I met with my Endo today for my 4 month appointment and review. My latest A1C has come back at 6.5, which is down from 7.1 when I last saw her in late September.
Don't get too excited for me yet. I made that mistake already today. Looks fantastic on paper, I know. But like everything else related to diabetes, everything isn't always as it seems.
At first I was ecstatic to see this number as I had been having a bit of a roller coaster ride for the first 2 months since my last appointment. You may remember me saying here that I was having a lot of high blood sugars between meals and after fasting overnight. I hoped that physical activity might keep these highs in line, but I ended up having to increase my basal insulin. I was given instructions to tweak it bit by bit until I fell within range again. I was previously taking 10 units a day and am now up to 25 units. Apparently this is too much too fast and I got a little trigger happy with my insulin pen. Although it has resolved my between meal highs, I am now running a little too low in other areas. My typical morning bg is around 4.7 - 5.0 or so. At first I knew that for me that may not be a comfortable number as it was a little on the low side, but then I just got used to seeing it and feeling ok so I stuck with it in hopes that I would be able to achieve an A1C under 7.
There I go with striving for a specific number again, rather than doing what is safer for me. So much focus on diabetes control and management is based on that damn A1C. Sometimes I think it would be best to never know what I'm at. I'm a perfectionist so I get a number in my head and do whatever I can to reach that number, even if it means living a little on the edge.
My endo and I have decided that I need to scale back on the basal insulin for the next bit and she is going to review my numbers in about a week and see how I'm doing. I'm dropping down to 20 units and will monitor my pre and post meal bg's.
I'm hoping this trial and error period is relatively short this time around because I love feeling like "I got this!" even though I know diabetes always seems to crush that feeling eventually.
Alison I understand completely how you feel! I finally reached the elusive 6.9 which is what I had been striving for for sooooo long. You feel great when you see(hear) it, but then you realize that now you have to stick with it. I think I would feel much better not knowing and just being able to keep my daily numbers "in range" for the most part.
ReplyDeleteI love your Drew Cary picture and would like to have seen this one acted out!!
Yep, totally understand too. Hang in there, you guys will be able to figure out the formula for a good A1C without too many lows.
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