My Health Report

I recently went to the doctor for my annual physical. A few days after the appointment, the office posted lab results and the doctor's comments on a patient portal. This is what my doctor wrote:

EXCELLENT LABS LIPIDS VIT D NO DM OR ANEMIA SUGAR 87 CHOL 192 WITH HDL 52

GREAT HE IS AGAIN IN VERY GOOD HEALTH F/U ROUTINE IN ONE YR NL VIT D 33

Several thoughts about this. FIRST, WHY ALL CAPS? THIS ISN'T TWITTER!

There's probably a good lesson here that I should not send any direct messages.

While my sugar is 87, what is my watermelon sugar?

I thought my doctor and I had a good relationship, so it's a little rude that he wrote F/U in the summary.

Overall, this report seems good. My LYM% and LYM# are low and my GRAN% is high whatever all of this means. My LDL cholesterol number is high too. However, the doctor didn't seem at all concerned about this. 

As the weather has gotten colder over the last few weeks, I'm becoming less and less active. Even sloth-like. Therefore, I was a little surprised that my weight stayed pretty much the same. Actually, my weight is up 0.022 pounds from last year. That's right, not 2 pounds or even .2 pounds, but 0.02 pounds. The difference might be that I wore a heavier shirt on the scale this year!

The doctor seemed tired. It's clearly been a tough year for him because of COVID. 

Oh, thinking about Chadwick Boseman's passing, I asked whether I needed a colonoscopy. Traditionally, this isn't done until you are 50, but there have been some reports suggesting that this should be done at 45. I'm 45. He said that as long as the blood labs came back well (which they did), I should wait to do this until around 47.5 (to "split the difference") and definitely after COVID ends.

So that's my health report. Tune in soon for my annual Hanukkah post, and please check out and like the Pickles at Chanukah Facebook page. You'll be surprised to see how this tradition is growing!