Diabetes - update

My latest A1C is 5.8. My last in May was 5.5.

5.8 is a good number. It is in the “normal” non-diabetic range. However, I feel _______ [anxious, disappointed, silly, guilty…] that my blood sugar levels have increased. Anxious because I worry that I am not able to control my BS levels as well as I was. Disappointed because I feel like I am not living up to my own expectations. Silly because I know this is a very minor increase. Guilty – see disappointment.

When initially diagnosed in March 2022, my A1C was 9.5, which means unable to control blood sugar levels and put me in the diabetic range. Since that time I’ve been able to lower my blood sugar levels significantly through diet and exercise. I do an A1C test every three months and it has always been lower (9.5, 8.0, 5.9, 5.5) until now (5.8).

Some things were out of my control in the last three months. I had a bowel obstruction which landed me in the hospital at the end of June. I took in no fluids or foods for several hours. Following that, a liquid diet for a few more days, all of which required me to consume fluids that were high in sugar: Gatorade, jello, followed by soft foods, but still with a higher sugar content than I usually eat. This didn’t last long.

Other things are within my control. I have had to increase my calorie intake because I am too hungry if I don’t. I have tried adding a bit more grains and some of these seem to have caused a BS level of 7.0 on average. I prefer my post-meal (two hours after eating) BS level to be in the 5-6 range. I have been consuming more alcohol of late – a pint or two of beer weekly as opposed to maybe once a month. I’ve eaten chicken wings at pubs (plain, no sauce, but maybe still an issue?). I haven’t been walking as much as I was. I am still doing my fitness class three or four times a week, but in July and August it's on Zoom rather than in person so I wasn’t walking 10kms per class as I was in the earlier part of the year.

I have been testing only after my evening meal because my other meals are always the same and when I tested for them before, they came up with good post meal numbers.

My plan going forward is to be stricter, to drink less alcohol, to avoid the wings and to test the other meals, not to skip the daily walk.

I’m trying not to panic, not to be blue and not to feel overwhelmed. I know it’s just a tiny increase. This is a disease. I have to take it seriously. I have to prioritize it over everything else. I can never slack off. I have to keep vigilant. I will have to figure out how not to be hard on myself, but that’s a problem for another day.