health – Page 3

end of August

I realise I haven’t written anything about Summer Camp this year – I guess because although we enjoy it so enormously, it must be a bit boring for other people.

This year’s was a classic for no particular reason – some new folk, some people we haven’t seen for a while, and just … lovely. Moyra was very much missed. Only two things marred it for me: firstly, the woman who thought it acceptable both socially and parentally to spend 45 minutes verbally abusing her small child. At 6.30 in the morning, in amongst the campers. I’m amazed I managed to keep my mouth shut. Secondly, I tripped over the back doorstep on Sunday night; it didn’t hurt at all then, but by Monday morning it di, and after 7 hours in the car, it hurt a *lot*. Pete was a hero, and took the tent down, packed the car, drove all the way home, and unloaded it all again, while I crawled upstairs to a hot bath.

Didn’t seem any point in going to casualty – they’d just tell me to strap it and rest it, which is what I did. But I did miss two Morris practices, and far more disappointing, I missed the big dance out at Lincoln on 3rd September 🙁 We did go, and I hobbled around Lincoln with the aid of a stick – it was a grand day out, but I’d rather have been dancing. Still, there’s always next year.

and the results are …

januvia Last time I went to the doctor, on 1 June, she was not encouraged by my diabetic condition. She upped my Metformin to 4 pills a day, and put me on Januvia (sitigliptin) as well. She gave me strict warnings that if I didn’t mend my ways, the next lot of medication was the sort that had to be declared to DVLA, and it all gave me a bit of a fright.

Since then, I have taken my pills like a good girl, increased my exercise, and watched my diet a lot more. And this morning, I got the results – HbA1c down from 9.4 two months ago, to 7 today. Yay! I have to keep taking the tablets, but no increased dose, and indeed I might be able to cut some of them. And no more tests for six months, so I must be managing it better. She did say that probably the sitagliptin did the trick – I just wish it didn’t give me these bloody headaches.

I suppose that celebrating with chips and chocolate and white bread and more chocolate and more chips would be foolish, but I do feel rather pleased all the same.

Wii Exerbeat

In my quest to lose weight and get fitter, I find my Wii a great help. I can’t be doing with Wii Fit – a load of nonsense – but I have Wii Zumba Party, which is surprisingly hard work, and serves to remind me that I “dance” like an elephant, and also a My Fitness Coach Cardio Workout, a boxing game, which is even harder, but huge fun. I wanted something that sort of combined the two, and Wii Exerbeat looked as thought it would do the trick, so I pre-0rdered it on Amazon and it arrived last week.

Readers, it drove me crazy. It is targeted at families, and parts of it are dumbed down beyond belief. You cannot get at most of the exercises until you’ve done a load of the basic ones to unlock them, and then you have to do this appalling “round the world” thing between exercises, where the Rhythm character (I kid you not), bounces about while you walk round the world, using miles you have “earned” doing exercises, with about twelvety presses of button A each time. I nearly threw it out of the window.

Then suddenly I managed to unlock the bit where you can get the game to do you an exercise programme right the way through. And the bit where you can set up your own programme of routines. You still have to suffer the infantile round the world thing at the end of it, but it’s much less irritating if you only have to do it once.

The sessions it sets up for you are good – couple of warmups to start, and a couple of stretching ones to finish, and this morning’s routine left me sweating. There are aerobics, hiphop and latin dancing, karate and boxercise, yoga and stretching, and I can see that it’s going to fall into my heap of favourites.

Sad to relate, though, my Wii balance board appears to have died 🙁 Pete is going to prod it later, but I’m not hopeful …

taking myself in hand

As I wrote – briefly, the other day, my diabetes control is getting away from me. I think that foolishly, in my head, I convinced myself that now I am taking Metformin, I didn’t really need to be careful, which was very silly indeed. I’ve put on a load of weight too, and so Something Must Be Done.

The doctor has upped my dosage of Glucophage from 1500mg to 2000mg per day, and added Januvia. Whether it was this or something else, i don’t know, but Pete and I set off across the Humber Bridge yesterday for a day out (yes – South of the river), and after visiting Barton, then Brigg, I felt so ill we had to come home, and I spent most of the rest of the day on the sofa – no trip to Gainsborough after all. It has all given me a bit of a wakeup call, so I am back on the straight and narrow.

I got up early this morning and did 45 minutes on Wii Exerbeat, which can be deeply irritating, but now I have unlocked a load of levels, is much more useable. We have been to the stupidmarket, and bought: apples, strawberries, raspberries, melon, cherries, grapefruit, satsumas (I had oranges, apples, apricots in already). We have bought spinach, cabbage, peppers (to accompany the varied peppers that I didn’t know we had), celery, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, fennel, radishes and mushrooms. I bought a free range chickie! which we will have tonight with steamed spring greens, and some (just a couple for me) new potatoes, and I shall make a vat of roast veg that I can have for lunches. In Brigg yesterday for lunch, I had a warm chicken and bacon salad which was lovely, so I bought some small steaks to do something similar with – I have chicken breast in the freezer – somewhere – and pork fillets too. I have a cupboard full of pulses as well. See?

I’m going to do it. OK?

hmm …

A trip to the doctor this morning reveals that despite taking 3x500mg Metformin per day, my levels have not dropped at all – still 9.4%. So she’s put me on Januvia, and upped the Metformin to 4 a day. I MUST LOSE WEIGHT.

General bah, really.

the next stage

I went last week to be stabbed by the phlebotomist at the surgery, and then yesterday to hear what the results indicated. As requested, I took a urine sample in a little bottle that the diabetic nurse gave me a few months ago, but sadly it turned out to be the wrong little bottle, so I had to decant it into the right little bottle. Madness – a sample is a sample, surely?

My levels are improved – down from 9.7% to 8.9%, which the doctor said was very good, but not good enough, and they need to be below 7%, so metformin it is. However, clearly the doc has listened to my concerns, because she said I needed to take it, and she was going to prescribe the slow release version, which is easier to adjust to, apparently (if this is so, I’m bloody glad she did, because my stomach this morning feels as though a cyclone is going through it!). This is just a starting dose, so another set of tests in six weeks, already booked.

I’m quite pleased with the results, actually, as I’ve not been as careful with my diet as I should, and I’ve had very little exercise what with dark mornings, winter, a 5 week viral infection, etc, so possibly when the spring comes I can get my levels down again. We shall see.

weekend 13-14 august 2010

Not overly exciting, really. Walked into town on Saturday afternoon, had lunch, prodded some camera shops (have sold my DSLR, and am looking for something smaller and lighter to replace it). Went to see Inception, which was very good indeed, but didn’t live up to its hype for me. #3 on IMDB? – oh please.

The story was well thought out, but nowadays I find, by and large, there’s far too much CGI in movies which I presume they do just because they can. Given I’m currently reading Charlie Stross’ Merchant Princes series, there were altogether Too Many Worlds in my head, and I found it all quite difficult.

Walked home along Anlaby Road to West Park, where there was an Event taking place, but we didn’t care at all for the band on stage, and came home to soda bread toast and Marmite.

On Sunday, I finished constructing chicken soup, and also made a batch of coriander chicken and slung it in the slow cooker. We decanted some soup into a thermos flask, and packed it up together with chiz’n’onion baguettes, apples and cereal bars, and took ourselves off to Hornsea.

Started off at the shopping village, and bought me a new warm jacket (mine is far too big now, and Summer Camp is upcoming; you need a warm jacket at Summer Camp). Then we went to Hornsea Mere, had soup and sammidge, and set off to walk round the lake. You can’t – well, not without long waders. So we took ourselves down to the beach, and walked for a few miles. 55 minutes going out, into a ferocious head wind, and 40 back (I said it was ferocious). Lovely weather for a robust stroll, though I was glad I was wearing proper stout walking boots – lots of streams running down that beach.

Home to coriander chicken, dhal and rice and a slump. And that was that.

Oh – there was a letter from the Eye Clinic on Saturday, saying that I have “some background retinopathy”. Which is directly contradicts what they told me in April – same test, different department. $deity knows, but it’s worrying …

soggen

I went to the doctor yesterday to get the results of my blood tests. Not too good – HbA1c is 9.4%, not much down from the 10.5% on 21 April 🙁 Cholesterol levels now: total 5.9, ratio 4.5 – I’ll have to find out how to relate those results to the earlier ones. The doctor wants to put me on metformin, but I’m going to hang on for six weeks and see if I can knock it down a bit more on my own – I’ve not been as good as I should be recently, I know.

And so, I set the alarm for 6 a.m. this morning, and set off at 6.30 for a bike ride and then a swim. Runkeeper crashed out on me, so I’ve had to estimate how far with Google Maps – I think about 7 miles, but I don’t really know how long. It started to rain about 1 mile out, and got heavier and heavier – I stopped at the Baths, and very nearly said “soddit” and went home, but I had to lock the bike up anyway, and go in and collect the headphones that I’d lost there last visit, so I did go for a swim. Only did 16 lengths – was tired after battling the rain, and I did some weights and resistance last night too. Still, better than nothing.

Put my wet clothes back on and pedalled home – not a long route, but not the most direct either. The parcel man had been while I was out, bringing me red shoes of stompiness from eBay – nearly all my shoes are too big, since I’ve been losing weight, and so I have to buy more; such a hardship.

a target achieved

I went to the gym this evening, for the first time in godknows how many years – six or seven, probably. I didn’t do anything too exciting – some treadmill with an 8% incline, 7 minutes on the cross trainer, and some weights.

As I was on my way home, I remembered that I’d set myself a target of being fit enough to cycle over to Bev Road Baths, do a gym session or have a swim, and cycle home again. I remember it as I pedalled down Ella Street, on a long way home, irritated that I hadn’t taken any lights with me, and couldn’t really go any further. And I cycled for half an hour yesterday before I arrived at the swimming pool at 7 a.m.

I may not be fit yet, but I’m sure as hell fitter than I was!

weekend 17/18 July 2010

We cycled down to the waterside early on Saturday morning, and spent most of the day there, watching the clipper boats come home, and enjoying the vibe (but not the rain and wind). Red Devils parachuting, and Royal Navy Black Cats doing daft things with helicopters too, and horde of people. Wandered up into town part way through for tea and a scone at Ferens Art Gallery, and checked out some rucksacks, as I need a bigger one. Evening was spent watching An Education, which was excellent, although we felt the ending was a copout.

We had planned to go cycling on Sunday, but it was really windy, so we took ourselves off to Burton Agnes Hall, making use of our Historic Houses Association membership. A beautiful Elizabethan manor house, still lived in by the same family who built it at the turn of the 17th century, with some stonking art collected by various denizens over the years – Matisse, Gauguin, Constable, August John – and they’re still collecting. The current inhabitants have young children, and use all the house when it’s not full of visitors, and it shows – it has a really nice feel to it.

There’s also a beautiful walled garden of an acre, with veg, fruit and flowers, board games marked out on paving slabs, various ponds, etc., a woodland walk, and lovely parkland. We shall go there again.

As it was so close to Bridlington, it seemed churlish not to go and see the sea, so we did that too, and had a brief stroll on the beach after consuming the compulsory fish and chips (I was good, and picked the batter off mine).

This week holds a big push to get a site finished, a proposal for a new biggish site, and the Driffield County Show (we’re skiving off on Wednesday, OK?). And more blood tests, which I’m a bit worried about, because I haven’t really been very good of late.