Just got off the phone with my therapist.
Which reminds me : earlier this week, I finally got the gumption together to call my doctor’s office to make an appointment about all these fucking lesions on my legs.
I was told that he was no longer seeing patient in person but that I could make an appointment to talk to him on the phone.
And for whatever reason, this rattled me badly. In retrospect, that was a highly predictable outcome. No doctors are seeing people in person right now.
In fact, you could say doctors are avoiding their patients like the plague!
Cricket, cricket. Someone in the audience coughs.
But at the time, it came as a shock and I was definitely not ready to contemplate talking to him over the phone so I told the receptionist I would call back later.
That was three days ago, and so far, I have not called her back.
Because what the hell can my GP do for me over the phone? I can’t show him the lesions on my legs over the phone. Maybe I could do if I had a smartphone, but I do not.
And how can he know ho to treat them if he can’t even see them?
The only alternative I can think of is to go to the hospital. Maybe the ER, maybe not.
But at least at the hospital, they still see you in person.
Actually, forget calling them lesions. According to this webM article, they are ulcers.
It says I should be cleaning them once a day and keeping them wrapped in bandages at all other times.
Which is… a challenge. Not sure I could keep that up on my own.
But it’s possible that if I took this to the ER, they would get me on a regimen like I was on when I got my first big massive super infected ulcer (which never finished healing) where I go to the wound clinic three times a week so they can change the dressings and see what progress is being made.
That, I could handle.
According to the article, there could also be some kind of topical ointment to apply to them as well. That, too, I can handle.
Of course, it could be that the ER is pretty slammed right now from all the people like me who have the sort of thing a phone call can’t fix.
Plus COVID-19, of course.
And I imagine anti-contagion protocols will be quite strict.
But I have to do it. My legs are covered in these things. It’s only going to get worse unless I do something about it.
And if it gets much worse, my legs themselves might be in danger.
And I use them like, half a dozen times a day!
So it is decided. I will take my ulcerous legs to the ER some time soon.
Now it’s just a matter of working up the will to do it.
I will talk it over with Joe and see what time works for him to drop me off at the ER.
Time for me to buy another giant book of crossword puzzles, I think.
More after the break.
The sweet life
WARNING : Not as cute as it sounds.
Well, I finally did it. I got myself a new glucometer.
Went to the pharmacy yesterday to pic up my psych meds (only ten days after my therapist phoned in the prescription!) and went through the manual to set everything up and make sure I know what I am doing.
After all, much to my shame, it has been many years since I tested. Patient readers know I have done a piss poor job of managing my diabetes, and my only defense is depression can kill you in a lot of different ways.
Suicide is only one of them. It’s far more likely to kill you via one of the ways you self-medicate, whether it’s booze, drugs, or in my case, food.
So I am not arguing with the fact that I should have been taking better care of myself.
But I can’t afford to think like that because one of the strongest and most deadly component of why I didn’t go to the doctor for my skin ulcers is shame.
I was too ashamed to show a doctor what a bad job I had done of taking care of myself. To take this to my GP would be to confess failure to an authority figure, and that is hard enough for the mentally healthy.
For someone with serious social anxiety like me, it is Herculean.
Anyhow. so I got a new glucometer, set it up, and now I have taken some readings, and holy shit am I fucked up.
Like, I don’t know how I am even alive with blood sugar this high. My blood must have the consistency and viscosity of cold maple syrup.
So right now, I am trying to figure out how high it needs to be before “take some insulin” turns into “call 911”.
I mean, this afternoon I got a reading of 28.8 mmol/liter, and normal is 7.
I get the feeling that four times healthy is probably bad.
So far, all I can find is the danger range listed using the American system, which is 250 milligrams per decilter.
Because, being America,, they have to do things their own way, namely stupid.
Brainstorm! I thought to look up how to convert the American numbers to Canadian. Turns out it is super easy : just divide by 18.
That gives us a danger range starting at…. around 14.
So…. that 28 was double the emergency range.
Yeah, I am thinking the ER is in my near future.
What I am going to do is finish eating, wait an hour, test my blood, and if it’s still something ridiculous, I will go ask Joe or Julian to drive me to the ER.
No sense in calling 911 when I can get there just fine on my own.
I will also exercise before the reading in order to get that number down.
But I suspect that I will still end up going to the ER, and so along with exercising, I will pack a bag with some books, a change of clothes, and so on.
I highly doubt I will be admitted for the blood sugar, but they may admit me once they get a look at my legs.
I admit, I didn’t expect my results to be THAT bad.
Here’s hoping it’s not too late for me yet.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.