Bert's Place

I have been getting sick a lot lately.  At first I just supposed it was due to increasing age and lack of great sleep.  Then I started having to run to the bathroom every few hours to relieve the old bladder.  This went on for a week before I decide to purchase a blood sugar monitor and have a look at my numbers.  509.  Two hours after eating a relatively small meal.  Hmmmm, this doesn’t look good but maybe my new toy isn’t reading correctly?  It comes with a small vial of sugar solution that can be used as a control to show proper reading so I go ahead and do the control test.  It reads correctly.  Crap!  I wait two more hours and take my blood sugar again.  407.  Double crap.  I’m doing this at work and getting a little panicky now.  It’s 0300 in the morning, I have five more hours in my shift and my doctors doors will not open for two more hours after that.  I resist the urge to randomly destroy things, finish my shift and give the doctor a call while attempting to keep all traces of near panic out of my voice.  I get an appointment for 1150 the same day.  Blood is drawn and an A1C test is order.  My dear doctor also gives me a prescription for Metformin since he assumes I do indeed have type 2 diabetes but tells me to wait for my test results before purchasing the drug.  So I sweat out another 24 hours in near panic before getting my results.  Bingo.  Type 2 diabetes has been attained.  My first day on the medication along with a drastic change in my diet has my blood sugar down to 238 fasting and 251 a few hours after eating.  Still bad numbers but they are improving.  My A1C by the way: 10.8 with a fasting blood sugar level of 298 on the day I had the blood drawn for that test.  So it looks like it’s time to start a new category on the blog to keep track of my blood sugar and meals.  I’m not particularly depressed about this as I have been pretty easy going over many life changes in the past few years.  Becoming Mormon and the giving up of alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee, getting married, changing jobs – I’m just going to look at this as one more change among many that life requires of an individual who chooses to be alive and chooses to have each day better than the last.