They decided I should take a test.
A week or so ago my Health Insurance Company sent me a letter to inform me that in their opinion I should take an HbA1c test. They said they were sending me a home test kit that would be arriving soon, and that I should take the test and return the blood sample to their lab as soon as possible.
My first thought on receiving this letter was WTF? There's been so much hooplah in the news and social media over the last several months about the Covid CCP Flu, I automatically thought this test was somehow related to that. Some quick Internet research showed that wasn't the case at all.
HbA1c refers to glucose and haemoglobin joined together (the haemoglobin is ’glycated’). Haemoglobin is the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout your body. The amount of HbA1c formed is directly related to the amount of glucose in your blood. Red blood cells live for up to 4 months, so HbA1c gives an indication of how much sugar you’ve had in your blood over the past few months. It’s different to the blood glucose test, which measures how much sugar you have in your blood at that moment.
So it's a diabetes/prediabetes test of sorts. My doctors check my A1c number regularly and they've never (yet) diagnosed me as diabetic. But I am older and pretty overweight, so it makes sense that the insurance company would want a close look taken.
Anyway, this morning I poked my finger, collected the blood sample, filled out the little form, and this afternoon I'll mail the collected material up to the lab in Dallas.
My next scheduled face-to-face appointment with the Primary Care Doctor is in a few weeks. This will probably give us something to talk about.
And the adventure continues.
Published on 28 July 2020, ~11:56 CDT, this is my post number 49/100/365 of the https://100daystooffload.com blogging challenge.
#100DaysToOffload #health #SeniorLiving #RoscoeEllis #blog
by Roscoe