With a name like Phentermine...it has to be good!

Good afternoon.

I have got to tell you straight off the bat that I am...well not unlike my first week or so without cigarettes. I feel like everything is going a mile a minute. My heart is racing, my fingers are flying, my walk is like triple time. I am not going to lie...I love it!!! I feel like I could just keep going and going and going. On the flip side---it did not even take a day for my irritability to jump up from within. I know a certain manager who just about got the biz nitch from me today.

Oh, the things that we are willing to put ourselves through to lose weight.

How did I come upon this lovely little pocket of energy in capsule form? My CRAZY new doctor. As if having a doctor that was "assisting" you in losing weight, but never wrote down your weight was not bad enough...somehow at random (and a shout out to St. Luke's Physician referral service), I got hooked up with this pirate of the padded cell.

From an earlier debriefing I advised that I was pleased with my new doctor. On my first visit, she was just the right amount of personable, compassionate, and showed a willingness to help. She gave me big props for quitting smoking on my own and restored my faith in the medical profession. She did all of those things and more..that was until the phone call.

To set the tone, you should know that I had some blood work done...a litany of tubes and labels. The doctor let me know that I should call her in a week, if I did not hear back from them before then. My original appointment was on Wednesday, I waited until Thursday the following week to call...they were busy, but if I leave my number, she will call me back later on in the afternoon. I carefully recite my cell phone number to her and advise that I am at home for the rest of the day. She asks "Is this your home phone?" I advise very succinctly that I only have a cell, we do not have a home phone (by choice).

The waiting game begins.........

No call, all day, nothing. It's creeping closer to 5 and I tell myself that she is a new doctor for me and I don't want to jump right in and become "that" patient. I have convinced myself that her office hours are later, or she has a lot of paperwork. By 7 o'clock, I resign to myself that I have been overlooked.

I will call her in the morning. Little did I know that I was in for the most curious conversation I have ever had in my life. I get to work and prep myself to call her. Damn...her office doesn't open until 8:30. Well, I will have to call her later, but for now I will listen to my work voicemail...8 new messages.....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (people I work with understand)

1st message---customer
2nd message---atty
3rd message---Dr. Renfert "Christie, please give me a call when you get this"
4th message---insured
5th message---Dr. Renfert "Christie, I guess we are playing phone tag, give me a call, please"

***this is just me, but doesn't phone tag require two parties to play

6th message---Dr. Renfert "It's me again, I have your blood work"
7th message---hang up
8/th message---Dr. Renfert "Christie, I guess we could keep playing this way all day, but for the most part your blood work looks fine, but (and this is where time stopped for me) there was thing that was of GREAT concern to me, so give me a call in the morning"

Hmm...great concern.

15 minutes til 8:30.

I call her office as the clock changes from 8:29 to 8:30. I am connected to her directly. Very cheery voice, the conversation continues below.

"Your blood work looks really good" she says with a smile. "Cholesterol is fine, but there is one thing that is VERY CONCERNING to me"

"What's that?" I ask sheepishly.

"Are you somewhere that you can discuss this?" she questions.

"Yes, I can discuss whatever?" I reply with increasing nervousness.

" Your blood work" she begins, "reveals to me that you are....B O R D E R L I N E diabetic."

I laugh out loud...I laugh hysterically.

Dr. Renfert, obviously annoyed indicates very distinctly that diabetes is not a laughing matter.

I shared with her that I was very well aware of this, I explained that I meant her no disrespect and relayed to her in no uncertain terms that I would have hoped that she would have remembered our conversation from a week ago where I advised her that I am a Type II diabetic and was diagnosed 6 years ago.

She continued that my fasting blood sugar which in a non-diabetic is 120 or less and mine was 117...dumbfounded, I let her continue to tell me that I was only borderline diabetic or I was doing a really good job of keeping my sugars under control. She told me that I might have to get this thing called a "Glucometer" to check my blood sugars. I stop her again and I tell her I already have one. I get a new one every year and have for the last SIX years.

At this point, she is trying to get off the phone with me, but I ask her well, what about my A1C ( a test that can tell a physician what you average blood sugars have been over the past 3 months)

She recites "In someone without diabetes, we like the A1C to be under 5.9, yours is a 7 (not good, but not bad)" I question her on whether that wouldn't say to her that I am diabetic rather than borderline to which she responded..."that is something to think about"

I can not fathom that this is a REAL conversation I am having with a REAL physician, she then advises that "along that same line, we did find protein in your urine which is a definite indication that your diabetes is affecting your kidneys and they are showing signs of kidney damage.

Hmmmm...Everything EXCEPT for my fasting blood sugars shows I am diabetic, but we are going to err on the side of stupid and say that I am not.

Great choice in Dr.'s!

Tomorrow's goal is to be more active and less LOOPY!