Progress Check

Good news from the doc.

I took a blood test recently.  The best, most ideal indicator of how "under control" diabetes is is the A1C test.  It's in essence how much of your red blood cells have sugar attached.  When sugar is attached to your blood cells, it's harder for them to squeeze into smaller capillaries like in your feet.  One reason why diabetics with out of control disease lose their feet:  blood isn't getting in there.

The A1C is a better indicator than the day-to-day glucose test I take, because that's a reading based on hour-by-hour eating and fasting.  The A1C is like a 3-month snapshot average, thus providing a really good glimpse of just how under control the disease is.  I can fake a day's worth of little finger-prick tests if I do shit like eat a boatload of sugar then take a couple shots of vodka, or eat a loaf of bread then do an hours-worth of wind-sprints.  You can cheat the gluco-meter.  You can't cheat the A1C.

A "normal" non-diabetic person would have an A1C result of somewhere between 4.5% and 6%.

My blood test:  4.8%.

Bam.

The doctor has put me on metformin, an oral drug with huge benefits.  He has also taken me off of insulin.  Further, my metformin dose is half the regular dose.  The goal is to even some day work me off of metformin.

Metformin isn't fake insulin.  In fact, it works specifically with my body's own insulin, which I'm producing some of.  From a med journal:

Many people may wonder, "How does it work?" Metformin belongs to a class of drugs known as biguanide medications and works in several ways. The medicine reduces the amount of sugar made by the liver, limits the amount of sugar absorbed into the body from the diet, and makes insulin receptors more sensitive (helping the body respond better to its own insulin). All of these effects cause a decrease in blood sugar levels. Since metformin does not increase the amount of insulin produced by the body, it is less likely to cause dangerously low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), as many other diabetes medications can do.

It also reduces my long-term risk of heart disease, a common co-occurring disorder with diabetics, and vastly reduces pancreatic cancer risk.

This is huge.  No more shots.  My body is working again.  Other diabetic risks diminish both because of my diet and exercise and because of this med.  I tend not to get hypoglycemic during my completely insane workouts now.  

I'm really pleased, and really proud.

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Channeling Wilford Brimley

Sometimes, life ain't fair.

A year and a half ago, I embarked on a serious mission to get in peak physical shape, adopt healthier eating habits, and lose weight.  I was nearly 220 pounds, almost 40 pounds heavier than I needed to be or should be.  Drinking beer added calories, but I had no balance in the food I chose to eat.  Working out 3 times a week yielded slow, incremental weight gain and no marked improvement in muscle mass and athletic performance.  I was lazy, and slowly becoming someone I was not proud of.

I did it.  I eat healthy now, and enjoy an occasional sin, but it's OK, because "sin" was no longer the bulk of my dining experience.  I did the Insanity workout, then dove right into Crossfit training, and was nearing the shape I was in coming out of Infantry School in the Marines.  I was down 30 pounds.  I remembered what it was like to earn something again, and that makes your mind as tough as your body.

My reward for all this hard work and discipline:  2 weeks ago, I was diagnosed with diabetes.

What.  The.  Fuck.

A normal person, when they wake up in the morning, has a glucose level of around 100, and after a meal, about 120.  2 hours after a meal on the day I was diagnosed, I was 514.  My low point was 489.

I went in to the doctor because the night of the Super Bowl, I went to bed fine, and woke up the next morning no longer able to see very far.  My head felt cloudy and I was a tad confused.  Thinking was like thinking through mud.  I chalked it up to getting sick.

But day by day, symptoms racked-up.  Cotton-mouth.  Couldn't drink enough water.  No matter how much I chugged, I needed more and more.  I'd wake up on the hour, every hour, at night to piss a quart at a time (no wonder I was so dehydrated) - my body was pissing-out the sugar it couldn't process.

Finally, I bit the bullet and did the one thing you should never ever under any circumstances do:  I checked out Web MD, because all the symptoms sounded real familiar.  The next morning, I called to doc to get in that very afternoon.

When I got in, I told the doc that I'd bet him $10 I was diabetic.  I told him my symptoms, and said "just go get the glucometer."  514.  Arterial blood draws confirmed it.  My pancreas is broke.

Since then, I take a daily shot of insulin, and check my glucose 4 times a day.

My diet is already healthy, and a diabetic diet looks a lot like the Paleo diet, or simply a diet of someone who eats healthy and loses weight...my diet already!  Low in sugar, low in carbs, if you must eat carbs, make 'em whole grain. No big deal there.

I had to take a break from exercise so we could get the sugars to a control level, and then I could get back to the gym, as hard exercise drops your blood sugar.  I'm easing back into exercise; some light cardio last week, now amping-up the cardio and adding some resistance.  Eventually, as I figure out my sugar levels, I can hit Crossfit and Insanity and all that other crap again, because I'll have a better understanding of exercise, my dosage of insulin, and what I need to eat before and after a workout so I don't "go hypo (hypoglycemic)" and pass out!

My glucose is dropping to normal ranges.  No permanent damage was done, as we caught it early on.  Had I not been in such good shape, and thus attuned to how my body was feeling, it coulda been worse.  Only slight eye damage, and not retinal bleeding; my lenses got warped by how much sugar was in my blood and how fast I got rid of it, so from now on, I'll be a tad far-sighted.

I feel good again.  I'm glad we caught this.  I'm pissed and life isn't fucking fair that I worked so hard to not be in this position, but here I am anyway.  The rest of my life is needles and poking and disciplined dieting and watching my blood and nerding around with what certain foods and activities do to my glucose (it gives me something to tinker with!) and sometimes feeling fuzzy and sometimes feeling weak and shaky if I miss a meal and so on.  Needles and shots...forever.

But at least I can still drink beer.

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