Diabetes 101 should also be a required class for everyone diagnosed with this disease. I was diagnosed 10 years ago and I would have loved this type of class. It could have saved me a lot of heartache and money. It took me ten years, but I think I may finally have a handle on my diabetes, and I can actually look at a time in the future when I can maybe, cross your fingers and pray to God, scale back my medication! If I had access to the information I have now, but a decade ago, I may have reached that goal.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Why did my education of the issue stall for so long? Well, it didn’t stall as much as I was mislead. The American Diabetes Association recommends 45 grams of carbohydrates PER MEAL. Keep that number in mind. I was given this information along with the prescription to some medication. So, okay, I take the drugs, watch what I eat and keep the carbs down to 45 grams a meal thinking I should be okay.

And I was.

For a short while.

Then my A1C, which is a test that people with diabetes take to find their average blood glucose level average over 3 months, went from 4.1% with medication, to 6%. Still not too bad, and I felt I was doing ok because that was a modest increase, but still within the normal range. A few years later, my A1C shoots from 6% to 8%. Whoah! What happened? The doctor doesn’t know, but he certainly can prescribe a second medication to help bring down the number. Great! Thank God for medication, right?

And the new med, along with the previous med, stabilize the blood sugar at 7%. Phew!

And then a few years later, after seeing my blood glucose go up, up, up, until my A1C was a crazy 12%, my doctor recommends the dreaded “I” word. Yes, Insulin. Its been nearly 10 years since my first diagnosis, and I’ve seen the disease slowly take over.

I’m on 2000mg of Metformin a day, along with Glipizine, which compared to other diabetics is not a lot, but now I have the recommendation to begin Insulin and I am scared to death. So I do something desperate. I start looking for information on diabetes from outside of my doctors office. I hit the internet and the book stores and find some real crazy ideas about “cures” and radical drug treatments, and many things that I simply had to dismiss as B.S. But I also start to hear things that simply don’t make sense to my ADA indoctrinated ears, but that DO make common sense.

This is where my education into the disease that is slowly killing me, began. I’ve learned a lot over the past year, and I have started this blog to record what I have discovered, and to document how the changes I’ve made to my lifestyle have helped to kick diabetes’ butt! I may blog about other aspects of my life, but it will all center around my life with Type 2 Diabetes in one way or another. I don’t know if anyone will read any of this, but if one person reads my posts and is helped by them, then it is all worth it.