Strange Complaints

I am a terrible diabetic.

I can probably count the times I've done a blood check to see where my sugars are over the past ten years on two hands. Whenever I go get blood work done for refills at the doctor's office they tell me something called an A1c test, where I've averaged between 5.8 to 6.3.

Since that is a range consistent with a generally-under-control diabetes I've pretty much just trusted that and gone about my day.

Five days ago, on a whim, I decided to use one of the wife's spare CGM (continuous glucose monitoring) sensors. It was a sample given to us should you think I was wasting one we'd paid for.

And for those five days I've had the ability to see what my sugar levels actually do as I've "gone about my day" like I mentioned. What they do, it turns out, is seesaw like crazy but evenly so that while there are stupid highs (when I grab that frozen coke or ice cream) and stupid lows (when I lose track of time and skip lunch), the average reading is in that generally-under-control range is been telling on.

Who knows how many times a sweet treat has caused a spike like today's reading of 212, which my phone alerted me to thanks to this sensor. As I don't take supplemental insulin I chugged a larger glass of water which caused those higher sugar readings to drift back down into proper range.

How many times has that happened in those ten years as I just bumbled right along in willful ignorance?

I suppose what I'm trying to get to other than letting everyone know I'm an idiot is that I hope I learn from this experience and change going forward. I also hope that if anyone's out there is treating diabetes or want other condition the way I was... maybe if we hold each other accountable we can do better together.

If you see me in the store buying something overwhelmingly made of sugar please feel free to glare at me in judgement so that I maybe put it back in shame. That goes doubly so for the ladies who see me pulling up for those frozen cokes.

Let's take care of ourselves.

Until later...