The results from my first blood draw came in around 1:00am this morning. Of course, at that time my doctors had not reviewed the results, and the results came with a warning: the results may be hard to read, or may include "difficult news," so you may want to wait until your doctor has reviewed them and reaches out to you.

I tried that until about noon and couldn't wait any longer. My numbers looked really good, almost everything right in the middle of the acceptable range for that test. Glucose was high.

Doc G reached out at the end of the day and confirmed that my blood looks pretty good — cholesterol is good, potassium is good. But the glucose was definitely too high. So now I need to get back over to the draw station and give them some more blood for a diabetes test.

Yesterday morning my BP was 192/111.
I started my blood pressure meds last night.
Today my morning BP was 181/104.
Today my evening BP was 161/91.

Not jumping to any early conclusions, but it looks like the medications and the immediate dietary changes I've made could be paying off already. Again, I'm afraid to jump to any conclusions — I've had good days before. But I think I feel better.

Dietary changes?

Three of the four things I drink each day have caffeine: Advocare Spark every morning, V8 Energy most mornings or in the afternoon, and my favorite — Pepsi. Number four is 2% milk, which I usually have a glass of most nights with whatever book I am reading. Today, I mixed and drank about half of my morning Spark drink and then switched to water. I drank water all day, even with meals, and I finished the day with a big glass of milk. No V8 today. No Pepsi today.

I'm supposed to be making the switch to a DASH style diet. DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. (Hypertension is High Blood Pressure.) We have some work to do at the grocery store to revamp our fridge and pantry for this, so we're still trying to eat what we can without throwing things away. A separate instruction from Doc R is to cut back salt as much as I can right now — no salt if possible.

Want to know more about DASH? Check this out from the Mayo Clinic.

Around 10:00AM today I ate a bowl of leftover spaghetti. It was made with Zia's pasta sauce, which I'm sure has a ton of sodium in it. But I didn't add any more salt like I usually do, and I hammered it with pepper. For dinner I made chicken wings on the grill, but couldn't use our favorite Frank's Red Hot sauce, nor could I use our favorite BBQ sauce from Sweet Baby Ray's — both are high in sodium. So, I used a little butter to mix up some onion powder, black pepper, oregano, basil, and paprika, and brushed that on the wings while they were cooking. They were OK — bland AF for my palate. We also had fresh corn with no extra added ingredients. Corn is one of those things I salt to high heaven. This time, I added some black pepper, stirred it up, added more black pepper, stirred it up, added more black pepper, and dug in. No salt. It worked out very well.

I'm no stranger to black pepper. My dad had a heart condition and died from a heart attack when I was very young — about 42 years ago. I remember him putting nitroglycerin tablets under his tongue, and I remember him saturating his food with pepper because he couldn't have salt. Of course I wanted to be like my dad, so I'd load my food up with pepper just like him. Now it seems I'm doing it for the same reason he did.

I slept really well last night. I didn't have the shortness of breath symptom while sleeping or trying to fall asleep, and that helped a lot. Again, not jumping to any early conclusions because I've had multiple consecutive "good days" in between my 1-3 "bad days" for the last 2.5 months. I'm taking it one day at a time, and I hope the trend continues.

Not much else to report today. Thank you for reading and for your support.

Much 💙 from the shop.

This blog and every article in it documents one person's journey — Sparky's journey. Every person's health situation is unique, and what applies here may not apply to you. Sparky is not a physician or medical professional. The information shared in these posts reflects his own experiences and what he believes he understood from conversations with his care team — and he doesn't always get it right. Nothing written here should be taken as medical advice. If you have concerns or questions about your own health, please contact your physician. And if you don't have one — get one.