I’m not sure how people find out about blogs or blog posts, but I’ll give this a try. I really do want to start some conversation, but I want to be able to share fairly in depth if I need to about my story, so I’ll try this. I also thought about just starting a forum discussion on some of my issues and concerns, but I’ll try this first.
Part of my issues is that I really don’t have time to be doing this. I feel always pressed for time, even though I work from home and so don’t have to add a commute into my daily activity, but it seems like I always am stealing my small amount of personal time when I do stuff like this, which means the laundry won’t get done or the mail won’t get read. So I don’t know how much I’ll even be able to keep this up. I also write a personal journal, and spend time when I can meditation-journaling, but I joined this group so I’d have sort of a virtual diabetes-support group, because the only one in our area meets some 4 times per year for some speaker on recipes or something and that’s not what I need.
Until about a year ago, I was controlling my Type2 diabetes quite fine. On my previous insurance I had been seeing an endo who was quite happy with my progress, although no one but no one can figure out how to help me lose weight. Dieticians are always amazed ('You’re doing everything right!"…“Your only problem is that you’re not eating enough”…). But over the course of my adult life I’ve tried just about every type of diet and weight-loss program known. It’s not that I couldn’t stick to the diets, I could and did, and I could lose 5 pounds on any plan (provided it was a plan I had never tried before). After that I stopped losing until I went back to regular eating, when I would gain all 5 pounds back and a few more. So I don’t dare “diet.” I eat sensibly and exercise regularly. Fortunately, my current husband fell in love with me looking just how I look, so that has helped my self-esteem issues a lot.
Anyway…so I was controlling my blood sugars and blood pressure etc well. But last summer the insurance took me off Hyzaar, which was one of the bp meds that had worked well, and put me on cheaper substitutes, and my blood sugar took off. I developed a monitoring chart that I still keep, as my doc and I have been working for a year now to balance everything out again. I have gone on glyburide in addition to the max dose of metformin I was on, and last spring when I just said I’ll pay for the damn Hyzaar and the doc gave me a bunch of samples…now that also sends my sugars skyrocketing. So…
For now I’m making do with hydrochlorothyazide, which I used to take, and the lower bp number is just fine but the higher one is high. (We tried a beta-blocker for a short time because the doc really really thought I should, even though I told her I’d tried one before and it made me depressed, and that is a week I’d just as soon never go through again!)
With all this juggling, I also started a new job at about this same time last year. It was doing the work I was already doing, copyediting, but I was doing it freelance and now I’m an employee for the primary company I freelanced for. But it has been an incredibly stressful year. It seems like they have given me all the impossible jobs and impossible deadlines, and even though I work at home I feel terribly overworked and overwhelmed. I was reading recently that I have a right to discuss the effect this stress has on my blood sugars (I’m sure it hasn’t helped and am starting to think it may be the primary problem, just coincidental with the med changes) with my supervisor. She’s a sweet young woman (about the age of my own children, mid-30s I’d guess), and probably doesn’t have a clue about diabetes. My annual review is coming up and I need to talk to her, because every copyedit job I get, it seems like, at first seems like it will be reasonable and then various complications come up and before I’m done neither the job nor the deadline are reasonable in any way. I think the company is taking on some really questionable deadlines and extremely messy manuscripts for new publishers, so they don’t expect this kind of craziness yet with each and every job, but I really can’t deal with this. I used to think I could keep freelancing forever, but now I daydream constantly about retiring (I’m 61). I can’t really quit and go back to freelancing because I let my other primary client go when it became apparent last summer that no way could I do his jobs while working fulltime on these maniacal copyedits, and I don’t think he’ll want me back. And we depend on the money for our budget. So…
Anyway…stress is a major blood sugar issue for me. I first went over the hill to diabetic when I was in a mega-stressful year of my life, in 2000, and I know stress is murder on my blood sugar. It is in the family and I knew it was coming but I had been staving it off by essentially following my mother’s diabetic diet and exercise, but that year of mega-stress did me in.
I sooooo wish that they knew, just a few years ago, when I was dealing with it, about pre-diabetic insulin resistance and the effect that has on weight, and also about cortisol, stress, and sleep problems, and the effect that has on weight (and in both cases that damn pre-diabetic belly fat that is soooooooo attractive and healthful (NOT)). If someone had thought to start me on metformin say, 10-20 years ago, I might not be in this position (weight and diabetes) now.
Also I struggled with depression this past year, based on a number of issues, including job stress and health but also some other things I’m working on dealing with. I answered a questionnaire at the doctor’s last time about diabetes and depression and one of the questions was about whether I felt it would be better if I were dead, and my response was just the opposite: I am AFRAID I am going to die before I am ready. I want to live a good long life and it makes me angry and sad and upset that I might not.
Ok, guess I’ve finally spewed it all out for now. I would welcome comments if anyone has a way to find and an interest in reading. I don’t really know how to get the word out that I’ve started a blog.