Showing all posts tagged diabetic

In Diabetes, General, Health and Exercise

My Latest Diabetes Review

Author Nicki CawoodPosted on 4 Comments

Last year I was diagnosed as Type 2 diabetic. It was a pretty crappy time. I still maintain that my pancreas is an arsehole. Three months ago my Hba1C was 57mmol/ml after a routine diabetes review which is not good and my medication was upped to the max (for Metformin). Today I got the results of my most recent review, and it’s good news.

I’ve had some real struggles managing by blood glucose, despite my health team recognising that I’ve been doing all that they asked, and more. After my last review and another crummy result, I decided to try blood glucose testing. As a type 2 diabetic I am not automatically eligible for this and so I decided to swallow the cost and fund it myself. What a difference it makes.

Over the past few months, I’ve learned a lot about what spikes my blood glucose levels, foods and otherwise. Already on a restrictive diet due to other issues  I eat no junk and prep everything by hand. I was really surprised by how one portion of some foods would be fine where one and a half would not be. Using a blood glucose monitor has helped me understand a lot about myself (because all diabetes are unique) and manage everything more effectively.

This morning I received the results of my most recent review. I have gone, in three months, of having a Hba1c result of 57mmol/ml to 46mmol/ml. This a fabulous result, fabulous!

Dear Mrs Cawood,

Your recent blood test results were all satisfactory, indicating that your Diabetes is currently well controlled…..

To say that I was thrilled when that popped through the letterbox is a great understatement, not least because it means that I don’t need to keep going back every three months as my diabetes review date has been pushed back to six months.

I’ll post another time more about Hba1c, what it means and so on but in simple terms it means my diabetes is very well managed for the first time and I feel like I have a handle on what I’m doing. A very large part of this has been down to self-testing my blood glucose levels.

I’m hoping to convince my diabetes nurse that I would be a worthy candidate for an NHS monitor as opposed to spending a fortune privately buying test strips, lancets and what not myself. We’ll see.

For now, I’m just grateful for a good result. Onwards and upwards (or downwards please, the numbers need to keep coming down)!

 

 

In Health and Exercise

Diagnosed With Diabetes

Author Nicki CawoodPosted on 2 Comments

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This week I have been diagnosed as type 2 diabetic. This wasn’t altogether a surprise as I’ll explain in a moment but was something of a slap all the same.

About four years ago I went to my GP for an MOT. I’d not been feeling wonderful so went in to get a checkover. The results came back that my “blood sugars” were too high. Fast forward three months for another check and they’d shot up to the point where I was borderline diabetic. Being proactive the GP referred me to our excellent diabetic team (as clearly something wasn’t working as it should) and I was put on 1000mg metformin then and there, to stave off what seem to be the inevitable, for a while at least.

I’ve been classed as pre-diabetic ever since. The meformin did reduce my levels and I’ve bounced along that way ever since.

Back in July my review came back with a significantly higher result than hoped for. My levels had jumped up. My HbA1c levels, for those in the know, had jumped from 45mmol/mol to 55 mmol/mol. Where 42 mmol/mol and under is considered normal and 42-47 mmol/mol is pre-diabetic, 48 mmol/mol is classed as diabetic. 55 mmol/mol is considered diabetic and not good.

Three months on I was retested and yesterday went to see my diabetic nurse who confirmed that while my levels had dropped to 51 mmol/mol from 55 mmol/mol I was now classed as type 2 and so additional management and support was put in place.

I was a bit upset to be honest! I eat incredibly healthily, am active and take care of myself. Despite this, my body has decided to rebel. It was always something that could happen; there’s a family history of diabetes, I have PCOS and had wildly unmanageable, despite frequent testing and injecting gestational diabetes during my last pregnancy. Still, a kick in the pants.

I’m not being maudlin about it, it is what it is and I knew it was coming. My health team are quite frankly awesome, and know the lifestyle I lead is (or should be) helping so at least I’m already doing the right things.  So for now it’s in for a battery of check-ups and additional testing then hope my new regime helps to manage the diabetes better. Injections are “coming” at some point apparently however for now I’m hoping that the new medication levels and what not, when tweaked, will do the job.

It’s not ideal. It’s not great. I’d rather I hadn’t tipped over however I have and now that I’ve stomped around, called my pancreas an arsehole a few times and bemoaned the fact that despite my best efforts my body has other plans I’m now ready to forge on, do what needs to be done and get on with things.

My body really can be an arsehole sometimes……

 

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