Please excuse me while I expound on the torment that is dealing with adult onset type 2 diabetes.

First, I will say that I totally understand that there are much more agonizing illnesses to manage. My 10 year old nephew is 11 weeks into his Leukemia treatment and awaiting a full bone marrow transplant. Thank goodness his older sister is a perfect match. They’ve all tried to make the situation a little more fun (because we all know it’s a miserable and unfair state of affairs), by bombarding him with gifts and encouragement. On Easter morning they woke up in their hospital room to decorations and a candy easter egg hunt plus fun activities. There’s a music room, a game room, and arts and crafts at the hospital. He was visited by a new pro soccer player in their town and received a bunch of autographed items from the team, but life is still a slice of hell for that poor little guy.

Then there’s my 84 year old step dad on his 36th round of chemo for the prostate cancer that has settled in his spine. He’s getting a back brace to help with the pain. He’s determined to keep living because he doesn’t want to leave my mom behind. His sister lived to 96. Pretty sure he wants to outdo her.

So here I am with my moderately annoying diabetes and about to complain. It feels wrong, but I’m gonna do it anyway, because I know I’m not alone. This whole thing “began” way back when I was, well, born. Part of this is genetics. There is type 2 diabetes on both my father’s side, and my mother’s side. As previously mentioned, my dad died from complications of diabetes just before covid, at age 77. My grandfather on my mom’s side died from a heart attack at age 82, but he was diagnosed with diabetes at about 50. He wasn’t overweight, but he loved him some cookies. When we cleaned out his little retirement home apartment after his death, he had packages of cookies hidden all over the place. He also had lady friends “hidden” all over the place, lol. Gotta love him!

Now, I’m not in denial. I was warned by my extremely thin and healthy Indian doctor that not only did I have the family history, but I also had the genetic markers. Those high triglycerides, even when I was in my 20’s and not overweight, were a sign. So ignoring that, and gaining weight over time, put me at high risk. I had no symptoms until my fasting blood sugars creeped into the 130’s around my 45th birthday. My doc was all over it!

I still have no physical symptoms of the diabetes (other than the blood tests). Yes, very occasionally there are signs of low blood sugars (head ache, dizziness, sleepiness), but not high. My organs all have normal function. I don’t have neuropathy. I’ve blogged about my visits to a place called Structure House, near Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Back in 2016, Structure House helped me understand my diabetes. I lost weight there and became stronger. But even with proper education, diet, exercise, and therapy, over time the diabetes progressed. It’s not horrible. I’ve maintained the nearly 40 pound weight loss for about eight years, but I have also needed to increase medications. I started with Metformin, then low dose insulin once a day, then Jardiance about a year ago. I had been, for years, trying to get my A1c (a blood test that measures blood sugars for the prior 2-3 months) below 7. It should be below 5.7 for non-diabetics. Three months ago my A1c shot up to 9 even though my morning numbers were good. I decided I needed a CGM, a continuous glucose monitoring system. My insurance covers a portion of Dexcom, so that’s what I ordered. It took a couple months for them to get the sensor in stock. Each sensor (the expensive part that is inserted on your body with a painless applicator) lasts 10 days and the transmitter (that clicks into the sensor and sends data to your phone) lasts 90 days. With my insurance the whole thing costs about $150/month and is so worth it!

The first couple days after inserting the Dexcom sensor, I was astonished at what the numbers showed. I had set the parameters at 70-180, with an alert if my blood sugars went above or below those numbers any time of day or night. A non diabetic would have numbers in the 70-140 range with most numbers being below 100. Well, my morning numbers were good, generally below 120, but each morning after breakfast, regardless of what I ate, my numbers shot up above 250 😮 and as high as 280 when I had one of my favorite protein smoothies. Damn. Not good. Day 3 I ate ONLY protein for breakfast. Zero carbs and my number 1.5 hours post breakfast was still 248. Now everything you read would have you believe that being overweight and eating too many carbs (sugar) are the cause of high blood sugars (diabetes). For sure, those things don’t help, however, they are not the ONLY factors for high blood sugars. So what things besides sugary foods and “white” carbs lead to high blood sugar numbers:

Medications (yep, I take a few, some affect blood sugars)

Stress (yep, I could manage it better)

Physical Inactivity (yep, broken foot at the time)

Illness

Hormonal changes (ummm)

Dehydration (I try to drink A LOT of water)

Smoking (nope)

Alcohol (nope)

Artificial Sweeteners (nope)

Sunburn (not at this time)

Coffee (nope)

Lack of sleep (yep)

Skipping breakfast (sometimes yeah, but not anymore)

Time of Day (okay)

Dawn phenomenon (what???)

Nose Spray (ack, I’m addicted)

Gum disease (no)

To name a few…

Not sure exactly what to do, I started adjusting medications. I cut in half a couple that could affect it, I split my already low dose slow acting insulin in half and started taking half at waking and half before bed. That helped. I tried to get more sleep.

Then there was the issue of the crazy alarm going off the very first night (middle of the night) due to LOW blood sugars. The first low reading was just below the cut off, at 69, so I ignored it and went back to sleep. It stayed pretty normalized at night between 80-110 for the next 10 days, so that was good.

Then I had heard that if you eat protein first, at breakfast, then complex carbs, the body processes it better. It was worth a try. 🤷🏻‍♀️

All was going well with blood sugars generally falling between 90-220 (not great, but better) and two days ago I got up, my blood sugar number was 100 (good). I ate a high protein breakfast and went out to work in the garden (we’re in Ojai) for what turned out to be three hours of hard labor reworking my raised garden boxes, digging and amending soil including lugging huge bags of compost and working in amendments then planting about 30 annuals and perennials as well as some pruning and hauling debris. At lunch I was strangely not very hungry but I ate a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain and an apple. My blood sugars never went above 140 all day. For dinner I really wasn’t hungry but ate part of a delicious Vietnamese chicken salad that we picked up at the local noodle house. I also had a couple bites of my son’s garlic noodles with chicken. We took a walk with the dog, then I watched some tennis on the tennis channel, it’s clay court season. Not my favorite, but I do love the tennis. At 10pm I fell asleep, not feeling very well, but totally exhausted. My blood sugars were a little low at 90, but I didn’t worry. At 11:30pm the annoyingly loud (no matter what the volume of my phone is at) Dexcom alarm started going off. My blood sugars level was 59. TOO LOW. Blues Eyes, because he acts like a child half the time, drinks juice boxes (don’t ask). He quickly brought me an apple juice box, which I drank, I mean frantically sipped. Fifteen minutes later my sugars had only risen to 60. Not good enough. Although Blue Eyes was standing there with another juice box, I asked him to slice me up an apple. After forcing down 3/4 of the apple and feeling like I was going to throw up, my numbers slowly started to climb. It took 2 hours for my blood sugar to reach 80. I was feeling awful, but I was super grateful for the Dexcom CGM. I went back to sleep. The next morning my sugars were still a bit low, but better.

I keep tweaking things, medications, when I eat, what I eat, trying to get enough sleep, exercise, etc… generally things are going well and my 14 day blood sugars are averaging 137, which equates to about 6.5 A1c, which would be phenomenal. It IS frustrating needing to monitor SO many factors in order to get a half way decent range of blood sugars each day. I’m sure non-diabetics would find it incredibly annoying. Type 1 diabetics have been dealing with this their whole lives.

For anyone who is pre diabetic/diabetic, I would highly recommend a CGM. Although I am still in the baby stages of figuring out my own body as it relates to blood glucose, I’m grateful for the technology. I know my situation isn’t so bad. A food addict friend with diabetes regularly has numbers in the 3-400’s. That is too high, and irresponsible, and causes serious health problems. My dad was a poster child for ignoring his diabetes. I don’t want to be that person.

I also have friends who love to give me diet advice. A high school friend and her husband were very overweight. About 3 years ago, hubby went to the doc and was diagnosed pre diabetic. They immediately went on a Keto diet and each lost a bunch of weight. He’s no longer pre diabetic. She claimed if I just buy this book and do that restrictive and unreasonable diet for me, all will be fixed. I told her thanks for the unsolicited advice, but no thanks. I need a sustainable program (realizing I’m STILL figuring it out) for me. Not sure if it’s related, but a few weeks ago this friend was rushed to the hospital with artery blockage and had emergency surgery. Ouch.

In other news, I’m incredibly happy to welcome in May, my birthday month. Grateful for all the beauty here in Ojai!