Blood work - not so good :-(

October 5, 2002

Well, as I had posted yesterday " just off the wall " , not realizing really

anything about what I was saying about trying to get back into some sort of

exercise. If you had read my post it talked about ongoing muscular aches

after my severe anemia and protein malnutrition and how I'm on the road to

recovery, but " not there yet 100% " . Vacuuming sends me to bed with the

heating pad and same thing wtih doing laundry. I figured it was just that

those muscles weren't getting a workout, but afraid to really test them too

much with " real " exercise. Well, a few minutes after I got off line, the

phone was ringing. It was my hematologist's office (6pm at night) to get into

the office immediately for stat lab work, as the labwork I had had done on

Wed had some abnormalities that they wanted run again. Namely, POTASSIUM was

elevated to 8.8 (normal is less than 5). They said this was very serious.

So, I went back to the office, where the lab courier was waiting to pick up

my blood stat, and supposed to get the results on Saturday. She said that a

very high potassium could be very serious and asked if I had muscle aches

(DUH, YEP!) and heart palpitations (duh, YES). It really surprised me that

she asked me these things cuz, again, sore muscles - palpitations - I just

figured were " normal " for me (again in denial dammit!) Kidney function (BUN)

high, but creatinine was normal, however, cholesterol was 84 (EXTREMELY low)

and I eat REAL butter! LOL! But, NONFASTING blood sugar was 50. Hmmm...

just what would it have been had I been fasting? Normal blood sugar should

be like 70-120. She said I was still " starving " my body - back to the timer

to eat... I asked if the blood sugar was why I was butt draggin in the

afternoon, thinking I was anemic again, and she said of course. She said

" eat carbs or sugar - i.e., orange juice " to which I replied that I would be

dumping on OJ or sugar........so, waiting for the new lab work, gonna fax the

results to my surgeon up in WA and see if the hematologist will confer back

and forth to see how they can get me turned around.

However, of ONE important note!!!! Since starting protein shakes last April,

my protein went from 5.5 to 7.0!!!!! My preop protein level was 7.2, so I'm

ALMOST there!!!!

Sorry for being long winded! LOL

B

Distal RNY 12/95

275/155

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