Image via WikipediaThe GoodI'm still feeling positive and motivated despite some small setbacks I've been having. One thing that's influenced me the most is it's getting easier to wake up in the morning and the grogginess that I used to experience is going. All this means that the diabetes has been affecting my recovery through the use of CPAP for my sleep apnoea. It's setting me up for a better start in the morning, which has a knock on effect for the rest of the day.
I've finally been contacted by the diabetic clinic so I'll be able to find out if the changes I've made are right, too much or possibly wrong. As I've said before it's important to be able to talk about diabetes, it helps me that I've got people with the condition that I know, and I'm now looking forward to seeing the people at the clinic. The topics that they're going to cover look good, diet, carbohydrates, exercise and problems, all to do with living with diabetes. I'm getting myself a digital voice recorder so that I can tape the sessions so I can use them with any notes I take. My aim is to set up a mind map to make it easier to remember what it is I'm supposed to be doing. I'll be able to highlight the things that I am doing and identify the things that I'm not, then it should just be a case of maintaining the correct level of some things whilst changing the level of others.
The Bad
The last two months have been a bit hit and miss, I'm still feeling odd but my sister says that's because my body is used to having a high blood sugar count and as I've dropped it quite quickly it'll take a while for it to get used to the lower levels. I figure once this happens I'll start to feel a lot better.
Things weren't helped by having a cold for a week, that left me feeling really grouchy, tired and generally down. One thing I noticed during September was that I was starting to feel tired earlier in the evening, I'm not sure if that's related to the cold, sleep apnoea or the changeable weather we've been experiencing.
I've had a number of skin infections as my blood sugar has dropped each one treated with some antibiotics, the latest one is a rather large lump on the side of my head making various parts of my face feel numb at odd times, this may be
(a) an infection
(b) chicken pox
(c) shingles (what I used to describe as the single most painfull experience I've ever had before my appendix burst)
or (d) I'm turning into Zaphod Beeblebrox, which I think is far more preferable to any of the others and probably a great deal more fun.
The Excellent
I had a blood test at the start of this month and my HbA1c count is now 6.5% (yelps of joy), which equates to 48 mmol/mol. According to Diabetes UK this puts me at the lower target for people with Diabetes and at the top limit for people without Diabetes. The one thing I'm not sure about is how much of this progress is down to medication and how much of it is down to changes in lifestyle. The one thing I'm sure of is that medication alone is not enough but I'm very confident that you can use lifestyle changes in place of medication, it probably just takes a little longer.
For those of you who don't have diabetes and are reading this, it's not too late to look at how you're leading your life and make some relatively small changes, you'll be glad you did.
