I went to the fair!

The health fair anyway. It was sponsored through my employer, it was free, and they even served a light breakfast afterwards.

I've turned into a bit of a hypochondriac. With all of Robert's garbage going on, the last thing I want to do is get sick. So I worry about it.

Last spring, I sat in a crowded waiting room at a new doctor's office for an hour, and my blood pressure was higher than usual. That freaked me out a bit, and now I check it every time I go to Walmart. I read recently that licorice will elevate your blood pressure. Once I stopped eating giant boxes of Good'n'Plenty every week, my blood pressure dropped.

Meanwhile, I worried about my resting pulse rate. It seemed very high. I would lay in bed and count it. I would wake up, moving as little as possible to see the clock and count it. I finally looked it up on the internet and discovered that my pulse rate is nothing to worry about. But I still kept counting it to make sure.

I figure that I'm pre-diabetic. It runs in my family, although "only" aunts and a grandmother on one side. But I have thrown up a few times after eating too much sugar (for example, after that horse show, and seven times in the morning on my second day of work, but that post may never be written). I worry that I'll go into a diabetic coma and, I don't know, die or something.

I worry about cholesterol and my heart. My dad's one of the healthiest people I know, but he has lousy genes and still had a heart attack a few years ago. Aren't my chances 50/50 that I'll take after him? The difference is that I'm not one of the healthiest people I know. I was laying in bed the other night when my heart seemed weird, and I figured maybe this is it.

A few weeks ago at work, I had something really weird happen with one of my eyes. I wondered if I was having a stroke. Or a brain tumor. Or at the very least losing my sight. As I was frantically searching yellow pages for a doctor, and googling the difference between an optometrist and an opthamologist, it cleared up. When I googled it later that night, I found it was nothing unusual--it's so common in fact that none of three websites I checked even mentioned calling your doctor.

It even crosses my mind most mornings that I shouldn't get up too fast. Isn't prime-heart attack time first thing in the a.m.? Or is it prime-stroke time? What if it happens when I walk down my driveway for the paper, fall to the ground, and everyone else in my house continues to sleep?

The obvious solution would be to go to the dr. But I hate going to the doctor, I hate searching for new doctors, and I hate anything dealing with insurance.

So I went to the health fair, figuring I can handle low doses of bad news.

I had to fast for 12 hours, but I didn't quite make it. Around midnight, I ate a few Oreos. Or 6. Or 12. Or 20. (I can guarantee it was somewhere between 12 and 20.) And I guess I didn't slip into a diabetic coma.

So I hit the health fair. My numbers, and the recommended guidelines:
Total cholesterol: 162 <200
HDL: 62 >60
Triglycerides: 87 <150
LDL: 82 <100
Ratio: 2.6 <4.0
Glucose: 84 <100
BMI: 22 20-24

My blood pressure was fair, 132/60. Okay, it seems kind of weird, but the 60 is normal for me, and I was still a little nervous, and I ate a big box of Good'n'Plenty a few days before.

And my diabetes risk assessment was 6. Actually, tomorrow is my birthday and it will rise to 11, which is slightly higher than optimum. But oh well, it was good for two days.

So I was REALLY happy with my results. REALLY happy. Hugely relieved. I figure I'll live at least another week. Or two.