Relentless Inquiry

Three days on Estroven and I'm not spacing out all the time. The battle vs peri-menopause continues. Active ingredients are soy isoflavones (estrogen mimics) and black cohosh. Seems to be reducing hot flashes and night sweats. $14/bottle at Trader Joes, and it's worth every penny. Heck, if I can get in another hour of billable time in a given week because I'm not spacing out, it pays for itself several times over!

My friend recently had some complications from diabetes, and that got me scared that maybe I'm not managing mine very well. My doctor keeps telling me that my a1c numbers are fine, and to only test once a day, or every few days. But I'm thinking, hmm, my whole endocrine system is weirding out due to the menopause thing, and folks on the most excellent FA-DIAB list are talking about diabetes being a progressive disease, and their strategies as their bodies change.

So I'm starting a bunch of food testing, and finding some very unpleasant things. You'd think I'd put two and two together if one of my fairly common breakfasts makes me sleepy an hour or so afterward, but no. I am (and I know I shouldn't be!) fairly routinely sleep deprived, and I usually eat breakfast while plowing through the morning email. So I've always figured that if I get a bit sleepy, it's because I have usually had only 5 – 6 hours sleep and, hey, some of my email is pretty darn boring, even if it's billable time. But no. A blood test at 60 minutes from breakfast, when I started feeling realllly sleeepy showed my sugar had spiked to 254. I've fricking NEVER seen those kind of numbers on my meter. I got up, walked around a bit, but had to lie down 'for a few minutes'. Woke up a couple hours later, tested, sugar of 92 and a raging headache which has faded somewhat with drinking some fizzy water with diet soda. Ay-yi-yi.

Brave new world time, better order some more test strips. Time to pump up the volume and map the territory a bit better. Plus time to STOP being quite so actively 'bad'– have had ice cream sundae twice in the past 7 – 10 days, when generally it's a once a month or less kind of treat. Bah.