Yesterday, The Hub went with me and we saw Dr. DogLover. And his dogs.

This is the news in a nutshell. Good news first: I don't have ALS, MS, or Parkinson's disease. I don't have any known auto-immune disorder. A variety of treatments are available for the stuff I do have, so it is possible that I'm going to get better.

It just might take awhile. What I DO have are slightly abnormal brainwaves on my EEG. The theory, based on my other symptoms, is that I have that type of epilepsy where I have seizures when I'm sleeping....

....that would explain why I used to wake up half out of bed or on the floor sometimes, usually with the dog licking my furiously. It might also explain why, in later years, Winston would nose me awake anxiously when I didn't have asthma ( he always woke me up when I had asthma). I was never mad at him - really, I figured there was probably some good reason why he was waking me up, though half of the time I thought his ears were bothering him, and then he stood there stoically while I cleaned his ears out. The poor dog. No wonder he sleeps all day.

Anyway, the MRI reveals that my scoliosis is much worse now than it was when I was a kid. My spine isn't just curved, it's twisted, and since it's an S curve it's creating pressure in my upper back in a way similar to the way in which a corkscrew works. If you're guessing that this is probably painful, you're right. Add to that the idea that I was throwing myself out of bed onto the hardwood floor periodically and....well, you can pretty much imagine the story. Soft tissue damage every where, inflamation, pinched nerves. I got a referral to a physical therapist and I'm going to have a nerve conduction study, hopefully next week.

Dr. DogLover had me walking up and down the hall so the PA could see the situation with my "gait disorder".

"You see how she's **some technical term I don't remember** and **some other word I don't remember**? You see how - How come she doesn't fall over?"

"Um. She does have her cane." The Hub pointed out.

"Yes, that's good. But STILL - why doesn't she fall over?"

"I'm gonna guess experience" The Hub muttered.

"Yes! But she must FEEL like she's about to fall over all the time."

No matter what I felt like, I refused to fall over.

I had an inconclusive test for Lyme disease. When we see that at work, we think it means that the person got bitten by a deer tick a long time ago, and by the time the test was done, their body had basically kicked the disease. This would explain why I felt like hell 10 years ago, but probably does not have much to do with me feeling like hell now. This should make me feel really angry, but instead, I'm just glad I don't have to deal with it now.

And, the cherry on top of my Sundae of Sickness is that I have diabetes. Didn't see that one comming.

Now, thankfully, this isn't the Holy-Crap-Insulin-Dependant-About-To-Lose-Toes level of diabetes. This is the threshold of diabetes, the point at which your family doctor says "It's important that you control your diet and that this be monitored" and then goes into all the horrible stuff that will happen to your body if you don't take care of yourself, attempting to scare the person straight....the assumption being that the person is fairly careless about her diet in the first place, has a sweet tooth and/or has had an ongoing, intractable weight problem brought on by all the stuff that brings on obesity in our society.

The PA, however, didn't take that tack with me, largely because she could tell by my comments in going over my labs that I knew more than the average person about what the numbers meant. And also I blurted out "Holy S***!" when I saw how high my hemoglobin A1c was, so I think she felt that I was effectively already scared.

The reason why I was so scared is this: Being totally honest with myself, and including my "chocolate jones" I still have a very moderate diet compared to other people around me. I might be the only person in America who eats the recommended servings of vegetables and fruits. Though I enjoy dessert, I often don't finish it. I've been almost all vegetarian for a few months and before that ate very little meat, seldom ate fried food, seldom ate fast food.

I'm a little overweight - about 20 pounds right now, and I've been losing. I was losing weight at the time of the blood draw (which measures how the body has dealt with sugar in the 6 weeks prior to the blood draw) It's very unsettling to me to imagine what it must have been when I was taking that Remeron and I was eating everything in sight. Because when I see this kind of A1c reading on someone's medical records they're usually a good 50 pounds overweight and have been for a long time. I think I managed to convay most of this in some disorganized way to the PA.

"Do you have a family history of diabetes?"

"Yes, my grandmother...her whole family...my grandmother had it but she kept it under control...my brother..."

"This can be genetic. I am looking at you and thinking, you know, this is probably genetic." (she has a slightly unusual speech pattern, English is a 2nd language for her, though she's easy to understand) "I want to prepare you for the fact that you may do everything right with your diet but still have this number go up. There are many cases of diabetes that have got nothing to do with self control."

"Yeah, well, I aim to not be one of them, and at my age with my family history it isn't going to help to just give up ice cream. I'd be rate-able for life insurance at that number today - that's got to come down."

"Rate-able? What does that mean?"

"I'd have to pay more, in my company, if I applied for life insurance there."

Her eyes widened. "That's horrible! This is not drinking or smoking or anything you have got control over! This is not your fault, you are not even heavy, except a little bit from that you cannot walk so well."

"It's about risk" I said. It sounded lame to me, "Actually, it is unfair. Actually, I hate that job. The truth is, when I was worried that something was seriously wrong with me I thought, what if I have to go stand before the Lord and say that my last job was making sure that the people who most needed life insurance had to pay more for it for the good of the company?"

"Nobody in here is thinking it is a bright idea for you to drive that far down there, you know?" she said.

Anyway, that's all I know right now. I've got to go clean out the kitchen. There's a lot of stuff out there that has to go!