Discovery Wellness Assessment – Results

As part of all the gym sessions this week, when my sister and I went to my first actual gym session at the Virgin Active in Bedfordview on Monday, there was a notice up in the front reception about Wednesday being a Discovery Wellness day. They were offering free sessions – covered by Discovery – and there were a whole lot of 10 minutes slots still available. So we decided to sign up and take the very first slots available at 07h00 and 07h10 in the morning.

We had to make sure we didn’t have anything to eat or drink for at least six hours beforehand. I managed to get up at 5h30 and was out the house at 6h15 and I even had enough time to stop and fill up with diesel in Edenvale on the way (diesel came down in price at midnight the night before and I was running on empty).

We were a bit early and after waiting around upstairs first and then downstairs at reception, in normal clothes while everyone else in their gym clothes were eyeing us out, we managed to find the nurse. We had to fill in some forms from Dischem with our medical aid information and some medical history questions and then at the back of the form was a consent form for an HIV test – which came as a bit of a surprise.

In any case Rowena and I filled in our forms and signed as witnesses for each other and she went in first. Her blood pressure was a bit low as well as her glucose level – which was attributed to not having eaten anything since last night and her cholesterol was 5.3 which was a bit high but still reasonable.

My results were as follows:

• Blood Pressure was good – 118/81
• Glucose – 4.1 – a bit low but we hadn’t eaten breakfast so that was probably the reason why
• Cholesterol – this was the shocker. It was 6.8. That is apparently very high and I should be worried. The nurse asked me if this could be generic which to my knowledge it wasn’t or isn’t. She then suggested I go to my GP ASAP and get proper blood tests done so they can give me a breakdown of the good versus bad cholesterol levels and we can go from there.

I was in a little bit of shock afterwards to say the least and more than a little pale.

Before going to work we went to a little restaurant in Bedfordview close to Murry and Roberts for breakfast. We had hot chocolate and then a normal breakfast of eggs, toast and lots of bacon. I could not not have eggs (I love fried eggs too much) but I did have brown toast. Yes I know. Not the best idea.