Cholesterol

Lipitor Here I Come?

Last week our company had a Health Fair. One of the local hospitals was offering a free Lipid Profile, AKA Cholesterol Check. What the heck, I’m in. The results were mailed to the house and it seems as if I am totally out of the “normal” ranges for most all of them.

Total Cholesterol was 209, less than 200 is the goal
Triglycerides were 271, less than 200 is normal
My HDL was 24, 35or greater is what you are supposed to have of this “good” cholesterol
My LDL was 131, less than 130 is what you are supposed to have of this “bad” cholesterol
My Factor was 1.82, instead of less than .50, I guess this is some sort of mathematical combination of these other numbers.

Top Down Day

Not to rub it in on those of you in the frozen north, but Donna and I went out to Burger King for lunch and rode with the top down. I don’t know what was better the nice open air drive or the Whopper served hot and fresh for a change.

Go to the BK site linked above. Then select the Nutirition tab. You can build your meal and see the totals. I had a Whopper – no mayo, medium Sprite and we split a medium fries, so my totals were:
1050 calories
300 calories from fat
34 grams of fat
12.5 grams of saturated fat
3.25 grams of Trans fat
75 mg cholesterol
1280 mg sodium
130 grams total carbs
6 grams fiber
66 grams sugars
33 grams protein

Comment Spam

We get annoying phone calls selling us stuff we don’t want. We get regular mail flyers full of stuff we don’t want. We get tons of spam emails for stuff we don’t want.

I got hit with a new one yesterday and until someone comes up with a clever word for this, I’ll call it Comment Spam.

It wasn’t random at all. If you search my rant site for the word cholesterol you get one hit, it’s in the post they left the comment on. Notice that I had accidentally mis-spelled cholesterol. If you search for the correct spelling, there are no hits. in the comment spam they too spell cholesterol wrong, with an “al” on the end. I never get a link or even the name of the supplement, so was this a random act of a random person who stumbled on my site?

You Get What You Pay For

Our company has 2 different medical plans, the PCN (Physicians Care Network) and something else. The something else used to have a name, but now I think it is called the Non-PCN Plan. 🙂 In the PCN you have to go to the primary doctor and get a referral for anything he can’t handle. Not that they are stingy with referrals, but they don’t want you running to the ortho guy for a hangnail. The company is trying hard to steer you towards the PCN by making the other one twice the cost. It is working too, the last time I was chatting with our HR Manager he said there are like 20 (out of 350) left on the Non Plan. The nice thing about the PCN is that you can go to your primary doctor as often as you need and it doesn’t cost a cent. No deductibles, no forms, no nothing.

Well if you read my Wednesday post you know that I was not feeling to well. After repeated calls to the doctor’s office on Thursday asking for results of my blood work and them saying they haven’t got them yet, at the very end of the day they actually got them. Seems the lab’s fax machine was sending the results, they are just not sure where they were going, outer space perhaps. The Physician’s Assistant called and told me that my results were normal, but if I still felt bad in the AM I should come in and see the doctor.

After a restless Thursday night I went back in to see the Doc. The Nurse took my pressure and pulse, 168/106 and 78, still high. The doctor showed me my results, everything was smack in the middle of the OK range (except my cholesterol which was 203.) He also showed my 4 other copies of the report! Seems as every time I called, the receptionist called the lab and the lab faxed over a copy, but it got stuck in the pipe, but eventually came out. I got another EKG, which looked better than the one from the other day. The Doc is stumped, if something bad happened to make my pressure skyrocket like this, it would have showed up in the blood work. He gave me a different BP medicine, Micardis, and said take this over the weekend and check your pressure on Tuesday and give us a call.

Took one of the pills at lunch and I’m starting to feel almost human again. I hate to brag, because I might jinx it. Shhhh!