Health Progress

Hi guys!

It's been a while since there was a post, and I wanted to update you all on things.

Overall, progress has been very good for me.

I've lost 35lbs in the last few months. A1C has gone from 11 at the end of April to 5.5 today. My Lipids profile shows the bad cholesterol and stuff is half of what it was in May.

The more concerning stuff is my eyes and heart. An echocardiogram showed that my heart has thickened in the last chamber growing inward which means that it has less volume to fill with blood to pump out to the body. It's not extreme but it is enough to be concerning.

For my eyes, I have severe non-proliferative retinopathy. I'm getting anti-VEGF injections in the eye because its on the verge of becoming proliferative, which means leaky/weak blood vessels. The hope is the injections will help stabilize things and my vision shouldn't get worse and stay stable.

My kidneys are fine, last time my labs were done in May they showed minor amounts of protein leakage but it was just above baseline and that seems to have stopped.

I've basically cut all carbohydrates and maintained strict calorie control for the last 3months while doing my best to do multiple daily walks of 1 mile. I wanted to do more but I'm still having problems with my blood pressure. I'm waiting to see the cardiologist and neurologist this month about my heart and that.

I really have just been relaxing and taking it easy while working on myself. I was going to give more frequent updates but I didn't have any progress on resuming writing on things yet. But I'm hopeful, especially with the good results today.

I know the hardest part of this isn't actually managing to do this well (over the last few months) but maintaining it for the rest of my life. It's a bit daunting.

Actually, one of the reasons I had health insurance this year was because of the books doing well on amazon and audible. I was able to get a health.gov plan. Without that I don't think I would be able to afford all the medical care/medicine I'm getting now, so it has basically saved me there.

Thanks to all of you again.