This will be painfully boring and technical for anyone but me. I just needed to make note of a few things for future reference.
The nurse has me at 175 pounds and according to the last weight they have for me, I have lost 14% of my body weight. She seemed quite impressed. I liked her 
Then the doctor came in. This is Dr. R (Dr. L is my normal doctor but she is on maternity leave). I mentioned that I wanted to work my way off of the Toprol. The doctor asked if I was having problems with it. Do I have to be having obvious problems with a med to want to go off of it?! What about long term effects that can’t be seen right now? If I can manage without, why would I put it in my body?!? Anyway, this was the second bp med that I was prescribed. I am not anti-medication, but if I can get off of one of my meds I certainly want to. Dr. R was NOT so sure about that because my bp was 130/70. She said tht going off the med could raise my bp 10 points and if I can get my bp down to 110 or 120 (top number) that we could consider working towards being off of the toprol which she referred to as being a low dose. Well, in a doctors office I don’t think I will EVER see 110 or 120. I get so nervous.
Next, we discussed how I opted out of the niaspan and then opted out of what they had replaced it with (tricor). She feels like since I had such high triglycerides that there is a genetic issue and that diet and exercise will not be enough. She is so confident in this that she went ahead and gave me a prescription for the tricor for when my results come back.
I really want to see Dr. L. I go to the doctor every three months. So maybe she will be back this summer when I go.
Basically, the doctor was not as impressed about the weight loss as the nurse was. The doctor’s reaction was basically a “yeah that’s all good BUT…” She definitely was not going to allow me to think that I can fix all this weight diet and exercise.
There are some good opportunities and motivation in all of this, so I will try to stay focused on that. I just need to increase my exercise to work on the blood pressure thing since I need to walk in with 110/70 to be able to go off of the toprol. Continued weight loss should help too, especially if I start seeing more losses in the belly fat.
I WISH that I could add fish oil instead of stupid tricor. But if my results don’t show enough of a decline in my triglycerides, Dr R is going to expect me to go on the tricor. The thing that bugs me is that if I go on tricor, I will never get off of it. They sure don’t like to take you off of meds once you are on them. So I want to give myself time to see if I can succeed without a prescription for triglycerides, but they keep wanting to shove pills down my throat. I think it is because they trust pills. They don’t know that a patient will stay committed to lifestyle changes, so they like that safety net of prescription meds.
Blood work results will be back within a week. I wish that my triglycerides will have taken a nose dive, but I fear that will not be the case although I do expect a nice decrease. Maybe just not enough of one. :( I don’t want to let this mess with my head, though. I can’t let myself get discouraged.
