canceled

It is finally done. After some procrastination, I finally canceled my July 21 appointment at the hospital. I am now on my own, but my plan is to go back to my original doc and let him prescribe me the meds I need (or more likely, "need"). I'll be visiting the doc sometime in late August, taking with me the list of meds I have from the hospital so he has an idea what to prescribe. This will make life easier: doctor visits, compared to hospital visits, are less expensive, take less time, and don't involve traveling very far because the doc I use is in the very building where I work. I can get the same meds prescribed as before, and the doc is capable of doing much the same blood work done at the hospital, without the need for a two-hour wait (usually, the doc tells me to come back a day or so later).

Introvert that I am, I'm normally averse to human interaction (unless I'm in a teaching situation where roles are fairly defined, or in a hangout situation where I'm with close friends), so when I pondered how to contact the hospital to cancel, I first went with email, using an address I'd found on the hospital's website. Those people wrote back with some bullshit about how I had National Insurance, and thus needed to talk to different people. They gave me two phone numbers to try: one for English-speakers and one for Korean-speakers. I tried the English-speaking number several times over several days and never got an answer; a computer voice kept saying that no one was answering (duh), and could I please try again later? Today, I tried the Korean line, which turned out to be one of those "please press 1" deals. I managed to follow the logic tree through to canceling my appointments, and with both appointments canceled, I was now free at last.

It's tempting to just go without meds for a while and enjoy my freedom, but going without meds was what got me in trouble in the first place. Until I get myself to a decent weight and blood-sugar level, going totally without meds is probably a bad idea. The last thing I want is to suffer a second stroke.

When I go back to my regular doc, I'm going to ask him whether he can give me more blood-work numbers than he normally does. I watched a recent Dr. Sten Ekberg video about what numbers are important for diabetics. He noted standard stuff like HbA1c, but he also talked about insulin (C-peptide), triglycerides (a reading I got at the hospital), and VLDL (very low-density lipoprotein, or "remnant cholesterol"). Along with those numbers, another important one is, as you can imagine, blood pressure. I've traditionally had high BP—so high that the only way for me to get it down has been to engage in intense athletic activity fairly routinely (e.g., stair work, at least 1.5 staircases). Before my stroke, in fact, I was sure that a heart attack was going to be the most likely disaster. Frankly, the stroke took me by surprise.

For the moment, though, canceling that hospital appointment feels like a weight off my shoulders. I wonder whether the hospital will try to contact me for a followup, or if this is it, and I'll never hear from Samseong again.