Zoo I've recently been diagnosed as having glucose intolerance. It's a kind of diabetes precursor - I don't have diabetes, but I am at a high risk of getting it if I don't adopt a heath(ier) lifestyle
So I am supposed to only eat at 3 meals per day with no snacking in between (although I have to have something to eat last thing at night - often weetabix - or I wouldn't sleep so I'm on 4 meals). This gives the pancreas time to rest in between bursts of producing insulin!
Then I'm supposed to eat healthily and lose some weight. My current targets (as well as cutting out snacks) are to eat at least 3 portions of fruit and veg a day and cut down on high fat/sugar foods (like cake!)
I'm also supposed to increase exercise so my current targets are:
Garden once per week
do mini-exercise bursts on my mini-trampoline 3x per week
Walk somewhere once a week.
This last is getting me soooo frustrated at the moment as guess what - I can't garden tomorrow ( my usual job is a bit of gardening at my church on a Friday - I do get paid just a bit for it!) because I now have two medical appointments mid-morning!
I did have an appointment with a practice nurse earlier in the morning and I could have gone on to garden, but now the receptionist has phoned to say that my GP wants to see me to talk about a scan I had in mid-March ( and that I have already talked once to her about, just 3 days after the scan) and the only time she can fit me in to see the Dr is mid morning with a re-arrangement of my nurse appointment for then too! I don't know whether this is a mistake and the GP forgot she had already talked to me about scan, or whether she has spotted something more she wants to talk about and of course the receptionist doesn't know! So I feel I want to see someone ASAP, so have to go for later appointments.
This will now be 4 medical/health appointments that I have had this week. Whilst I am grateful to be seen by Drs etc and have things treated/checked out it is really difficult when you are self employed as every time you take time out for an appointment, you can potentially lose income ( like I will lose my gardening income tomorrow.) If it were just a one off it wouldn't be so bad but I have had medical appointments coming out of my ears since the beginning of February!!
In case you are wondering - as well as the glucose intolerance, I have a bad hip with a tear in the soft-tissue cuff round the joint and also tendonitis which is currently being treated by orthopedics and physio and I've seen a rheumatologist and I think it is likely I will be diagnosed with fibromyalgia at my next appointment!! One of the problems I have is being extremely tired all the time which also adds to the difficulty of fitting in work plus appointments!
OK - sorry if all that is TMI but it had helped me to let off some steam about the frustration of it all!