Diabetes Doctor Details

Last week, the day after my presentation, I had an appointment with my diabetes doctor. My regular bi-annual appointment. I arrived armed with my blood sugar/food log and a whole bunch of questions. She arrived with my blood work results.

My A1C was the lowest yet at 6.5%. I have been more stable lately - less lows - and I thought perhaps I'd be somewhere around 7%. Seeing a 6.5% knowing that it happened despite fewer lows made me happy.

A1C is essentially an average of your blood sugar over the last three months. There are different ways to reach a good A1C average. You can reach it with good numbers but you can also reach it by having lots and lots of lows which help lower the average but that's not a particularly safe or smart thing to do. I'm glad that my A1C this time was most likely due to good numbers.

My cholesterol was in the healthy range and there were no signs of protein in my urine. High fives all around.

After looking at my blood sugar log, my doctor noticed a trend that I had not seen. Apparently I have a low blood sugar in the early mornings after I swam the morning before. It's almost 24-hours later but seems to be a pretty consistent pattern. So I'll be more aware of that.

My turn.

I started off by asking for a prescription for test strips for my new Verio meter which she readily wrote. By the way, two people commented on a post I wrote last week saying that the Verio meter gave them readings that were higher than their other meters. I noticed that too on the first night when I tested my blood on my old and my new meter and then tested both with a control solution. The was almost a 2mmol difference. The question is: which one is off? My OneTouch Ultra Mini or my OneTouch Verio? Hard to know. I'm bringing both with me to Israel with lots of test strips for each so, if one starts feeling like it's giving me wonky results, I have a backup.

I then asked for a prescription for long-acting insulin. I told her that I decided not to bring a back-up insulin pump with me because of the potential $5,000 charge if I lose or damage it. I said that I was planning to bring a prescription for long-acting insulin with me as a back up. She did even better than that and gave me a pre-loaded Lantus pen with enough long-acting to get me through 20 days. I was given instructions for how to calculate the dose. Sweet!

The last thing I did was mention the issue that I had had with my toes. Anyone remember my blog a few weeks ago when I went to my family doctor and showed her tiny dots on the tips of my toes? They had been itchy but not painful and had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. My family doctor told me I had small blood vessel disease, told me to keep my feet warm, to take low dose aspirin and to show my diabetes doctor. Well, the black dots are gone now so I had nothing to show. My diabetes doc listened to me explain my symptoms and said that it probably wasn't small blood vessel disease. It was most likely a wart virus I had picked from the pool that had flared up and then disappeared once my body fought it.

She said that my family doctor probably didn't think of that because I have diabetes. (Insert rant here about looking at me as more than just a diabetic).

So my A1C was good. My other blood work was good. I have a low blood sugar trend to be aware of. My feet are fine. I have a back up plan in case my pump collapses from the Israeli heat.

All in all a very positive day at the doctor's office.