So, today I had my follow up with my primary care physician. Last week was Endocrinologist follow up. Between the two there was definitely a miscommunication. I’ll get to that later. It was a simple one, but still.
As an aside, the VA here in Fayetteville, NC has improved tremendously. The schedulers, the nurses, front desk people. Wow. Streamlined just like you would expect of any professional establishment. They must be listening to their customers. I checked in 5 minutes early, and was seen within 10 minutes of my scheduled appointment. In the past, it would have been more like an hour wait. Especially the one I went to in Phoenix. Nightmare that place was. So I give applause to them here. Smooth running machine. Thank guys.
After the nurse re-validated who I was for the third time after checking in (which is good, there is another Johnson in there with the same last six digits of the social security number) which is something I have gotten used to having such a common name:roll_eyes:. She does a double take at the records. Looks at me. Looks at the page on her left, looks at the page on her right. Looks at me again. Clears her through, and has the biggest smile on her face as she says, “ it says here in Aug you had an A1c of 11.8%? And this test last week shows it’s now 5.8%?!? How?” That how was incorporated in with a bunch of stuttering and babbling for what felt like it was taking her forever to get it out. Must have been about three or four seconds really. She almost looked like she was going to get up and dance. She said it was remarkable. She has never seen anything like it. She double checked the records again to be sure they were correct. I assured her they were. She took my blood pressure and weight (the chair I was in had a scale built in, way cool. Had tons of diagnostic equipment attached to it. Made me think of Doctor McCoy 
. I was getting geek on.
Then another double take, well, two double takes on my blood pressure. It was 170/130. She coughed, and didn’t want me to see it. I said, oops. I just ran up 3 flights of stairs. Could that have effected it? 
. So after 3 more attempts she got a reading she could use. 130/80. She had to adjust the chair for me, it was very uncomfortable.
But when she looked at my weight, she was amazed. She was comparing it to the reading in Sept, which was 245. She said,”wow, 40 pounds in four months?” And I said no, it was 40 pounds in two weeks😁 with a much bigger smile than that. I had her attention. She said she had to know. How was it possible to do this?
So I didn’t break it gently, since she was asking me for it, I hit her with both barrels. I replaced all my carbs with fat. I eat, well try to eat, as close to zero carbs as possible. Her jaw dropped. Maybe I hit her a little two hard. After a moment she asked if it was difficult. I admitted, the hardest part was giving up the addiction to carbs. Which she admits is her problem too. She said she’s gotta have her pizza. I began to mention the foods I now eat, steak, eggs, bacon, my 500 calorie coffee. My visit was no longer about my diabetes. It was about introducing her to Keto. and I was fine with that.
She was slightly overweight. Not nearly to extent that I was, but is was just this side of noticeable. But not so much that I would say she was fat. More like normal, with a little extra. And she was eating up the info. She had more patients to tend too, but I could tell she wanted more. She kept stalling and asking more. I gave her Dr Fungs name, a quick summary of the Obesity Code. And the address to this Forum. Hopefully she come here and reclaims control of her sugar dominated health.
THEN THE DOCTOR COMES IN. First, please note. I am really good with accents. I am really good and communicating with persons who are ESL (English second language). Probably from growing in in the immigrant district of San Francisco. I had friends from every continent in my schools I attended there. I’ve even been able to understand without them even speaking English. I was always good at observation and keeping context (I guess, my ex wife would argue that one🤠)
So, my primary care Doctor is Chinese I believe. Based on his name, and accent. I won’t use it here for obvious reasons. We (he) we’re having horrible communication problems. I’m pretty sure he allotted a certain amount of time with me, and was already behind, and wanted to end the visit as quickly as he could. He looked over everything, said, “ok, keep taking your BP meds, your statins, and the Metformin.” I told him I haven’t been taking it since mid November. He said, ok. Just don’t discontinue them as your blood sugar will spike really high and could harm you. I got really serious looking so he would pay attention this time as I told him the how and why I discontinued it on my own. Which prompted me to ask about the benefits of continuing it anyway for other reasons. Such as reversing IR (insulin resistance). And that I never had been taking statins. Ever. This was news to me.
This got his attention. Caused him to open my records and look again. Made sure he was looking at the right Johnson, and said, “I see, very good job on lowering your a1c, you must be eating much healthier and exercising a lot now.” So I leveled with him, because I needed him to understand, I wanted to know if taking Metformin could help with my IR. He refused to talk about it, said I needed to talk with my Endocrinologist about that. And that I should continue talking my meds, to prevent a sugar spike. 
Reminded of of a line of Arlington Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant, “and the judge came in and sat down. And the seeing eye dog came in and sat down. And the Sheriff looked at the 27 8x10 glossy color photographs with he circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back explaining what each one was, and looked at the seeing eye dog”
So stood up, shook his hand and said thank you Doc.
It was at most, an underwhelming experience. I was prepared for some confrontation of some kind. But instead was received with, ‘meh’.
But at least that nurse got some info to help her out. Makes the entire day worth it🤠
It isn’t Thanksgiving at my home without Alice’s Restaurant.