Doctor's Checkup for January

I had my six-month checkup with my primary care physician (not my bariatric doctor). The good news is that I'm still alive. The bad news is that I'm still not normal. The okay news is that I'm a little closer to normal than I was.

The doctors have cut my cholesterol medication and my blood pressure medication dosages in half. One of them has a side effect of damaging the liver; now that they think my weight may not be as big a concern with impacting the liver, they're going to see if my progress with my blood chemistry continues if they cut back on the medications.

Bloodwork came in today. My LDL ("bad") cholesterol was 89, and the normal range is 10 to 100 mg/dl. So now it's in the happy zone finally. I think my blood sugar is within controlled range as well, because my Glycohemoglobin A1C is 5.2 (normal range is 6.0%).

My ALT...something with liver function...is still high, however. 98, where normal range is 30 to 65. I don't know what the previous number was, but hopefully it's still falling. They had said, after all, that one of the medications could be elevating this number so now that I'm cutting back on them...maybe the results will fall more in 6 months when I have my next bloodwork battery.

Another number that's off is Ferritin levels, measuring 16 when normal is 30 to 300. Wikipeida says that ferritin is a protein that handles release of iron in the body. But my iron serum and iron binding capacity measures seem normal. The doctor didn't note it in the letter, so I guess it's not something to worry about?

Other numbers are apparently in "normal" ranges. I guess at this point that there has been improvement but there's room for a little more improvement. Again, I'll find out down the road.