Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Dumb Luck

Click for the One Great Thing - Tuesday 5/15 Link List.

Today's prompt: One Great Thing. Living with diabetes sure does take a lot of work, and it’s easy to be hard on ourselves if we aren’t “perfect”. But today it’s time to give ourselves some much deserved credit. Tell us about just one diabetes thing you do spectacularly! Fasting blood sugar checks, oral meds sorted and ready, something always on hand to treat a low, or anything that you do for diabetes. Nothing is too big or too small to celebrate doing well!


Today I'm asked to describe an aspect of diabetes that I'm really great at.

And I keep coming up short.

There was a time...we will call it the nineties...where I was great at logging my blood sugars. Never missed writing one down - from diagnosis at age 10 through at least age 18. I carried one of those kitschy four-color pens and diligently logged breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack each in its own bright color, even notating my dosage and where I gave my injection. (In those days, I also changed my lancet four times a day. Haha.)

But all of the logged data in the world (aka 'compliance') didn't have any effect on my A1cs. I floated between 11-16% for my first three years with D. By age 16, I was pretty consistently hanging in the 9-10% range where I would stay until age 24.

So I suppose I was also good at surviving.

I hear dParents talk these days about their kids' A1cs creeping into the 8s and 9s as though their child is teetering on the brink of oblivion.

I don't know whose perspective is closer to the truth, to be honest.

I just know I'm pretty awesomely healthy considering those stats. Considering I stopped logging and, for too many years, stopped believing my efforts had any measurable outcome on my blood sugar management.

But I survived to build a career. I survived to build a marriage. And with the combined encouragement of a supportive spouse, the DOC, and the right mix of doctors, I learned to manage my diabetes really well and so I survived to build a family.

I wish I could tell you how, but this disease is spectacularly unfair. Compliance bought me no victories; indifference bought me no tragedies.

But I'm here. With confidence and grace. I'm still here.

4 comments:

  1. I'm glad you are still here! And I bet your family is too. <3

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  2. thanks for sharing :) Cara's A1c stinks, it's getting better we are now in the 8's but no where near the range people want us to be. So thanks for letting me know I'm not alone in this fight, people go through this and everything turns out OK :)

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  3. wow, this was a super powerful post for me (as a mom of a 12 yo daughter with D). my blog post for tomorrow (what can i improve) was probably going to be about how i feel i should log more. thank you so much for sharing your experience, it really helped my perspective.

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  4. I'm so glad you are still here, and I think you rock. :)

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