Some of the magazine covers Don displayed. (Didn’t know how to eliminate the reflection and the glare from the sun outside.)
I came home from last Sunday feeling fairly energetic, maybe because I knew that I didn’t have work the next day, and my time was my own until 8 a.m. Tuesday morning.
Compare that to today. Susie and I rode home on the bus after the service, and she went to her computer and started writing, chatting online with her friends, updating Facebook, etc. I stretched out on a futon in the dining room, a few feet away from where Susie was, and I didn’t even make a pretense of reading or watching some of the TV shows stacked up on the DVR. I pulled a cover up over myself and slept for the next two hours. And I still don’t feel that restored. I need to muster up some energy to make the trip to Kroger to buy bread and milk.
I am debating about using some sick leave tomorrow morning to go to my doctor’s office and getting the fasting blood glucose test she’s been wanting me to have since fall. I Twittered about it before starting this blog entry, and said that I’ve been procrastinating about it because I’m dreading what the result will be. A very astute high school classmate of mine quickly pointed out that what she may find won’t change what I do or don’t have. Which means I probably will go, if not tomorrow, than sometime this week.
There’s a chance (a pretty good one) that it may be tied into my overall lack of energy. My eating habits are atrocious, and I need to lose about 40 pounds (my BMI is 31.7, which is in the “obese” range). I almost always feel the need to drink something, and my energy seems very low. I know enough to realize that these may be symptoms of diabetes.
When I was living in Cincinnati in the early 1990s, I remember writing the usual news-filled letter to my dad about my seasonal hiatus from the post office, people I knew and lived near, etc. Almost as an afterthought, I said, “It seems that I’m always thirsty, no matter how much water I drink, and I almost constantly have to urinate, and I’m always exhausted, regardless of how much sleep I get.” (During the time I was laid off from the post office, I never slept better, because I could go to bed when I wanted and sleep as long as I wanted.) I told him about riding the bus downtown one day, and the urge to urinate was so sudden and so intense that I got off the bus and made a mad dash into a bar to use the men’s room. As a P.S. to the letter he sent me in reply, he said, “The thirst-urination thing could be a blood sugar problem. You may want to go to the next free screening offered by the Red Cross.” I didn’t; I waited until my annual post office physical, which revealed everything to be fine. (My guess is the symptoms came from my excessive caffeine consumption.)
One thing I realize is that in delaying the test, I am mimicking what my dad (probably) did the last few years of his life. He had an aversion to doctors coming anywhere near him. While he was in a coma from the heart attack from which he died, Steph and I went into his ICU room. There was no sheet or blanket covering his feet, and I was horrified to see long, curling, uncut toenails. He resembled those drawings of Howard Hughes during the last 10-15 years of his life, when he lived in total seclusion and complete neglect. (I thought Steph was going to lose her lunch when she saw that.) Reading between the lines, I suspect that my dad had diabetes, or thought he did, and wouldn’t go to the doctor for treatment. He knew that diabetics are more prone to infection than non-diabetics, from simple daily activities such as shaving (which he hadn’t done since 1975; he grew a beard when he and my mother divorced), cutting your nails, or even a simple skinned knee.
The temperature is just in the double digits right now, according to the bottom of my screen. I should probably take advantage of this brief heat wave to go to Kroger.
|