the one that needs a disclaimer...

Disclaimer: I would like to point out at this time that I am NOT a person with a medical degree (yet), or a certified diabetes educator, or anything like that.  I am just a person with type 2 diabetes making my own decisions about my health.  This does not mean that I don’t follow my doctor’s recommendations and orders, it just means that I might make decisions at times that might make me look like I’m not a good patient.

Now on to my post :)

For about a week in the middle of October I stopped taking my rapid-acting insulin.  Don’t panic, it wasn’t a bad thing necessarily.  I am a type 2, I have been eating healthy-ish, I was (am) taking not only long-acting (Lantus) and rapid-acting (Novolog) insulin but I was also taking Metformin and Januvia as well. 

My Lantus dose was normal (for me), but my Novolog had gotten to the point where I was taking only a little with my meals.  One day I ate my bagel for breakfast and totally forgot the shot.  About an hour and a half later I remembered and tested, panicked, thinking I would be high, but I turned out to be lower than my fasting BG was.  Weird, right?

So I thought about it and decided to do an experiment and see if I could get off the insulin and start being just on the oral meds.  I made sure that I tested all the time and paid really close attention to what I was eating and whether I was high or low.  And I had plenty of both highs and lows, which was interesting.  What I discovered is that at this point in my life I can’t just take oral meds.  My numbers never really got out of control, and they actually stayed really steady for the first few days.  But then they just started slowly climbing.  At the end, I was having only slightly elevated fasting levels, but as soon as I ate something I would be living in the 200’s for the whole day. 

That was when I gave up.  I mean, I had the means to control it at my disposal, so I went back to it.  I have no problem being on insulin.  I have very tight control.  I am not one of those people that is scared to give it a shot (pun intended).  Yeah, I was kinda pushed onto it, and of course if I could get away from it I would.  I’d love to lose some of that weight that might be associated with being on insulin, but I don’t have a problem where I’m at today.

And now I actually have an endo and a lot of changes are being made, and I have a ton of appointments in the next couple of months.  I’ll be posting more about that in the next couple of posts too.