I honestly think I should call the cardiologist office tomorrow and clarify what he told me, though I might just wait until the nurse calls.
I was kind of freaked out that she didn’t call today, but then I remembered what she said — she had to call and get the procedure pre-certified before she could make an appointment.
I personally think most of what is going on with me is caused by the uncontrolled GERD, which was caused by the uncontrolled stress.
I think the cardiologist said that the borderline stress test could also be caused by the GERD … but that could be denial talking. I will say that I’m putting the borderline stress test together with the decreased ability to run my dogs. I hope I am getting 5, not 4.
Amy from Diabetes Mine came by and sent me a personal email and was a bit shocked that I was having problems. Frankly, I’m not THAT surprised. I’ve had sleep apnea for a very long time, it has been estimated that I started suffering from it after my car wreck when I was 20. Though lack of sleep seems to be one of those genenic vs environment arguments for me. I don’t think anyone in my dad’s family sleeps that well.
In fact, it was my pulmonary specialist who sent me to the first cardiologist, mainly to make sure that the sleep apnea hadn’t already caused heart damage. I’ll be frank, I’m actually relieved to be on an APAP, I haven’t been confident that the CPAP was doing the full job.
I’ve talked with a couple of close friends, and we all agree that I’m approaching this from the right angle — I told my current cardiologist that the reason I started seeing him regularly at 45, was so that we could meet in his office and discuss things in a sane rational way, rather than meeting him in an ER — and not even having a choice of cardiologist at the time — and making decisions in panic mode.
In other words, it is a lot better deal with a blockage, if I have one, while we are in his office, and not after I’ve been hauled into the ER, probably from a dog show, and have to deal with it on an emergency basis.
Anyway, diabetes isn’t the only factor in causing any complications. I’ve got environment to thank — I grew up eating and learning how to cook very fatty and salty foods. I started cooking for the family when I was in 6th grade, and I am quite sure that no more than 3 days passed without cooking something with a cream sauce in it. As I said before, my role models didn’t sleep. Especially on my father’s side of the family. When I was in college — and I still do this the last few weeks of school, I would run none stop, and then sleep for three days straight at the end of the semester.
I’ve got the sleep apnea, GERD, and morbid obesity to thank for this. It might be time for bariatric surgery, but I don’t have time to go there until Christmas 2006. Besides, it usually takes that amount of time to get the insurance on board.
The good news, is that I did 30 minutes on the treadmill tonight, straight, without a break, though I did slow down that pace, then did over 10 laps in our pool. Man, it was nice tonight.
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