Hello Tu!
Here's my newest blog post. Talks a wee bit about how I view my A1c numbers. Just wanted to say a big thanks to all those out there with inspiring numbers and stories. You inspire me everyday. I also genuinely love reading about those who are battling to get their A1c back to a reasonable number because I'm also at that point. Your battles also inspire me :)
Blood tests don't lie
When I was younger I used to imagine up BSL numbers and add them to my log book. I quite clearly remember doing it. I'd fill in my log book with all my "real" numbers and then go through and add more numbers to show I was testing more often that I actually was.
I look back on it and just shake my head at 16 year old me. Making up numbers helps no one! And given insulin ratios are adjusted based on my numbers it could have been very dangerous. It wasn't something I understood back then but I do now.
But at the end of the day, blood tests don't lie. Not like imaginary log book numbers. Even though HbA1c isn't completely accurate and has to take into account you might be swinging between lows and highs to reach that number, it is the main measure of control that we have.
Continue reading here :)
I agree making numbers up is pointless. I considered it when I needed to produce a log to get a pump but the first time I sat down to do it I realized it was easier to see what my BG was than to think of what it might be. That may have been a very big step for me towards conceiving of a plan to just test and figure out how to ccntrol BG vs. roll dice.
I'm kind of the same way w/ A1C. I've read lots of posts about how it's off and it's a bad test and it doesn't work for me but there's not much in the way of other tests (although I think there's one, I don't recall what it is off the top of my head...) that will give you the sort of long-term big picture number. Diabetes is hard regardless of what your A1C is but maybe there's different kinds of hard or soemthing? I think it's *very* important to share your A1C via TuAnalyze. It's interesting to me that despite all of our "technological terrors," we don't seem to do all that much better in the USA vs other countries that are lit up. I wish more of the world was lit up too.
I guess when I was younger my real concern was not the numbers themselves but the fact that I hadn't tested. I got it drilled into that I needed to be testing on a constant basis and I just wasn't - so my solution was to just make up numbers so I wouldn't get in trouble.
Now, I think of testing much differently. The numbers themselves are so very important to me. They control how much insulin I take, when I eat snacks, the carb content of meals. If I miss a test it will only be myself yelling at me!
Thanks for reminding me about TuAnalyze! I saw it when I first signed up here but didn't put my numbers in because I only had that high one I did in Nov last year.. (I have other A1cs tests obviously but don't recall them). Have shared my last couple now with TuAnalyze! Am quite sad that New Zealand isn't lit up tho, needs 11 more users so hopefully not much longer :)
