The long-awaited follow-up meeting with the pulmonary specialist, Dr. DeLeon, finally took place yesterday morning. Granted, she was forty-five minutes late, but that’s just the way “Filipino time” works. Surprisingly, despite my notorious lack of patience, I accepted the reality of how things are done here and didn’t get upset. That’s quite a milestone for me.
So, we started out with the chest x-ray:
Dr. DeLeon then reviewed the blood test results. She said everything was in the normal range except the glucose/fasting blood sugar level.
So, all in all, I’m happy with the results. Dr. DeLeon suggested I increase my dose of metformin to twice daily. I’m not entirely comfortable with that, but I will do so pending a meeting with Dr. Jo for a second opinion.
After finishing the consult, I took Swan and my helper (technically caregiver) Teri to lunch. I planned to eat at Jewel Cafe but forgot they are closed on Wednesday. So, we walked another block to Myleen’s. I had missed the Wednesday Walkers group hike due to my appointment and was surprised to see this when I entered Myleen’s:
When the evening hours rolled around, we caught a break in the rain and hurried out to Bar Celona to do some socializing.
When we were ready to change the scenery, we headed downstairs to The Green Room, a venue that is increasingly becoming our favorite place to hang out. Swan and our regular waitress, Chu, are becoming good buddies and enjoy chatting together. I’m on hand to keep the lady drinks flowing. Works for me. We bought a pizza for the working gals to share, then later ordered another pizza to bring home with us. On the Sit-n-Bull menu, one of the daily specials was a “Big Ass Meatball Sandwich.” I’ve never seen meat on a bun advertised that way, so I decided to give it a try.
And so ended another day. Enjoy them while you got them.
Some other excitement in my day came via the Facebook Gestapo. Seems they took issue with something I shared a couple of weeks ago. At the time, I was just passing it along as food for thought, but it turns out I’m guilty of a FB crime:
This is what got the Facebook Nazi’s in a tizzy:
And as long as we are in the political realm, how about this:
Today’s stroll down memory lane took me back to my sophomore year in high school, where a simulator just like this one was part of the driver’s training requirement to be licensed at sixteen.
Eight years ago, I was repromoted to the position I had retired from five years earlier: Director of Human Resource Management, 8th US Army/United States Forces Korea.
I’m in a rush this morning so I haven’t had time to watch today’s YouTube video. I’m sharing this one from George with street scenes from Olongapo City. I saw George last night during his brief stop at Green Room. He wasn’t recording then, though.
And now for your daily dose of humor:
This morning I was greeted with this rare treat:
Okay, I’ve got to shower up and finish packing for my trip. Look for something a tad more interesting here tomorrow—or at least less familiar. See you then!
In the ongoing battle between you and a different commenter, you keep saying your doc’s surname is “DeLeon” while the commenter insists on writing it as “Leon,” perhaps assuming the “De” is somehow unnecessary,* but I see on the sheet in the first photo that her actual surname is “Lucio-DeLeon.” Maybe this is similar to the “Barreto”-vs.-“Barretto” conflict, with different sources spelling it different ways. (I see in the photo that the document spells it the way you do, i.e., “Barretto.”)
That 120 FBS puts me in the “pre-diabetic” category. My mother suffered from diabetes, and that is something I don’t want to deal with in my old age.
Diabetes is bad only if you let it get out of hand, leading to possible strokes, heart attacks, amputations, blindness, organ failure, etc. That’s the extreme end of things. If you really want to watch out, you’ll cut out the alcohol, or at least cut way, way down. I’ve long respected your willpower in quitting smoking; I don’t smoke, but I’ve heard that quitting is a bitch, and most people fail. If you could apply that same willpower to the bottle…
Dr. DeLeon suggested I increase my dose of metformin to twice daily. I’m not entirely comfortable with that, but I will do so pending a meeting with Dr. Jo for a second opinion.
You might want to reread what I wrote about metformin here. Yes, it chases the sugar out of your blood, but the irony is that it shoves the sugar into your organs, which is what already happens naturally with full-blown diabetes, anyway. Metformin is bad news. My own doc prescribed it as well because most docs assess your diabetes only by looking at your blood-sugar level, which is too bad. Better stats would be triglycerides, HOMA-IR (insulin resistance… it’s bad to be resistant and better to be insulin-sensitive), and blood-insulin levels.
my helper (technically caregiver)
What’s the difference? A “caregiver” sounds as though you’re in a hospital bed at home and can’t move around, and the caregiver assists you with things like going to the bathroom and showering.
Swan and our regular waitress, Chu, are becoming good buddies and enjoy chatting together.
Warming up the replacement for Aine, I see.
but this fucker was the biggest I ever remember eating.
A lot of meat on those balls. Eat well.
The pizza. Yes, that’s pineapple on top. Hey, we are in the Philippines!
I’m not dogmatically against pineapple pizza. But it’s gotta taste good. The local Papa John’s has it on their menu, and I ordered it once, but it was disgusting.
Pecan pie for dessert. Hey, man does not live by blood sugar alone!
Yeah, maybe don’t check your blood sugar right after eating that. Looks good, though. Before this year, I’d have contemplated gobbling it whole.
Questions without answers are false information, don’t you know?
It does seem odd that they would flag questions, not statements.
I love the “pun master” meme’s sarcasm. That said, there are some puns that are so terrible they’ve startled a laugh out of me. I admit I like those puns.
Safe journey.
__________
*This is a dicey question. Take a name like “Ferdinand de Saussure,” the putative father of modern linguistics. When Americans refer to him, the standard thing to do, at least in spoken and some written English, is to include the preposition since it’s part of his name: “As de Saussure often said…” (We all say “Da Vinci,” not “Vinci.”) But—when you make an adjective out of de Saussure’s name, you drop the “de,” so how important is it, really? “We got deep into the morass of Saussurean nomenclature.” (Not “deSaussurean.”)
This is a whole rabbit hole: when I went looking around at different sources, I quickly discovered there are all sorts of naming conventions depending on the country: Spanish is different from Italian is different from Portuguese, for example. Some traditions include the “de” and some drop it. The Chicago Manual of Style notes that bibliographical citations will write “Simone de Beauvoir” as “Beauvoir, Simone de.” The preposition isn’t ignored, but it’s also not attached to the family name. If we go by the Pulp Fiction rule of “I’m American, honey; our names don’t mean shit,” then it seems you’re free to do what you like in informal contexts.
Oh—the surname is on the second photo.
I really wish comment threads had edit functions.
I don’t know; to me, the name is what it is, and all the signage and references say DeLeon. There are two ways to spell Barretto: the right way and the wrong way.
I’m going to work on lowering the glucose levels in my blood as best I can. When it comes to beer, it is not a matter of willpower–I have no desire to quit drinking. I take pride in the fact that I am a disciplined drinker and, for the most part, don’t overindulge. Beer is in my genes and is a family tradition. And if it leads to my death, well, we all have to die of something.
Your post created my metformin red flag. I discussed those concerns with Dr. Jo, and she reduced my daily dose by half. Now, Dr. DeLeon wants to increase it again. I’m going to schedule another consult with Dr. Jo to discuss alternatives.
Teri went to school to receive certification as a caregiver, and she is qualified to provide services to decrepit old people. Her current duties are more of being a domestic helper. She keeps the house in order, takes care of paying the bills, gets my prescriptions filled, and anything else that needs to be done. I told her when I hired her that her job was to make my life as easy and comfortable as possible. She has fulfilled my expectations.
They call pizza with pineapple “Hawaiian” here. The ones I’ve tasted have been good, adding to the kaleidoscope of flavors. It inspired me to add some pineapple chunks to my chili once, and it was surprisingly good. I still prefer the old-fashioned way, though.
I’ll keep working on my pun skills until I get so bad I’m funny. Thanks for the inspiration!