Tag: metformin


We are the CIA

19
November

The title was just on the CBS Evening News. I thought it was cute. Anyway, so what’s up, world? I’m still alive, I guess. I mean, I’m not dead, and I don’t think I’m undead. ;)

What’s been going on?

I finally got my neuropathy checked out. The doctor I saw forgot to put it in my chart that I had peripheral neuropathy as a result of fluoroquinolone poisoning, so the next week when I had to go back because I was having pain and popping in my wrist, the next doctor I saw at the clinic didn’t believe that I could have possibly reacted so quickly to Cipro. Whatever. He also almost gave up on me having a pulse in my wrist because he couldn’t find it. He got out the doppler, which was the first time I’d had one of those used on me, and checked. He quickly found my pulse in the left wrist, but the right one (which had been easy to find without the thing) was hard to hear. I’m a tough case. He decided I had carpal tunnel, though I wasn’t showing symptoms of that. He gave me a prescription for Ibuprofen (600 mg) and Zantac (75 mg). Now, this was after he saw in my chart that I said I could not under any circumstances take Ibuprofen. He determined that the potential ulcer risk was not that bad, thus the miniscule Zantac dose. (I have been on 300 mg at a time in the past.) He thought that I must have minor bouts of gastritis from time to time since I’m not on a Proton Pump Inhibitor (Prilosec, Nexium, Prevacid, etc.) and that that did not warrant having a warning in my chart. I’m sure that would be news to the various gastroenterologists I’ve had. I don’t take acid reflux medicines, though I have it, because my “tummy doc” prefers to treat it with liquid carafate. If you’ve never had it, imagine taking a piece of chalk and crushing it and mixing it with water. Now, add a little fruit flavor. Imagine downing some of this before every meal. You will now understand why I refuse to take the stuff. Besides, my doc realized that I was no longer taking it and told me that I could live without it. I just have to grab Gaviscon and down 4 at a time. Bleh.

What else?

I finally went to see my psychiatrist again. Fun, right? Apparently, I’m fat. No shit sherlock. Apparently, this fatness is a protection to keep me from ever having to deal with the males of the species. Um, sure. It comes from being abused as a child. Uh…the predominate abuse I received as a child had to do with already being overweight. She then told me that I’m overeating, which is funny because I keep buying food to eat and I don’t end up eating it. I’ve had 3 meals in the past 48 hours. I’ve snacked a little, but only to keep my energy level up. I have yogurt I got weeks ago that I haven’t eaten, and fruit…these are things I ENJOY eating, but I haven’t eaten them lately. Oh, but since I’m obese, I’m one of those people who gorges out on food. I had to lie about my exercise level, because she didn’t understand that when one has chronic pain and various fatigue issues, then one does not necessarily like to get up off her butt and exercise. Of course, she didn’t understand that the lovely Depakote that I used to down 7 at a time of had been a factor in my weight gain. She also debated whether or not I could possibly put on about 30 pounds of “water weight” with my period. (I know, most women put on 3-10 pounds. In my family, we do the 25-45 pound thing.) Well, then, perhaps she can explain how the week after my period I was at one weight, the day before I was 25 pounds heavier (a week later, I know the period coming that quickly is not healthy), then shortly after the period was over (about 3 weeks after it had started) I had lost the majority of the weight. Hmm…doesn’t take a rocket scientist.

I had another drug reaction. I have been taking my Metformin once a day like a good little insulin resistant hypoglycemic (if I hadn’t had hypoglycemia, it would have been more often) for about a year. All of a sudden about 3 weeks ago, I started itching. I had this intense itching ALL over. Anywhere that there was tissue (internally and externally) I was in a painful itching state. My mom and I decided that I should try going off the Metformin. Since I went off of it, the itching has started going away. I have also started peeing more. (I had almost stopped while on it.) I know that was quite an overshare.

Oh, and I’m still doing quite a bit of the care for my mom.

I’m excited about tomorrow. You didn’t think I’d go without saying SOMETHING about New Moon, did you?

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*le sigh*

27
November

My Thanksgiving has sucked. Actually, my week has pretty much sucked. The movie was great, but so much happened in the hours following the movie. My grandmother called and had developed pneumonia, so I stayed with her for a night to make sure she was okay. Then, my mom stayed with her the next two nights. I developed something like bronchitis, which got worse the more stressed I got. My mom’s health started to get worse, but I kept passing it off as her just being annoying. (I know it’s bad to do that, but sometimes I don’t get that she can be in so much more pain when we have virtually the same things wrong with us.) I stayed up cooking all night last night for today, and I was psyched. Then, my dad was all moody when he woke up because I’d left the TV on too loud when I was finished cooking and was just reading. Then, my mom, dad, and I went to my grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving like usual, only once we got there things took an unusual turn. She was fine for a while, then she got pale and started having trouble breathing and having trouble stopping this whole body twitching thing. It was scary, in a way, because I kept thinking that she was going to die before the ambulance got there. (My grandmother lives in the middle of nowhere practically, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have a reason to fear.) I wasn’t panicking, though. I stayed very calm. I tried to help the medics with as much information as possible. I didn’t start crying until she was in the ambulance and my dad was talking to her before they left. I was all by myself in the car, which, as you know, leads to badness. I was thinking of contingency plans. What did I do if my mom didn’t make it while in transport from my grandmother’s house to the hospital in Huntsville? I would survive, I finally determined, but I wasn’t sure what would be left of me. I mean, when you take into consideration that anyone who has ever seen the interaction between my mom and me has said that it’s like watching two people sharing one mind, it is important to realize that we feel like one person sometimes. Whatever hurts one, hurts the other. We don’t let each other do anything risky for fear the consequences not only to that person, but to ourselves. We’re very careful, which can lead to resentment, but it’s a resentment that we understand. Anyway, back to the whole this week’s suckage, we got to Huntsville after winding down some country roads pretty fast and my mom was told that her blood sugar had dropped to like 37. (The low end of normal is 70.) She was given some sugar and things started to get better. They had to give her a breathing treatment, which I figure is why her blood sugar started bottoming out again, partially. (If you’ve never had asthma medicine, let me tell you, it drains your body of every resource.) It hit 48 after it had gone up briefly. They gave her more sugar. She sent me home. I stayed at home, fielding calls from my grandmother every hour and a half. My mom was admitted to the hospital. My dad told me at 7:00 that he was about to come home. I started panicking around 8:10 when he wasn’t here. I thought that he should have been here at least 40 minutes earlier. I don’t like being alone in the dark, especially in an already tense situation. So he got here at about 8:30, and instead of berating him for not being here on time, I just let it slide. I felt like if I got mad at him, then I would be punished somehow for being a bad daughter and that I would end up with both parents in the hospital or worse. (Crazy, I know, but that’s how my brain works.)

I’m extremely tense right now, so I made a deal with my dad that I get to spend tomorrow at the movie theater. He asked me what I was going to see. That should have been an easy guess. I’m a dork, therefore what movie am I going to go see? Twilight, of course. Not once, but twice. There shouldn’t be too many teenage girls at the first showing, since it’s at 12:20 in the afternoon. I mean, most teens don’t go to matinees, even when school is out. (Always try to get the matinee, if you’re planning on booking seats to a popular movie.) It will probably be busier at 3:20 when the second showing starts.

I was planning on seeing the movie again, anyway, but I needed to pick something that I could just lose myself in. I’m pretty good at doing that when it comes to the whole Edward and Bella thing. I think when I come home, I may start reading the books again. I just finished them again this morning, but to me, they’re like comfort food. Since I haven’t been eating much at all since I went on the Metformin, I might have to take comfort in reading certain books instead of indulging in things that will cause my sugar to do what my mom’s has been doing…shooting up and plummeting.

I’m almost over my hypoglycemic thing that’s been going on today, as well. My mom and I both did the stupid thing this morning of taking our “sugar medicine” with candy, instead of real food. (If you can trick the drug into thinking that you’ve just taken in sugar, then you don’t have to eat as much, therefore leaving the pouch open for more food…which is a good thing on Thanksgiving.) It backfired on both of us, her more than me. My hypoglycemia kicked in and has been kicking my butt all day long. I finally had a meal at about 3 at the hospital, then some more real food at about 5:30 because my body had already gotten over the minor sugar rush that I had gotten from the real food I had eaten shortly before that. I had to eat a little more real food at 7. Then, I just grabbed a bottle of G2 and started swigging back the sugar in the form of light Gatorade. It seemed to even out my sugar, to where I was able to deal with it for a while while I waited on my dad to get home. Once he got home, my mood stabilized and so did my sugar. I haven’t been hungry the whole time he’s been home. Yay for small miracles.

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