Diabetes Follow Up

I had my quarterly diabetes appointment yesterday and it was actually kind of awesome. I thought my appointment was at 3:00, but had this gut feeling all day that I was wrong. When I finally called and checked at 1:30 they told me my appointment had actually been right then….yikes! Luckily, I live across the street from my doctor’s office and promised to be there in less than a minute. They forgave me for being a few minutes late and got me in right away. I handed the nurse all my downloadable equipment (Dexcom, insulin pump, blood checker, etc.) and waited for my doctor. She replaced my old doctor recently and we are still in the get to know you phase, but for now, I love her.

I new trend I am noticing with my diabetes appointments is if I want a great appointment loaded with information I just have to mention the word pregnancy. No, not planning to anytime soon, but I would like to have everything in order, that way when the time does come I don’t have to prolong it by crossing my T’s and dotting my I’s. The first thing we looked at was my A1c, which was exactly the same as my last appointment 7.3% making my blood sugar average about 163. Because I research everything and talk with people about the subject a lot I informed my doctor that I was well aware I needed to drop down 2% before I even considered it. She smiled at me and said that wasn’t true. I could tell she could see the shock on my face when she told me she just wanted me below a 7 and that a 6.5 was the lowest she wanted me to go. My mind was blown, I am almost there and have to admit that I was a little embarrassed by the smile it brought to my face.

We continued our conversation with talking about diet. I explained to her that I am trying a low carb diet, but not nulling all carbs because I firmly believe bread carbs make you happy and should be apart of your life. She smiled at me again and said that she and the dietician on staff believed that a diet that takes away an entire food group completely wasn’t the greatest idea and how I am doing my low carb was great. But when I do get pregnant she said I would be seeing the dietician regularly because pregnancy hormones hate your blood sugars and I will need to make a lot of adjustments throughout my pregnancy.

Then we moved on to how often I would be coming in to see her because again, there are a lot of adjustments during pregnancy. I would have a few different basal settings throughout each semester to keep my numbers under control. And with my Dexcom information available to her during my appointment were able to make some much-needed adjustments to my current settings. But because my basals are and have been a huge problem/mess for awhile we went back to some basics and in a month I will go back to make some more adjustments. For the most part the current basal setting she has me at has prevented a lot of lows for me.

I am the giddiest when I go and see my doctor. They laugh at me because I am all over my chart looking at all my blood work, asking every question imaginable, and the fact that I know a decent chunk of information. Well, I think they laugh because of that, it’s either that or the fact that they think I am a crazy person. Either way I am not embarrassed it’s my health and I want to be involved and learn and grow.