Monday, November 28, 2005

I have never liked cake anyway...

It is pretty funny now that I think about it. I have had a LOT of blood tests in the past year, and my blood sugar was routinely high. As we'd go over the results the Dr would say "and your sugar is a little high", however on the tests I had in November they didn't mention my sugar at all. This made me feel pretty good. I had been watching how much sugar I consume, so I thought it had come down to normal levels again. Apparently the doctor was only concerned with hormone levels and left it to my family doctor to go over my sugar results. My family doc though is, unknown to me, on maternity leave so a replacement was filling in. Last week the replacement got my results and apparently requested that the medical receptionist call me in. I know how it works, they get the results and call to bring me in in the next week or so, at my leisure, whenever I have time, but soon. This receptionist was very thorough and efficient and she actually just had a cancellation so an appointment slot became available at 1:30 that day, unfortunately it was already 1:17. So when she called to say "Dr Merryweather would like you to come in and discuss your blood tests" I was already wondering who this strange doctor was, and I said "...um ok, when?" and in a clinical detached voice purposely devoid of emotion she said "Can you come in immediately?"

So here I am thinking I have 3 months to live or something, and I rush in there. I work really close, so I actually made it to the waiting room by 1:25. You know how normally even though you show up at the appointed time they make you wait for a little while longer? Well, here I am early and they actually rushed me right into a room as soon as I walked in the door. So now I am REALLY thinking I am one step away from 'CPR', the 'ER', the 'OR' or whatever R they have handy. The doctor came in, sat down, and spoke to me in a serious, quiet, and compassionate voice. She brought up my test results on the computer and told me I had diabetes. So once I found out that was all that was wrong I was like "really??? cool!"

On the bright side, I don't know if I have it that bad at all. First of all, Blue Cross is covering all my costs for diabetic equipment. Second of all, they are paying 80% of whatever medication (if any) I will be prescribed, but third and best of all is that I have been monitoring my blood and tracking the results in a log - I call this blood log a bloog (I am sure the term will catch on). From my bloog I made the above graph, and you can see two spikes indicating the two times I did a blood test after a meal. Everyone has high blood sugar after a meal. Other than those, every value is below the red line of 7.0 - which is where they diagnose you as having diabetes. So far so good.

As my good friend Little Nuckers pointed out to me, having diabetes will make me think about what I eat, it will make me make better choices. I have always known which choices were bad in what I consume, but that didn't always stop me. I have a feeling that this is one disease that will make me healthier.

Sarah
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