Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The Education of Sayre (from the other blog)

Note: Just as I don't want to bore you all unnecessarily with my weightloss fixation, I don't want to bore you all with my diabetes stuff. I am as always amazed and humbled by the response of "total strangers" to my various postings about personal things. You are not strangers in my heart even though I wouldn't know you if I ran into you on the street. Your support makes dealing with some of these curveballs much easier. Thank you! If you want to keep up with my physical navel-gazing, you can visit my other blog, Finding My Inner, Thinner Self which is on my blogroll.

After a false start yesterday, I got to go to my diabetes education class today. It was a one-on-one with a nurse in my doctor's office, which was nice. She had all my information and my folder with her, so I could ask her all kinds of questions that pertained to just me.

For those of you who are number geeks (and as a reminder where I can find it for myself):

HDL = 36 (should be 55+)
LDL = 98 (now that I am diabetic, they're gonna make me get down to 70)
Triglycerides = 145 (should be less than 150)
Total Cholesterol = 163 (should be less than 200)

When they did the blood test for diabetes, mine has come back as 6.3 twice. Normal is 5.5 for a fasting glucose test. So I'm diabetic, but not really, really bad.

I got a metering machine and prescriptions for lancets and test strips (scary sounding). She told me to "play around" with the machine to get the hang of it. Apparently it's a waste of materials to show me how to do it in the office, but the directions are in the box and why stick yourself more than you have to?

Initially, they want me to test every morning when I wake up and then two or three times a week about two hours after eating. That will give us some baseline information and adjustments will be made from there. I get another blood test next month, which will line up nicely with my cholesterol/liver monitoring so I can get all that done at once rather than having them search for veins several times a month...

I also have a prescription for Metformin, which is a common diabetes medication. Twice a day. Plus vitamin D. I need 2000 IU a day because my levels are low. Apparently this has some effect but I'm not sure what. I do take calcium for my osteopenia, so more vitamin D isn't a bad thing.

I also need to schedule a thorough eye exam. Having never had one, this makes me a little nervous, but once a year I have to do this because one of the side effects of diabetes can be - blindness.

It's all very scary sounding stuff, but keeping it all under control doesn't sound that hard. Basically, I take my medications, get some exercise every day, and avoid white stuff. No white sugar, white flour, white potatoes, white rice - you get the idea. Which shouldn't be too hard. I will miss mashed potatoes and sweet tea, but already I've noticed that my taste for sweet tea has waned quite a bit. I tried putting Splenda in it, but I don't really like the aftertaste so I've been drinking it unsweetened. Not bad (and for me, that's saying something).

After I've read everything and started doing the stuff they want me to do and have my check up near the end of February, we'll have a better idea of what is necessary for me to control this.

It's not fun having diabetes, but it's better than a poke in the eye.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay, now think about it. How long has it taken you to get where you are today? It will take a little bit for the body to adapt to new behaviors. And even then you may still have cravings.
I know that you will succeed in this new direction of your life.
My faith is in you.

love ya, stef

Anonymous said...

What is sweet tea? Is it just regular orange pekoe with sugar in it? or is it a certain brand of tea?

karatemom said...

Sounds like you are off on the right path.
Don't let it slow ya down.

Sayre said...

Oh, Babzy - Sweet Tea is the champagne of the South. It is appropriate with any meal, but goes especially well with fried grouper and cheese grits. But you basically have it right. It's brewed tea with A LOT of sugar added while it's still hot so that it melts in just right. Good sweet tea is in a class by itself. Here in the South, when you order "iced tea" you get sweet tea. You have to specify unsweet or not-sweet if you don't want the sugar. I discovered this the other day when I ordered "tea" and got Sweet Tea. Most of us natives automatically say sweet tea anyway.

Anonymous said...

Up here we have "tea" (put your own sugar in if you want) or "iced tea" is always sweet unless you say "unsweet".

A very popular tea around my parts is Chai Tea. Can be hot or iced, has a lot of sugar and a lot of milk in it. Also contains spices such as cinammon, nutmeg, other stuff. It's been introduced to us by the South Asian community.

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure if we ordered sweet tea we would draw a blank.