I remember going to boardwalks or local fairs when I was young and playing games to try to win prizes. I was always ‘so close’ to winning something but I don’t remember actually doing so. Later, as a parent working at our parish carnival, I saw just how hard it was to actually win.

These days I feel I am playing a really bad game of whack-a-mole with my health. Most of this is related to medications. I take one to reduce the risk of a breast cancer recurrence – but that has lead to osteopenia. So now I am consciously working on calcium consumption and continuing with weight-bearing exercising as part of my routine.

My monthly butt dart helps keep my tumors from progressing – but causes high blood pressure and diabetes. I’m on BP meds but these have changed over time. First it was one, then 2, then and increase in the first, now off the first (see below). And I had a recent A1C reading showing pre-diabetes so there’s that new fun.

The psychological game of this disease has caused me to need medication – first med didn’t work at all, the second worked well but side effects with appetite were not helpful so on to a third – now this affects my heart rate too so I am off the first BP med to see if that helps with recent low BPs.

And then something is affecting my HR during workouts (butt dart med… cancer tumor hormones.. age…who knows??) I’ve started wearing a HR monitor to be able to see the readings in real time on my phone, instead of after a workout (my watch reading is too small without glasses). I’ve known how high I can get during workouts but thought it was ‘error’ due to the watch being my monitor – it’s on my wrist, how accurate is that? The first use of new monitor – my phone propped on the rig – let me see exactly what was going on and when. The look of concern from my coach was actually more worrying than the red numbers. This has turned workouts into an arcade game-like activity – can I keep my level in the blue or green? Oh crap in the red again!

I won’t even go into the new mouth guard I acquired from the dentist.

I don’t have much choice so I will continue to play this stupid game but THIS SUCKS!