Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as the Great Wave, from the series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)”
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, who, like me, has had some health problems. And we were talking about how the things you do to save your life can later come back and have unplanned consequences.
“I’m dealing with that right now,” I said. We talked a bit more about how frustrating this is—but then we asked, Would we have changed anything?
And the answer is, probably not.
So I thought I’d write about this.
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After my clinic visits, we always have to wait for blood test results. One of them that we’ve been watching lately is called the A1c, which I talked about in the last post. Basically, it’s a batting average for your blood sugar. And ever since I entered menopause it’s been going up….and up….and up.
This is not good. The more sugar is in your blood, the more that can lead to lots of problems. Problems that I don’t want.
This isn’t CF related diabetes, because my pancreas still works. (I don’t take enzymes to digest my food, so that’s how we know….) But at the same time, my body is clearly becoming insulin resistant.
I’ve been on steroids for 14 years. So the thought is that steroids + menopause=unhappy A1c.
Now, I can’t go off steroids. I’m on a low dose—5 mg a day. There is a 2.5 mg dose. And I might try that. But the problem is, my body has adjusted to them, and my joints, especially like prednisone. A lot. I had CF related arthritis before my transplant and that is helped a lot by the prednisone. I notice when I miss a dose. So when I tried to go off prednisone a few years ago, my body said, “nope.”
Why am I on prednisone? Because I had a transplant.
Which saved my life.
But we know that prednisone has a lot of side effects.
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Another area where side effects come to play? Cancers. We’ve talked about that a lot here.
And, not pred related, but med related—my hearing loss.
So, these are all things that have happened as a result of staying alive.
But—what were my choices?
Well, to take the meds, or die. Really. It was that stark, in a lot of cases.
So I decided to take the meds. And live with the side effects.
And that can be sort of sucky, to be honest. Because you do things to save your life, but then…there are consequences, and you have to be ready to deal with those. It’s a long-term gamble.
But, and I said this to my friend, we do the best we can with the information we have. We can’t think about 5, 10, 15 years down the road when we’re looking down the barrel of the gun right now.
If you’re in that situation, I know how you feel. I know it’s hard not to google and think about the future. But really, in my opinion, the best thing to do is to talk to your doctors, see what the options are, and then go with what is best—for you, for the situation, for what needs to happen to achieve a good outcome.
Does that mean you’ll be thrilled with what you have to do? Well, no. I’m not thrilled that I’m injecting myself with five units of insulin every night. But it could be worse.
This is what I have to do to stay alive—to see year 15, year 16, year 17….post-transplant.
Now, are there things I won’t do? Yeah. I’ve always said I wouldn’t go for a third transplant. That, to me, is a bridge too far.
But right now, I take the insulin, I adjust my diet, and I do the best I can with what I have.