June 2020, which marked my 4th anniversary since eating sugar for the last time, I began for the first time recording my blood sugar test results. I had always thought I was one of the few who were in good control but now I was realizing I could do better and should, and that in reality, I didn't even really know how well I was doing. So I started testing frequently and recording it. I would test right after each meal and again after things settled, and so forth, striving to keep even my spikes under 150 mg/dL.
I seemed to be doing very well in June, July not quite as good, and then August was a little disappointing. But I kept at it, and achieved what I felt were mixed results in Sep-Oct. I had wanted to have my A1C tested at the end of August but the pandemic indirectly discouraged me from going in. I went in the third week of October, and the result was 6.3, 0.3 higher than my goal had been in June. I had never been that low before.
Then winter, always the challenge and the killer, came. Would this winter be different? Would I be able for the first time to keep the control I enjoyed all summer? It started out as a Yes on Thanksgiving day. After the festive feast, I was 117 or something. I felt I came off victor. Trouble was, I had not learned yet about how the food in you can keep on giving, and the sugar can climb after you thought it was stable.
So a little later, not having eaten anything, I spiked the first of many winter spikes through January. This winter was no doubt better than most but I was still searching for my way to a perfect summer-like winter.
Third week of January, I went in for my A1C. I expected it to be worse than 6.3 but I didn't care how much worse it would be, because it would have little relevance to how I was going to be, once I found the answers and could do as well all year as I had done in June.
Then on February 1, 2021, I had the worst spike of all. Since June or before, I had not broken 300 mg/dL. Now I was reading 383.
So I pulled out all the stops. All the tricks from my bag. Lined up all the guns. I had achieved the ability to never again eat sugar, now I was ready to permanently institute my evening fast. From then on, I would finish my eating for the day between 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm, even if it meant skipping supper or only having a light snack. From then on, my sugar would be settled by bedtime, and I would not have to worry anymore about checking my sugar and meteing out a bed-time shot of fast-acting insulin to get me trajected (hopefully) through the night. There would be many benefits.
My sugar would be lower and more stable during the night. This could be huge for my A1C. Imagine, night after night, suppose I was sleeping along for 7 hours at 102 mg/dL instead of 117 mg/dL, what effect that could have on my A1C.
So I started doing it along with all the other tricks I know. It was easy. I felt content evenings. I was waking up with sugars like 105 mg/dL. It was great. Now I really really didn't care what my last A1C result would turn out to be.
The doctor's office just called. 5.8.
5.0, here we come.
Since the 383 spike a week ago, I have not really spiked at all. I got up to 165 a couple of times is all - and that was right after meals. My wake-up sugars were 110, 131, 105, 101, 122, 146, 130. Which could be better, and hopefully will be, but as an entire week's record, at this stage, coming off many weeks of crazy spikes, ain't bad at all. As a statistic, I count bad days. Defined as days I broke through 180 mg/dL at least once. Ain't had a bad day since last Monday, when I spiked at not only 383 mg/dL, but 240 mg/dL just hours before.
Just so you know, I normally would be using Lantus as well as humalog but it was keeping me from strenuous abilities during the day. I needed a way to maintain at night that would not prevent me from charging up a big hill on my bicycle, lifting heavy logs, or participating in wrestling during the day. So that's why, above, I speak of getting through the night some other way. You should also know that over the past 6 months, I have put on more weight and muscle than I had done since when I was 19 years old, which was my former record. So you need not suspect that I am just starving myself, or anything like that. I am 6 ft tall and weigh 160 lb, whereas, through my 20s, 30s, 40s, I was 140 lb. In my 50s, I was closer to 160 lb, at least the late 50s, when I started working out and wrestling again.
An unrelated note, that I may not have mentioned, so I will just tack it on here - a lot of know-it-all people who think they can advise me on everything diabetes because they read an article or two, or because their grampa had diabetes, have insisted to me that I have type II diabetes. Well, my doctor confirmed I am type I. He also confirmed something I have come to realize - it isn't always a clear and definite case of type I or II.
