE DAY.  And dinner is the principal meal where I can hope to have any significant impact; my breakfast is almost invariably bran cereal (which I have to have for its fiber), and lunch is already under control—maybe a bit TOO much; the nutritionist thought I might be low-balling it with my budget-conscious Smart Ones or Lean Cuisine lunches on weekdays.

The exercise component solution is the most obvious:  I have to start walking again, frequently.  The difficulty is that that M is still not old enough to be left alone at home for an hour together, and by the time L gets home from whatever she’s doing in the evening, anything from two to four days of the week, it’s often nine or ten o’clock, and I have just come to despise having to do my walks every night in the dark, when no one else is out and you can’t see anything.  Nonetheless, I’m generally left to be the babysitter evenings, and try to eke out whatever time I can scrape up for exercise.  Which gravels me.