Diabetes

Congrats on getting the A1C down.

I just got my lab results for my dr. visit this week - my A1C was up to 7.6!!!! Admittedly things were out of hand last quarter, but I didn't think it was that bad. I was just getting things back in gear and then a whack of stress and eating poorly (my mom had heart surgery at the end of Sept so we were living in a hotel and eating restaurant food for a week!) really did me in. I'm doing way better in the last two weeks but that couldn't out weight the last 2 1/2 months. My HDL was down and my LDL was up - usually my HDL is around 60 and I've had the LDL under 100 for 6 months (No meds) but this time my HDL was 47 (still okay but women should be at 50) and the LDL was 117. But, I wasn't exercising so things flipped. Still not awful but frustrating to me. My triglycerides are still okay and I've lost a little of the weight I had gained back - probably 2 or 3 lbs is all but it's progress. I'm back to exercising 5 or 6 days per week, 30 to 60 min at a time over the last two or three weeks so things should turn around in the next few months.

So, at this dr. visit, I'm guessing we're going to talk more meds. When I read the test results, first thing I went to the Joslin website to research medication options. At the last dr. visit, we discussed upping the metformin (I'm still on only 500 mg per day) so that'll probably happen. I'm thinking about bringing up the option of long acting metformin to see if maybe that might help as well. I'm hoping he'll agree that increasing the met. is a reasonable step at this point and see if that helps by next time (along with my exercising and such). If it still doesn't result in a better A1C then it's on to various other meds - and I'll probably be asking y'all lots of questions about them if it gets to that.

--Deb R

Deb,

I agree with you that you aren't on the optimum dose of metformin at this time. Do take your meter and/or blood sugar chart with you so your doctor can see that your readings have improved and remember even a 5% weight loss will do wonders in getting this back under control.