On day 5 of hyperbaric oxygen treatment, I also had another medical appointment in Silver Spring with Dr. Phuong Trinh, an infectious disease specialist. He took the time to take a very complete medical history from me. My mom had had diabetes (onset at age 68) and in fact lost her left leg below the knee to it at 86. Her side of the family has a lot of diabetes.

My glucose readings were good enough but on one or two occasions went over normal. My eye doctor told me that that made me pre-diabetic, a designation you don't ever lose (and if you are lucky, it doesn't become full-blown diabetes). Other doctors had never really talked to me about diabetes.

Dr. Trinh said better than the glucose reading was an A1C test, or Hg for hemoglobin A1C. It tests for the average glucose burden over the past three months. He suggested that maybe, my pre-diabetes was a factor affecting the microvascular system. Vascular tests before and after the surgery were strong. So this was the one plausible explanation for: What the hell is going on?

Dr. Harry Huang, my eye doctor, encouraging me to be strong, exercise and lose weight, had said: Sometimes people with full-blown diabetes will have no eye problems, while people with pre-diabetes may develop the problems. We don't know why.

I whined to my friend Claudia that rather than improvement after the foot surgery, I was going up and down, down and up. (The 3rd toe began to show signs of distress about 3 weeks after the surgery.)

That's how you're doing it, Claudia said.

Made sense.

So on day 5 of hyperbaric, especially after 2 medical appointments out, I dragged ass up the stairs when I got home.

Stopping midway to catch my breath. Stopping at the top of each flight. For the record, there are 12 steps 10.5" tall on each flight, plus a turn and 2 more steps. But who's measuring?

I called my GP when I got home and asked his assistant? Had I ever had an A1C test? No.