This is the email that was sent to friends and family to give an update on what we were learning.
Hi everybody,
I know there’s been questions, so I wanted to give you all an update of what’s been going on.
First let me apologize if you feel like you’ve been left out in any way up to this point. That said, here’s a brief summary of the past months.
I really didn’t talk about it much, but I haven’t been feeling good for a while. So I began to mentally track some of my symptoms. I would feel light-headed often, fatigued almost all day, Brenda said she noticed I was losing weight, and almost everything I did felt like it took an enormous amount of effort. When I knew I had to be somewhere that required me to have energy I’d just load up on caffeine in an attempt to feel good enough to participate. The next symptom was when I began to feel a numb sensation in the tip of my right index finger and partial areas of my right foot.
Some of you know that there is diabetes on both sides of my family. I began to wonder if genetics had finally caught up with me, so I made an appointment with the doctor who sent me for blood work. The results came back positive that I have diabetes and high cholesterol. For those of you who want to know about the numbers the tests returned I’ve attached the results in PDF format. There’s enough information on them that you can understand the basics even if you don’t know much about all the medical ins and outs.
The biggest number is the A1C number. It averages where my blood sugar has been over the last three months then turns it into a score. From what the doctor told Brenda and me, most people are around 5.0 if it reaches 6.5 you’re diabetic. If you turn out to be diabetic the medical goal is to keep it under 7. The highest number on the chart I saw is 15.7. My A1C is 14.9. It is an extremely high number that does come with a high risk factor. It does, however, offer an explanation of why I’ve been feeling the way I have.
So the next steps are to go on medication, track my blood sugar daily, and develop new routines of diet and exercise. To be honest, I’m struggling to get comfortable with the diagnosis. It brings all kinds of questions to my mind of what the future looks like from daily practical concerns to long-term physical issues. We are making contact with a diabetes/nutrition educator that our insurance company offers and also a doctor who is a diabetic specialist. Beyond that, we’re taking one day at a time.
The good news is that diabetes is treatable and can be managed. The downside is that it will take a lot of discipline to control it. In practical terms what this means is there will be more of Dina’s sweet potato crunch for the rest of you come the holidays.
Thank you to each of you who have contacted either Brenda or me as you’ve become aware that we were in the midst of this. I appreciate all your concern and love that prompted you to reach out. It’s good to know that there are people in my life who care.
Much love to you all.