Thursday 6 May 2010

It's got me thinking

Sam over at Talking Blood Glucose often writes very frank and honest posts about her rebellion stage, which is now leading to complications. I enjoy the fact that Sam is so open about it - it's not a taboo, or something she wants to hide - quite the opposite in fact, she wants to educate.

It got me thinking about me, and complications. I feel incredibly grateful that I have had no complications of type one diabetes as yet. This is despite the fact when I was in secondary school, I'd be lucky if I tested my sugars once a week, let alone the 6+ a day I do at the moment. I think it is also down to the fact that I led a relatively balanced lifestyle - I ate decent food, didn't snack all over the place, did some exercise each week. Which kept my hba1cs in the 7s, which the hospital were always pleased with.

My highest hba1c ever is 9.4, which I got in autumn last year. This shook me right up, especially as when I went to the opticians they had trouble getting the right prescription for me and told me it was because I had unstable blood sugars. My last was 7.4, which I am over the moon with, and I'm hoping to get it in the 6s.

I think that over the years, the main thing I have learnt about type one is as long as you are doing everything you can to keep stable BG readings, do not give yourself a hard time over the odd one or two out of range. I'll always try to work out the possible reasons of an excessively high reading; sometimes though, there isn't a reason, it's just the damn diabetes fairy sprinkling her sugar dust all over you.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Last Autumn, I was at 9.3% :(

Just before I started blogging, my A1C was 8.7, which is still bad so I'm trying super hard to get it back into the 7's at least. I'm not sure how long it will take.

Sometimes I see a reading in the 300's (which is the 16's or 17's to you? I think? I'm horrible at math!)and I just want to bang my head against the table.

You are right, we should cut ourselves some slack sometimes!!

Siobhan said...

i'm trying to cut myself some slack tonight - i've just tested and i'm 22.8. FUN! i had chip shop chips, which i've managed to do okay with before...not this time. sigh. i'll be chasing my numbers down for a while, i bet!