Testing Times!!

Testing Times!

Why oh Why - someone please tell me why I have to spear myself all the bloody time (& I do mean bloody!).

Simple.

Your BG Meter is the only tool you have to help you make informed choices about managing your diabetes.  Don't want to manage it?  Want to be one of these statistics?

• Kidney disease accounts for 21 per cent of deaths in Type 1 diabetes
• Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death and disability in people with diabetes, accounting for 44 per cent of fatalities in people with Type 1 diabetes
• People with diabetes are 10 to 20 times more likely to go blind than people without.
• Diabetes is the most common cause of lower limb amputations.  Up to 70 per cent of people die within five years of having an amputation as a result of diabetes.
• Neuropathies (or nerve damage) may affect up to 50 per cent of patients with diabetes.
• Diabetes is the fifth most common cause of death in the world    
• The prevalence of depression is approximately twice as high in people with diabetes as it is in the general population

Source: www.diabetes.org.uk/Documents/Reports/Diabetes_in_the_UK_2010.pdf

Life expectancy is reduced, on average, by more than 20 years in people with Type 1 diabetes

Well I sure as hell don't, so given the choice, and it is MY choice, I want to manage my diabetes!

Easier said than done.....

Here is my first ever chart - the last week of January, my first few insulin injections and the first time I got the meter to say anything other than "HI"!

Max, Min and Average

I was very pleased with this.  Scared, worried that, as the GP had said "It'll take you eighteen months to get your bloods under control, and we don't recommend you do anything more strenuous than a gentle walk maybe once a day", but heartened that it was at least possible to get this thing under control.

One week of data, loads of reading, and no way I was going to have my life expectancy reduced by 20 years!  FFS that would only give me another ten to fifteen years.  Sod that.  Way too much to do yet!

I could barely wait for each new day and each new hour so I could capture more data, test, test, test.  I was racking up at least ten tests a day.  I knew that the more data I had the better chance I would have of being able to make sensible and informed decisions.

By now I had also decided to go  low carb.  I mean really low carb.  I was not my Dieticians favourite pupil any more.

Next edition:  Carb counting, Energy, Pseudoscience and Guidelines!