Diabetes and Me

I was watching the news this evening and one of the topics was the prevalence of diabetes in the USA. There are now 25 million Americans that already have it or are at risk. I too have diabetes. I was diagnosed in 2000 and started taking oral medication. I worked at doing the right things but believe me it is not easy. I blamed my job and the difficult hours. I blamed the fact that I was working mostly nights and my wife was on days. I blamed everything under the sun for what was happening to me. It didn't help and in 2006 I started taking insulin.
I was depressed and felt like a total failure. My doctor told me that it was not a failure and that for some people the medications and carbohydrate counting just didn't help. He told me that in some ways it was freeing. It meant that I could eat that cake and ice cream every now and then without the damage that it would do to my blood sugars. He told me that if I was good and worked hard I would not have the large swings in blood sugar that I had been experiencing.
It was still several months before I started to feel better about myself and start to understand how the insulin worked with my body. I'm still not as compliant as I could be but I have brought down my A1C from 8.8 to 7.2. I know, not good but better and I have been at 6.8 on my A1c once so I can do it again and get it even lower. Now that I'm retired from my 911 job I have more time to walk and plan meals. Hell, I may even really try to lose some weight.