Quark, Strangeness and Charm

Some may find this sacrilegious, but I've never been as big a fan of John Lennon's solo work as I am of his work with the Beatles.  McCartney's either.  They were near-perfect collaborators.  Apart, I've just never found either as satisfying musically.  Having said that, I'll admit that I liked the direction Lennon's life was taking when he died, both musically and in his personal life.  I would love to know where he would have gone musically from Double Fantasy.  He seemed to be finding some peace and stability in his private life that had been eluding him for a long time.  Such a waste to have been cut short.

I'm already super-smart, so it might be fun to be super-rich for a change.

(Kiiiiidding, people!  Sheesh!)

"You'd think a librarian would organize his own books better."

Yesterday made two weeks since my visit to an internist for a second opinion regarding my diabetes diagnosis, and yesterday I went back to my regular doctor for a follow-up to my initial visit with him.  So I've had a little time to process what I've learned, to see where I am and where I need to be going.

As expected, I do indeed have diabetes.  But the trip to the internist was a much more enlightening, optimistic, and even inspirational visit than I was expecting.  For one thing, he told me that, as diagnoses go, I'm just barely diabetic.  Consequently, he believes my condition is reversible.  He outlined how losing fat is the key to getting back to good health.  He tried to diagram it all on a Post-It note, with tiny pictures representing insulin, sugar, my blood stream, and fat cells.  It was kind of cute, the Mr. Rogers way he tried to describe it, but even simplified, a lot of it went over my head.  Still, his instructions to me were clear: lose fat and keep it off, and I just might be able to stop taking medicine for diabetes ... eventually.

So, I'm on a quest to lose 40 pounds and keep it off.  I was originally going to say 50 pounds, but since September 1, I've already lost 10 pounds!  I was at 256 when I went to my doctor September 1.  Yesterday I was at 246.  My target is 206.  Considering I once got as low as 185 (which really wasn't healthy for me), I know I can do this.

(That's weighing me on my doctor's scale.  At home, almost naked and about to get in the shower first thing in the morning, I'm at 243.  Hey, it doesn't sound like much, but I'll take it!)

The internist set a goal for me of losing two pounds per month.  My doctor says a half a pound to a pound a week, for a total of between two and four pounds a month.  I certainly think that's doable.  As they both noted, you don't put on weight all at once, so it's unrealistic to think you can lose it all at once.  That means I won't get to my target weight for about a year to a year and a half, but that's okay.  It's more important to make steady progress—that means my habits are changing.

Oh, and my glucose levels are pretty close to normal, too.  Another good sign.

My doctor still wants to sign me up for diabetes education, and I'm still having a hard time fitting it into my schedule.  But at least I'm not ducking their calls or swearing at the hospital people anymore.

Meanwhile, I've gotten so good at sticking my finger with a needle that, 30 minutes after sticking myself, I can't remember which finger I stuck.  I've gotten to where I can draw just as much blood as I need (which really isn't much at all; a pinhead is too much) and no more.  That's a big improvement over the beginning, when I was leaving bruises on my fingers that would last for days.

The things you find you have a talent for!

My biggest stumbling block so far has been that there aren't a lot of healthy eating choices for me in local restaurants.  I'm on a crusade to have our local delis find some substitute for potato chips with their sandwiches.  Potatoes in general are among the worst foods for diabetics, with French fries maybe being the worst ever.  How hard would it be to substitute a dollop of coleslaw?

I also haven't tried to eat at my parents' house yet.  Oh dear, what a nightmare that's going to be.

I still can't quite bring myself to end the pity party ("Why me?!"), but I'm getting better.  Anytime I want to wallow in the unfairness of all this, I just think of my dad.  My dad is 77 years old.  He's had a few health problems over the years—stomach cancer in his forties, a thyroid operation over 15 years ago—all of which he recovered from.  He was a two-pack-a-day smoker until about 12 years ago, when he quit cold turkey.  He's no athlete and would never dream of exercising for its own sake, but he stays active year round with several hours of yard work and home repair projects every day.  He'll never be confused with a young man, but he has no heart disease, no cholesterol problems, and no diabetes.

And the man eats garbage.

My dad's four basic food groups are fat, salt, sugar, and grease.  This is what he eats at every opportunity:

• Bread is plain white bread (aka "sandwich loaf," the kind that's square and cheap).
• Meat is breaded and fried.
• Vegetables are either breaded and fried or boiled down to mush, with all the vitamins, minerals, texture, and crunch—and taste—leached out.
• Salads?  What the hell is a salad?
• Cantaloupe is served at every meal.  I don't believe either of my parents has ever eaten a meal without cantaloupe.  That's their idea of a fresh vegetable.  I think they honestly believe eating cantaloupe every meal, regardless of what else they're eating along with it, means they're eating healthy.  I would be perfectly happy never to see another cantaloupe as long as I live.  (Actually, I have a good excuse for that now: all melons are high on the glycemic index.  I took a perverse delight in pointing that out to my parents when they told me how "healthy" they eat.)
• Dessert is ... well, just put a sugar bowl and a spoon in front of him and he'll be fine.  You don't want to know more than that.

In terms of health, I'm somewhere between my mom and my dad.  I just described my dad.  I don't eat the crap he eats, but I exercise and try to stay physically active.  Like me, my mom has high blood pressure and high cholesterol, for which she takes medication.  But in terms of exercise, she's a lump.  She reminds me of the people I was in Weight Watchers with who congratulate themselves for all the exercise they get walking to the mailbox instead of riding their lawnmower.  Except my mom doesn't do either.

My dad always ran the house with an iron hand when I was growing up; whatever he wanted, he got.  So meals have always been about what he wanted.  When my mom and I both started having health problems, she tried to cook healthy items for both of us to eat, but they somehow always got subsumed by what my dad likes.  And of course, there's the dreaded trap of thinking "Everything's okay to eat ... in moderation."  Somehow, "moderation" becomes "every freakin' time, and lots of it."

Also, my mom has some kind of psychological syndrome—I see this a lot in old people, especially in my family—where she thinks she has to one-up anyone around her who has health problems.  Rodeo Kitty says, "It's just a matter of time before she goes to the doctor and tells him she thinks she's diabetic.  Because you're diabetic, and you can't be unhealthier than her."  I'm kind of disputing that, as I can't imagine my mom ever sticking herself with a needle.  I can, however, imagine her getting my dad to do it for her.  So who knows?  Rodeo Kitty may be right.  Or my mom could actually end up diabetic anyway.  She's not getting any younger than the rest of us.

Well, that's how things stand on the health front right now.  I'm a lot more positive than I was this time last month.  I just need to keep up the diet and exercise ... and not accept any dinner invitations from my parents.

I really didn't intend to stay away from here so long.  Summer just kind of got away from me.  August in particular was a bear.  Between the heat (over 100 degrees every day except at the very end), wrapping up the summer semester, and preparing for the fall, I've just been über-busy.

I meant to post my photos from my spring break New Orleans trip, but in going over them, I realize just how close my camera was to completely dying on that trip.  I had a feeling I shouldn't have taken those pictures of the bones in the open crypts at Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1.  Marie Laveau must have put a hex on me and my camera.  All my shots came out with a pinkish-purplish tint to them.  Then there were the pictures I took on our bus tour of the Ninth Ward.  I took literally hundreds of pictures, of which not more than one or two are worth a second glance.  My camera got steadily worse over the summer, until by last month, it just up and died.  (Another August fatality?)  After a respectable period of mourning, I bought a new one: an Olympus FE-4030.  It's a much smaller camera than my old one, and at times I don't think it seems as robust.  It has some features I like and some I don't; but at twice the megapixels and half the price of my old one, I can't complain too much.  I certainly got a lot of camera for the money.  One of these days I hope once again to post some pictures worth looking at.

Meanwhile, poor Zack.  For the last two six-week periods of the spring semester, he was in serious danger of flunking out of 9th grade.  Rodeo Kitty and I have been at a loss to explain it, but suddenly he ... just ... didn't ... get ... it.  He couldn't function in class.  He stopped turning in assignments.  He stopped listening to his teachers.  He started getting into petty squabbles with other students.  Finally, he forged a report card.  Rather cleverly, I might add, though not cleverly enough to fool either of us.  It was only through a combination of carrots and sticks that we were able to get him motivated enough to buckle down and finish the year.  He passed everything and is now in 10th grade.

And we're starting the semester the way we finished the last one.

This year we even allowed him to opt out of AP classes (it wasn't much of a choice: his AP English teacher from last year said she "wouldn't even consider" recommending him for additional AP English classes) in hopes that regular classes might be more to his liking.  But emails from his teachers about missed assignments and botched tests are becoming a near-daily occurrence.

I knew when Zack was in 2nd grade that he is a very smart kid who doesn't like going to school.  Unfortunately, he has the lofty goal of becoming an engineer.  Pretty hard to do that if you don't like school.

Next Friday we have an appointment for him to see a psychiatrist.  This is pretty much a last-ditch effort to save what is becoming a lost child.  Our lost child.

In other news, in an incident virtually identical to the last one, Levitra the weenie dog killed another kitten.  I couldn't convince Rodeo Kitty to find another home for her after the first incident, so ... we had another incident just like the last one.  After Rodeo Kitty cradled a dying kitten in her hands and continued to find blood in her purse and computer case weeks after the incident, she has finally realized that we can no longer keep Levitra.  She's actively trying to find another home for her.

That's why I changed my avatar.  I know she's just a dog, doing what dogs instinctively do.  But she's no longer worthy to represent me.

Now on to me.

I went to the doctor on September 1 for a blood test.  I hadn't been feeling myself this summer.  I got up early in the morning before the heat got oppressive and jogged for a mile and a half at least five days a week, and I gained weight.  I was turning into a shapeless blob.  I suspected low testosterone—because, let's face it, every time a drug company comes out with a new drug to help men with their virility problems, we men think that's what's wrong with us.  I also hadn't been sleeping very well (although that could have been the heat), and I'd had trouble concentrating.  I'm supposed to have my cholesterol checked every year anyway, and it was about time for my annual checkup.

The nurse drew my blood, and I waited for the results.  My doctor came in and asked me if I had any history of diabetes in my family.  Actually, no, that's one thing my family has managed to avoid.  We get everything else—heart disease, cancer, freak accidents—but not diabetes.  He scratched his head, went away, ran some more tests, and came back a little later.

"Well, looks like you're the first."

I've already got high blood pressure and high cholesterol.  Now I've hit the trifecta of crappy old-guy diseases?  Jesus Christ, just go ahead and start shoveling dirt on me.

At that point the nurse handed me the telephone.  On the other end was the unctuous voice of someone in charge of diabetes education for the local hospital.  He wanted to set me up with an extensive program of diabetes education classes, lasting eight weeks and taking up at least two hours of my time a week that I should be at work.  Now, unlike most people in the Western Hemisphere, I don't carry a BlackBerry or iPhone or any other electronic device that doubles as a scheduler, so I had no idea when I might be free to start.  Besides, I wasn't taking this diagnosis sitting down, standing up, lying sideways, or any other direction you can think of.

I told "Bob the Educator" (that's what the nurse called him, so help me) in the most controlled tone I could muster, "I cannot, repeat, CANNOT have fucking diabetes."

"Yes, I know," he said in his best Mr. Rogers voice.  "Denial runs deep in these cases."

I didn't hear much after that.  I have a certain kind of ADD that kicks in whenever someone soothingly tries to talk me into something I'm violently opposed to doing.  It's the same kind of ADD I get when I have to write employee evaluations or read management literature.

They gave me a prescription for metformin, a drug to induce my pancreas to work harder at processing my blood sugar (at least that's how I understand it).  They also gave me a glucose monitor and some pins to stick myself with.  I've gotten pretty proficient at sticking myself every morning.  In fact, I can stick myself so that, by noon, I can't tell which finger I stuck.  It's nice to find you have a talent you didn't know you had.

Because this is such a life-changing diagnosis, and because I'm an ornery cuss when I choose to be—and because life's too short to spend any more time than I have to in the same room with people like Bob the Educator—I have an appointment with an internist for next Tuesday to get a second opinion.  Although at this point I'm about 99.9% sure the original diagnosis is correct.

Goddamn it.

This is the same reason why I don't do routine maintenance on my car beyond the 3,000-mile oil change.  Every time they do maintenance according to schedule, it drives worse.  I'm going to quit going to my doctor for annual checkups.  I just know next year they'll find cancer or some other damn thing.

Well, at least I can no longer say I don't have anything to write about.  Stay tuned for Boodgie's Diabetes Diary.  (Say, that's catchy.)

It saddens me to report that the chicken died sometime during the night, two weeks from the day Zack brought him home.  Fortunately, it was not at the paws of any of the dogs or cats.  He appears to have expired of natural causes.  He started getting sick yesterday morning and gradually got worse throughout the day.  When we went to bed last night, it was with the expectation that he wouldn't make it through til morning.  And he didn't.

I spent three and a half hours in the same room with him Sunday night, watching Saving Private Ryan and looking over at him now and then.  And as much as I hate to say this, I learned during that time why crippled baby chicks are culled out and euthanized.  He couldn't stand up.  He couldn't walk.  He flapped his wings if he needed to move anywhere, but that didn't get him far.  I knew his immobility wasn't going to get any better, short of sending him to a faith healer.  If I were to guess, I'd say he died from expending too much energy just trying to stay alive.  I never saw much of a future for the poor little thing from the beginning, and I can't help but think we didn't do him any favors by keeping him alive.

Worse, all the people we know who raise chickens (and for city dwellers, we sure know a lot of people who raise chickens) told us that if we were to put him in with other chickens, they would kill him.  "Have you never heard the term 'pecking order'?" one asked us, incredulous that we would even suggest putting him in with other chickens.  (Forgive us, we're suburbanites.)  So if he'd had any future at all, it wouldn't have been in a traditional hen house with other chickens.

I brought my concerns up to Rodeo Kitty and Zack several times between Sunday night and yesterday morning, and they make a point of ignoring me.  Did you know that denial has its own look?  I can't describe it, but that's the look I kept getting.

By yesterday morning, even they knew it was just a matter of time.

Now he's gone, Sebastian is depressed, and the rest of us are all feeling a little down.  An appropriate period of mourning will be observed.  Donations of food are appreciated (no chicken dinners, please).  Meanwhile, at least we've got a lot of friends who raise chickens.  Chicken feed doesn't come in bags of less than 50 pounds, and we've got a 49.99999-pound bag taking up space by the back door.  I'm sure someone we know could use it.

Alert readers may remember that it was about this time last year that we found Sebastian, the kitten with a maggot-infested wound, in a shopping cart at Walmart.  We weren't sure at the time that he was going to pull through; he had a very rough couple of months in the beginning.  Well, I'm happy to report that he's a year old now, and he's grown into a happy, healthy cat with a loving family of brothers and sisters of varying species, human included.  His tail looks kind of rough where his wound was.  The vet said the maggots ate some of the gluteal muscle and it won't come back.  So his hiney is pretty bony on the left side near the base of his tail.  His hair is also very thin there.  In fact, his whole tail looks almost like an afterthought, as if someone played pin-the-tail-on-the-kitty with him and didn't get very close.  But none of that seems to bother him.  He can climb trees and jump on the roof as well as the best of them.  And—surprise, surprise—he loves attention.

He also has a compassionate streak of his own.

Last Thursday, Rodeo Kitty got a cryptic phone message from Zack: "Uh, Mom, it's me, Zack.  [I love how he feels the need to remind his mother who he is.]  You need to come to the school and bring money because they have a chicken, and they're going to kill it."

*click*

It took Rodeo Kitty three hours to track down the story and decipher just what Zack meant by that.  It turned out that one of his classmates, who raises chickens, had brought a chick born with a deformed leg to school that morning.  Apparently in the chicken-raising business, a deformity such as that is grounds for putting the chick down.  And my tender-hearted son couldn't let that happen.

So the next day, Rodeo Kitty sent Zack to school with $3.00 and a birdcage.

( And this is what he brought home: )

I'd be seriously disappointed and horrified at the absence of hair.  On the other hand, I'd be delighted that long hair on men is no longer fashionable and that most people think it's no big deal if you can't grow any.  I'll always love 60s music, but I don't miss much else about that decade.

Strangely, nothing else I can think of even comes close.

I think I'm being punished for having had so much fun on spring break.  Seriously.  The Meeting Fairy has visited me almost every day at work since I got back.  Sometimes I've had as many as four meetings a day.  Thank you, Meeting Fairy!

We had a lot of fun in New Orleans, and I'm hoping to post about it very soon, complete with pictures.  Unfortunately, my pictures were a big disappointment.  I think my camera might be dying.  That would really be a bummer.  It's not even five years old yet.   On some shots, without warning, it would fade into pink and purple streaks.  Very odd.  Also, Rodeo Kitty and I went on a three-hour Hurricane Katrina tour, and, well, have you ever tried to make pictures from a moving bus?  Not many of those came out, I'm afraid.

So, until I can sort through my spring break pics, I thought I'd bring you up-to-date on Delilah, our new basset hound.  We've had her a little over three months now, and she's already bigger than Levitra the weenie dog.

( First, there was the inevitable adjustment period, which was harder on some than on others ... )

"Hey, dumbass!  It's time to get back on LiveJournal!"