Good, but hard day.

Today I had an appointment to check on my type 1 diabetes. I go twice a year to make sure everything is fine and make (major) adjustments to my treatment if needed.

In recent years my diabetes has been going haywire and with that my weight and my other blood’s (cholesterol for instance) have been going up and down. I wasn’t in a good place with it and accepting that I had a chronic illness was very hard. In fact it took me almost 9 years to do that. Years of eating disorders, self-harm/suicidal tendencies and depression, it wasn’t until I met my current diabetes specialist nurse that I felt like I could do something about it. She got me on the insulin pump which has made such a big change to my life, she’s always listened and tried to improve my quality of life.

The insulin pump really has made such a difference, as soon as I got it all my blood tests started to improve and I felt better about living with the condition. Today I got the best reward for this. My HbA1c has gone down by 3% in the last 18 months (HbA1c = long term measurement of blood glucose) and I was told by my doctor that this improvement was impressive. He was very, very pleased. I was of course also very very pleased. And not only had my HbA1c improved, but I had lost some weight as well (a good thing as I was near the upper limit of my BMI last time) and my cholesterol is still under the limit of being high. So, all in all this is very good.

Since my operation I have been told that I am quite impressive by quite a few people. Two student nurses wanted me to explain how my insulin pump worked when I was in hospital for the operation and they said I was more pedagogical than their lecturer who had a lecture on type 1 diabetes treatments. Then my surgeon told me that I had impressive tendons, and that the hamstring tendon graft was going to make a great new ACL… And now my diabetes doctor tells me I am impressive for improving my diabetes so much, so fast.

All in all I have had a good day, but the journey to the hospital was hard work. Getting on and off trains wasn’t the worst as I had thought, but getting the 0.85 miles to and from the train station was the worst. Then I obviously had to make it home again as well… I was so exhausted by the time I got back home that I fell asleep and slept for almost 2 hours! I usually never take naps in the day so I must have been really, really exhausted. Luckily I had Rob with me so he could help me around. Tomorrow I’m not doing a single thing! Will take it easy on the sofa all day long