Amount of time you've lived w/ Complications

That is the Irish in me AR! I was also very lucky to find a good doctor to replace the bad one. I think most doctors would have said “chop it off” but I found one willing to try and save it.

I ran 10 miles yesterday. I pulled over to take rocks out of my shoe about 8 miles into it and definitely thought of you!

Well, I was Dx’d in December 2010. Before that, I had to get a new prescription for my glasses because I started to notice that I could no longer read things up close. After I was dx’d though, my vision became really blurry but my Endo said that was normal and it should get better as my body stabilized. And it did and for a while things were A-okay. Then come March, I noticed my vision was starting to get a little hazy, and bright lights were starting to bother me. I went to the eye doctor and found out that I’m developing cataracts in both eyes.

I don’t know yet if I’m going to get the surgery for them, my endo thinks that they might just be from my body still adjusting and that maybe they’ll go away once my BG gets even lower. For now I just wear tinted glasses most of the time and lowered the brightness of my laptop screen. It seems to help, sort of. But I i think once I come home from school in the summer, if there really isn’t a dramatic improvement, I’m going to really consider the surgery since I am a TV production major and my eyes are a very important part of my job.

Thanks for the post Dan, this is a super important subject, By the way, I didnt know that dropping A1C too fast would cause worsen complications… Thank you so much for bringing important information

Wish SO much lucky and the BEST to all of us who are fighting to have a better life with diabetes

I was diagnosed from mild retinopathy and then moved to moderate retinopathy in 2008. I fought my way to get on the sensor and dropped my A1c down 0.7% and my retinopathy improved and no laser surgery for me!

However, after years of having GI mystery issues, finally was diagnosed two months ago with small bowel bacterial overgrowth (SBBO or SIBO) which means gastroparesis. After almost 28 years, I think I’m doing pretty good. Hopefully now that I’ve got an excuse to go gluten free, maybe I’ll lose these last 20 lbs.

What exactly is a floater? Sorry, I don’t think I’ve had them, but sometimes if I close my eyes in the shower, I feel like I am looking at the back of my iris. (I know it sounds weird.) Just wondering what it is.

Floaters are when you see little strings or clouds floating across your eye. If you move your eye from side to side they seem to be floating in liquid.

Floaters are common in older people with or without diabetes. They can be damn distracting.

T-1 38 years

Complications: some nerve damage in one foot, numing on the sides of my legs. Eyes good for 38 years per my Dr.

It could me aging. My biggest complicaion is the FEAR of complications

I hope when you pulled the rocks out, you also looked at your foot - if you say no, I am going to have to go collect some golf balls!

Do you know what is a “normal/good” range?

I probably won’t have severe problems since my A1c is in the 6.x, so I couldn’t drop it drastically anyway, but it’s never wrong to know.

Danny,

I was diagnosed with nonproliferative retinopathy back in 1979, seven years after my type 1 diagnosis. This was a wakeup call to me so I began to pay a bit more attention to how I lived with type 1. I had minimal changes in my eyes until the late eighties following college and grad school when I decided to take better control my diabetes. My A1Cs dropped from around 12 to 7, but my eyes now displayed proliferative retinopathy and vascular growth. I had laser surgery in the early nineties and kept my A1Cs between 7 and 8. I decided to try an insulin pump in early '03. Pumping is a good thing for me. My A1Cs have been around 6 and I have had no further eye issues. You can certainly last a long time with complications, 32 years and counting for me.

Bill

Non-diabetic A1c’s are in the 4’s and 5’s. Some non-diabetics do go into the low 6’s, but then it’s time to watch them to be sure they don’t go higher.
For a diabetic, it really depends. Some people, particularly early-stage Type 2’s, can get into the 5’s fairly easily with diet and exercise. Others, like some full-blown Type 1’s, have a hard time getting below 8. People DO glycate differently. Other Type 1’s have successfully gotten into the 5’s – there is even a group of them here.
If you’re in the 6’s, you’re not doing badly. It depends on how much work you want to put in to get into the 5’s, and it may or may not be worth it to you. I’ve always been in the 6’s for 20 years, except for 6 months last year, when I was in the 10’s (long story), and have no complications. Could be genetics, could be just plain luck!

I sense a common theme: Complications are the motivator for better control. With better control complications reverse or at least don’t get worse. That is my story too. I always wondered whether a pill that causes high BG to be painful is all that is needed. Deferred gratification is not everybody’s cup of tea. I am capable of a fair amount of deferred gratification. My downfall was that I believed my doctor who told me that A1C in the low 6s was fine.

A1C’s in the low 6’s ARE Fine.

Wow Danny, I didn’t realize that you had reversed a complication. I don’t know how I missed that. Congrats to you. You are a beacon of light for so many. I’m so Proud of you for not giving up. :slight_smile:

My A1C was consistently 6.2. It came as a total surprise to me when complications showed up at my doorstep. I thought that being fine meant no complications. It took many years in the 5’s for my complications to reverse. A1C in the low 6’s was not fine for me.

Having an A1c in the low 6’s only reduces risk. It is NOT a guarantee that they will not happen. Plus no one really knows why some people get complications and some don’t. There might be genetic factors over which you have no control. I don’t think Bernstein is wrong when he says diabetics deserve to have normal BGs, which lead to normal A1cs.

The majority of Diabetics will get complications because it is a progressive disease. The aging body tolerates Diabetes even less. Some may have complications and not associate/realize it or not want to admit it and let it get worse. As we’ve seen here, just because a Person is in the 5’s doesn’t mean that they will not get complications. There is NO guarentee, for sure. But if they feel Good being stable in the lower 6’s they theoretically should “last longer” than being miserable trying to be perfect in the 5’s which is much rarer whether an MDIer or a Pumper.

Most People can’t manage to get into the 5’s or if they do many are experiencing lows.and that includes some Pumpers. So telling someone who hasn’t been successful in even getting into the 6’s will not be encouraged if someone tells them that they’ll only save yourselves if you’re in the 5’s. They’ll give up. I was in the 7’s when I got a certain complication in 1999. I recovered from that complication by getting into the lower 6’s, as have others. It isn’t out of the ordinary.

Certainly Diabetics deserve to have normal BG’s but then they wouldn’t be normal Diabetics. That’s what separates us. There are too many known factors in our lives that cause our sugars to be out of the normal range sometimes even with close monitoring. Have you seen a 6 month daily results of Bernsteins numbers? I haven’t. I haven’t seen any actually. All I know is that he’s making tons of money. He has also had the advantages of the medical system and new technologies and news early on in his Life. He got his first BG meter in 1969? Wow! I didn’t get my first until 1988. Someone on here said that he looks Terrible. I would hope to look Great, if I was always having normal numbers. Okay, I just looked up his Bio. He’s in his 70’s and a Diabetic for 64 yrs. So he’s allowed.
I might add that Berstein had nothing to do with my complication reversal since I didn’t hear his name until 2006. I do agree with a low-carb diet although I think he takes it too far. Most couldn’t do that and enjoy Life.

Great! Thanks Danny. :slight_smile: I’ll be Happy to read it. Thanks for the link.