Budget Nomad: My New Spinning Game

Saturday, December 08, 2012

My New Spinning Game

After testing my blood twice a day, I returned to the doctor on Thursday night. For all of my US American friends and readers, I had an appointment at 7pm, but went at 6:30 and was seen at 6:40. Each time I go, he spends 15-30 warm and caring minutes with me on each visit. This never happened anywhere I lived in the US, not even as a child. He even takes my blood pressure. He is young enough to be my son. The nurse's primary responsibility was to show me how to use the Accu-Chek and print out the prescriptions on the computer, but the doctor takes my blood pressure and does all of the hands on care.

One thing that is absent is diabetic education. I am not certain if it doesn’t exist or if it doesn’t exist in English. Of all of the services he has stated he will refer me to when we return from vacation, this has not been one of them. Although I have not asked directly, I did have a newly diabetic diagnosed student last year and remember his telling me the majority of his education was from the doctor and the Internet. Hence, I have not pushed it. With Google and the American Diabetic Association, I have been in fairly good shape, though finding diabetic acceptable food lists was more challenging than I thought they would be. Counting carbs is way too tedious even with an app on my smartphone, so I am working the diabetic plate method.

Per my instructions, I am logging my twice daily results, but here is where the doc and I are at odds. I am using this chart as my guide.

My monitor shows the results in a decimal point number as shown on the bottom row. The American version shows it as whole numbers as on the middle row.Taking my medication at night, my fasting numbers in the morning have been higher than my before going to bed numbers. Either way, neither has been over 6.8 which according to this is still within the Good range. My doctor says "No!" you should be under 6.0. Yikes! One day most of what I ate was lettuce a "free" veggie and my numbers were still over 6.0. I have not had a beer in over 3 weeks. Not that I am a heavy drinker, but a beer a day was a pleasure I miss.

Now, besides the diabetic medication, the doctor put me on a diabetic aspirin. This is specially formulated to aid in the prevention of arteriosclerosis. It was not long ago when I used to comment on how many pills and solutions our American guests would have to take during their time here, while bragging to Ron about how healthy and lucky we were not to be in their shoes. Well, that boastful nature is now from days gone by.