About a month ago I went to the eye clinic I've used before, just to get a new prescription for glasses... I thought. The optometrist who examined me did a more thorough exam than I expected and told me that my right eye had a few spots of blood in it and there was a small bulge. He said it wasn't severe.
He said it could be one of three things going on and that the most likely was something called diabetic retinopathy. Well, my mother was a T2 diabetic from her late 40s and one of her brothers was a T1 from childhood. I've been checked every few years and always been told I didn't have diabetes. So this was a bit of a wakeup call. Something the matter with an eye was SCARY.
It happened that my husband and I were heading out on vacation in our little motorhome a couple of days after that news, so I didn't even have time to find out what doctors in our rural Colorado area might be good. Being a librarian by background, I headed for Amazon and bought 2 ebooks:
Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QZ9PC4/
Blood Sugar 101, by Jenny Ruhl, at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004Z8RXQW/
I found this website and forum from the second book.
I chose the books partly because of the reviews but also because I was already eating in a mostly veggies-and-protein way. Sort of paleo and partly influenced by a naturopathic doctor named Scott Olson, whose book Sugarettes had been quite a warning on the dangers of anyone eating sugar and foods that act like sugar in the body.
So for the month of January this year, I had followed the Sugarettes method and eaten NO sugar, no grains, no potatoes, etc. Never have cared for artificial sweeteners so I didn't have to give them up. That month turned out to be a good headstart.
On vacation, I picked up a blood glucose meter, the Relion Confirm, one of Walmart's house brands. I chose it because I wanted to do a lot of testing and the strips were about 35 cents each compared to some of the other brands being about a dollar each.
So I've been keeping a log and have been relieved to see that my numbers are in the fairly low "pre" diabetic range, with my early morning fasting readings ranging from 90 to 114 (and one 131 I don't know what to think of.) During the day, it's cycling some... I am still learning what to make of those.
A close friend of mine is a retired doctor and he is a resource for me. He concurs that the retinopathy may have occurred while I was eating a lot of sweets, which was the case for most of 2013. I'll go back to the optometrist in a few months (have a May appt) and I'll go to a regular doctor before that. I'm just back from vacation and for now, it's learning time!