I am a Type 2 diabetic. And I’m not very good at being a diabetic yet, even though I’ve been one for the past 18 years. Over the past couple of years I’ve been dealing with a lot of “life stress”. Taking care of a sick parent, in college, working full time, moving, COVID – you know S-T-R-E-S-S! People tend to deal with their stress in different ways and some of those ways can be positive (like exercise, meditation and counseling) and some people deal with stress in more self destructive ways like drinking a lot, gambling unprotected sex with strangers or in my case – NOT TAKING MY MEDICATION as directed.
Please don’t judge me (BGN is a judge free zone). As an outsider, you might look at my situation and say “You mean all you have to do is check your blood glucose level and take your meds every day to keep your diabetes in check?” Well yes – and I also have to keep my diet and exercise in check but yes – checking my blood glucose level and taking my meds every day is a VERY LARGE PART OF STAYING HEALTHY!!
Since I’m someone who is in a constant state of self improvement, I decided to use 2022 as a “kick start” to get my diabetes situation under control. I made a doctor’s appointment with my regular doctor who specializes in diabetes for a “diabetic med check”. As part of a diabetic med check, he ordered a blood test to measure my A1C.
Because I had not been consistently taking my medication (which is a combination of oral medication and insulin shots), I didn’t expect my A1C test to be all that great. So a week before my doctor’s appointment, I went to get my blood and urine lab work completed.
The morning of my “teledoc” appointment, I decided I needed to take a blood glucose reading (since I hadn’t checked my blood in awhile). A normal reading is suppose to be around 100 and when I checked my blood that morning, my blood meter said I had a reading of 489!!!! Oh my gosh!!! It has NEVER been that high!!! Ever!!! I was kind of freaking out because when your blood sugar is too high it cause symptoms like x, y, z.
So I kept my cool and got on the phone with my doctor who then went over my blood work results. He told me my A1C was 11!! Yes that is more bad news. Your A1C should be around a 6. So I told my doctor that my blood meter said I had a glucose level of 489 and he said, “I’m not surprised. You need to up your insulin intake from 4 units to 20 units to get your blood glucose under control.”
Wow – that’s a lot of additional insulin he wants me to take. And if I take too much insulin, it could make my blood sugar drop too low which could cause symptoms like x, y, z. That’s scary!!! What’s a girl to do?
Well, because I come from a family of genetic diabetics, and because I “know my body” I remember my mom in the past having equipment failures with her blood meters in the past. She always told me – “double check your results if they don’t look right”.
So that’s what I decided to do – double check my blood glucose levels. So I went to CVS, bought another blood glucose meter and did a side by side test of both meters. And as mentioned above, on the old meter it said my reading was 489 but on the new meter it said by blood glucose reading was 181!! That is quite a large difference.
I can only imagine what would have happened if I took my doctor’s advice and changed my insulin intake from 4 units to 20 units – without validating THE ACCURACY of my blood glucose level. If I would have taken that much insulin, it could have have caused my readings to dip way below normal and could have possibly landed me in the hospital.
SO THE MORAL OF THIS STORY is…check your blood glucose daily and if not daily, check it enough to know what your average reading is. AND if your blood glucose readings don’t look quite right – DOUBLE CHECK THE READING ON DIFFERENT EQUIPMENT before adjusting your diabetic medicine. Managing diabetes is tricky but not impossible!
