Just confirmed an ex-coworker has terminal brain tumor and has ~18 months to live. He started as a MBA intern and was hired as a senior analyst. He was then promoted almost every year until he became my manager. I spoke to our CFO at the time and decided to switch roles and eventually leave the company. All that is ancient history now since almost everyone I know has left that company anyway.

Again, it puts life into perspective. Terminal cancer is so sudden and brutal, whereas dialysis can sustain the patient for decades sometimes. I believe he is married and has one child.

My endocrinologist called me yesterday afternoon in response to my email message. I had asked her about taking insulin and whether it was permanent. I also asked her about my “normal” readings with the glucose monitor. She agreed that even though the A1C test was inaccurate, this was only one data point for fructosamine, so I should measure my blood sugar more closely for a few days and send her the results. She wanted a reading before each meal, and two hours after each meal. If the numbers are high, then I’ll need to start shooting myself with insulin.

I started last night and so far, everything is pretty low:

I’m not exactly sure what the normal range is for a diabetic. I’ve seen a wide range of numbers, but typically 70-130/140. From WebMD:

I typically measure in the mornings before breakfast so it’s like fasting/before meal. It’s almost always below 100. I’m hoping to avoid getting insulin shots since it’s another complication if I ever want to travel after getting a kidney transplant. A lot of places won’t let you bring needles/syringes in, and usually insulin needs to be refrigerated.

Weird. I just noticed that almost all my doctors are female and Asian.

For my podiatrist, I was referred to another doctor but she was booked solid so I scheduled a meeting with a different doctor. The original referral was to another Asian (Chinese) podiatrist. Also, my original primary care doctor, who just quit her practice, is also Chinese. I didn’t choose any of these doctors specifically. They were either referred by other doctors, or randomly assigned when I called their medical group office.

This is probably due to the Asian parent effect. All Asian parents want their child(ren) to become doctors or dentists or engineers. That’s why you see such so many Asians in those majors in college, and it skews the demographics when they all graduate and get jobs. I remember engineering school was probably >2/3 Asian students.

Maybe it’s because the Apple Watch is still a novelty, but I’ve walked four three days in a row since I picked it up from the Apple Store. I decided to take the local park route, even though I think Orange County is supposed to go into lockdown mode again. There were still some people in the park, most were walking their dogs. I did see a group of teenagers sitting around a picnic table without a mask in sight. Here is the Apple Fitness data:

For music, I started the 30 min Hip Hop Fun Walk in the Peloton app. The problem was that Apple Fitness tracked both sets of data, so two workouts showed up on the summary. I don’t know how it counts the two sets of data so I deleted the Peloton one. Since it’s all integrated, the next time I use the Peloton app, I don’t need to start tracking on the Apple Watch as well. Also, the green or Exercise ring on the Apple Watch moved a lot after the walk. This walk was a bit slower than the walk around the mall from yesterday. Not sure why that walk didn’t count towards the Exercise amount tracked.

Since it was dark out, I clipped a small flashlight to my hoodie so it would illuminate the ground around me. It’s really for cars to see me since I walk on the street and some areas are pretty dark. I bought one of these from Amazon so I’ll try it out tomorrow.

Since the charge in my car battery was pretty low, the charging display said it would take an hour to charge to 90%. I was on one of the “urban” chargers that only outputs about 50 kW or ~165 miles/hour. I spent about 20 minutes eating lunch in my car, then decided to go for a walk. I ended up walking around the outside of Santa Ana Main Place. I was going to walk inside too since the mall was open but I forgot to bring a mask from the car so I stayed outside. I felt a little conspicuous without a mask so I walked pretty quickly to avoid any contact or confrontations. Most everyone else I saw had a mask on but they were all headed inside the mall. I ended up walking 0.84 miles at a pace of 19’40”, which is better than 3 miles/hour. It didn’t feel like I was walking that fast.

After getting home and taking a nap, I decided to take another walk around the block. On the Apple Watch, it tracks your daily fitness with three rings: Move, Exercise, and Stand. The idea is to “close your rings” each day by moving and standing enough. I’m fine with those two circles/measures, but the Exercise ring is supposed to track activity at or above a brisk walk. The only issue is the definition of brisk walk. Evidently, 3 miles an hour is not brisk enough since the Exercise ring hardly moved after my round-the-mall walk. On the second walk, I tried to walk at a faster pace but failed. I ended up walking 0.71 miles at a pace of 20’39”. Here is what the rings look like right now:

At the top of the screen, you can see that I’m doing pretty good with the red and blue rings, but I can’t get the green ring (Exercise) to move with consistency. Maybe “brisk walk” actually means “running” or something. From the Move chart, you can see when I got up and went to dialysis at 4:30 am, had lunch and first walk, then went for a second walk before dinner.

First walk using the Apple Watch as the tracker instead of the Fitbit (Charge 2). I hope it’s more accurate and reliable than the Fitbit since it cost a lot more. The workout data is transmitted to an app on the iPhone called Fitness. Here’s the data screen:

If you scroll down on the screen, it also give you split times for each mile, heart rate chart, map, and the weather. I walked two laps of the larger neighborhood loop, which was ~1.3 miles. The pace was pretty good at 22’06” or almost three miles per hour. That’s close to my walking rate before the heart surgery and much faster than what I’ve done all this year.

Since it’s already dark outside and no one walks in LA, I didn’t wear a mask, but I also didn’t get anywhere near another person. I probably should have worn a mask though; there was definitely smoke in the air. A couple of times, my nose was burning from breathing in the air, even though the Apple Watch showed an AQI of 42.

In addition, I haven’t napped all day, even though it’s dialysis day. I’m not supposed to work that much today but there were several conference calls and a 1:1 meeting with my boss. I’m trying to hold out and not nap until tonight so I can try to get back to a regular schedule. I also have cell group tonight. Due to the fire, we’re probably meeting on Zoom instead of in-person outdoors. Need to try and stay awake through that as well.

It’s the first time I’ve walked outside (for exercise) in over two months. The last several times I walked outside, I was afraid I was going to be stranded on the side of the street. At the time, I was still having issues with pleural effusion (now that I know what it means) so it was difficult to breathe, and often I would have to sit on the curb and rest. Today was a bit different. I don’t know the exact stats since the Fitbit had a brain fart and didn’t record the walk. Maybe it knows I ordered an Apple Watch.

Anyway, the walk took about 25 minutes and Google Maps said I walked ~0.945 miles. I didn’t have to stop at all and was breathing normal at the end of the walk. It’s amazing how a bit of fluid can have such a huge impact. I need to start walking more now that I can breathe and my toe is pretty much healed.