Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Revealing

In the past when I’ve written about my numbers—daily or A1c—I’ve gotten myriad comments. Some have been positive and encouraging. Others, not so much. I keep a really tight reign on my diabetes; that’s what I was taught to do, and having an A-type personality along with other control issues, it’s what’s programmed into me naturally. I work really, really hard at it and make a lot of sacrifices. I’m by no means perfect—I have my down days and scenarios, and that’s usually what I write about on here.

But I do have a lot of good days, and a lot of good numbers. At one point, though, I decided not to share them on here, because the comments that were written often left me feeling guilty or like I was being made fun of on the playground, or being read a bad deck of cards by a fortune-teller. My diabetes status has been called into question, I’ve been told that I’m on a six-year honeymoon, I’ve been warned to just wait—things were going to get a lot worse, I’ve been told I’m very lucky, as if everything with my body has been chance alone with no impact from me. Whether the commenters meant them as positive or negative, I took them to heart, felt like I was doomed, felt like everything I was doing in my diabetes care didn’t matter and like I was being a little bit ostracized for doing a good job and talking about it.

I went to the endocrinologist on Friday, as a follow-up for starting on the Novolog in late April. The doctor took my HbA1c and I got my test results on Monday. My number was good, really good, and I worked really hard to get it, and I’m really proud of it. But I debated on whether or not to post it here.

Then I remembered what my original intent of this blog was. I wanted a blog that showed that while there was a lot of work involved, and there would be hard days, it was not impossible to do okay with diabetes. And I write this blog for me, as well, as an outlet to freely write about diabetes, and feeling like I’m not able to write about my good days and my good numbers makes me feel like I’m censoring myself.

So. My HbA1c was 5.3. Yay for me!

As always, more to come…

12 comments:

Unknown said...

That's a bloomin' marvellous result! Well done you.

In terms of criticism about your numbers, perceived or otherwise, every diabetic is different (as we all know). What's a good number for one person is rubbish for another - and vice versa. Without trying to sound like a trite personal development book - it's what you think about your result that matters - screw everyone else! Yay!

Scott K. Johnson said...

Fantastic A1C! Way to go!

Crystal said...

CONGRATS!!!!

That is AWEsome! And I am SO glad you posted about it.

Keep up the Great work.
The point is You. You and you alone manage your disease. However that works for You. And look at that number, it's working!! Hooray!

And TOtally what the Brit Tim said. He cracks me up. He has his own way of encouraging. Personally I enjoy it, a lot. ;-) And really, screw everyone else because what matters is You. No one else.

Pish posh on all others I say!

Congrats again, Amazing number!! Woo hoo, yippee! (how you gonna celebrate???)

Jonah said...

Wow, I thought after that you were going to say something like 7.3- a number that would be an improvement for many but still not at all ideal. Congratulations on 5.3!!
I saw a post a while back that suggested that for the purposes of communicating with other diabetic bloggers, we should instead of giving our numbers as numbers, use smiley faces to indicate whether this number is something that makes us feel ecstatic, happy, so-so, disappointed, or extremely upset.

Anonymous said...

I think you should post numbers as you please, good and bad. The more we ALL know about how others manage their diabetes, the better we will all be with our own. I think we all realize that everyone is different yet how do we know what to try if we don't hear from others for whom something has worked or not worked?

Great news about the numbers!! I think it's great that you shared!

Jeff said...

Great A1C, and thanks for posting it!

Chris said...

I've said this before, maybe not to you specifically, but it can be applied to a number of situations:

F the haters.

You're healthy, no need to hide from it.

F the haters.

Gail said...

Yay for YOU!! Your hard work paid off. So happy to read this post. You are always an inspiration for me.

jimpurdy1943@yahoo.com said...

Sherlock said:
"I think you should post numbers as you please, good and bad. The more we ALL know about how others manage their diabetes, the better we will all be with our own. I think we all realize that everyone is different yet how do we know what to try if we don't hear from others for whom something has worked or not worked?"

I agree completely. Our successes (and failures) can help other people who are willing to learn. Those who don't want to learn don't matter anyway.

Lora said...

Thank you, all.

:)

This Ro(a)mantic Life said...

Such good news! I don't have much to add to what everyone else said -- so ditto with extra exclamation points.

Cathy said...

Lora, you rocked it!!!! Yay for you!!!!