"Friends & Family Friday" - Biggest Support

Week 2: ACT
Friday, November 12

“Friends & Family Friday” – Who is your biggest support and how do they help you in managing your diabetes?

All of my family and friends--husband, parents, aunts & uncles, siblings, close friends--are helpful when it comes to helping me manage my diabetes...It's sort of a group effort sometimes!  They provide encouragement, a listening ear, and sometimes, even just ignoring my diabetes long enough to have a normal conversation about anything but my disease.

My mom has really been a big support since my diagnosis.  We've grown very close in the past several years, and are as close to best friends as a mother and daughter can be.  She went to my first doctor's appointment with me, when I found out that I did, in fact, have diabetes...I think my diagnosis was harder on her at first than it was for me.  When the doctor left the room, I was almost numb, but when I looked over at her, she had tears in her eyes...Which, of course, made me start crying!

Since then, she's been to all of my doctor's appointments with me, and she even came with me yesterday for the Diabetes Education Class I took (an hour and a half away).  We stayed overnight, and went to a Diabetes Health Fair at the same hospital this morning.  I honestly don't know what I would do without her...My husband realistically can't get off work every time I have an appointment, so if it weren't for my mom, I would have to go to all of them by myself.  She was joking just the other day that she would be going to all my prenatal appointments with me once I'm pregnant too, which isn't far from the truth!  Of course I'll want my husband to go to some of them with me, but I know that she'll probably be at the rest of them!

I'm so grateful to have such wonderful family and friends throughout all of this...It can definitely be a struggle, and a disheartening one, so having so many people supporting you makes it infinitely more easy to deal with.  The past week or so, I've been dealing with unexplained high blood sugars, and I know that there is something going on with my body.  I'm thinking that I might really have LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adults), because my readings have been consistently creeping upward and have at times been scary high for me.  Last weekend I had my first really high reading (371), but tonight I've been running in the 300's since 5 or 6 o'clock.  Since that's (obviously) above 250, I haven't been able to exercise to bring it down, either...According to most resources, you shouldn't exercise when you're at that point and have ketones in your urine, but some things I've read say not to exercise then at all, especially if you're in the 300-400 range.  You can read more about this subject here: http://www.joslin.org/info/why_do_blood_glucose_levels_sometimes_go_up_after_physical_activity.html

Anyway, since I've been having consistently high readings, I called my endocrinologist this afternoon and asked them what I could do to modify my current treatment regimen (diet and exercise only, no meds).  They called in a prescription for Juvamet for me, but it won't be available at my pharmacy until Monday, so I guess I'll have to wait it out over the weekend and keep close watch of my BG numbers.  Then, once I start taking my medicine, I'm hoping that my blood sugars will go down until I'm able to see my doctor again.

Well, I'm going to get off my computer and relax so that hopefully my BG will come down on its own...I'll keep you posted!