But you know how things are. Life has a way of becoming hectic at times, and we’ve been through one of those periods lately. But to kind of catch  you up to speed, I thought I’d make a short post today.

My mother’s side of the family has always had a problem with Type 2 diabetes. I had hoped to give it a miss, since several people in my father’s family had the exact opposite problem–hypoglycemia.

But in November, 2018, our daughter insisted we go to the Urgent Care to have them look at one of my toes. When she looked at it, she found a small piece of metal embedded in the wound, which was healing far too slowly. Once the doctor there looked at the blood test results, I thought they were going to forget the toe altogether.

With a blood sugar of 417, they immediately sent me over to the ER. After several hours of sitting around and waiting for test results, they treated the toe and put me on metformin until i could see a persona physician. Several years ago, our insurance changed, and several of my doctors were out of network. Due to the whole new patient process to find a new doctor, I’d kept postponing it.

Our daughter is an LPN and she recommended a doctor to me. She had worked with him before and thought I would appreciate his approach to health care. Instead of waiting for me to make an appointment, she came over the next day and made the appointment for me, as well as one with a podiatrist I had seen previously.

My first visit was frantic. Although my blood sugar was down a bit–into the 300’s–Dr. Fogarty wanted to get my blood sugar down as quickly as possible. I hadn’t wanted to use insulin, but agreed to a once a week injection along with twice daily Metformin. The surprise was the diet he had me adopt.

I had been expecting a high protein low carb approach, but no. He asked me what the body ran on. Well, glucose. And then he asked what sort of diet I thought I should be on. Well, since my body’s glucose levels were high, I assumed low carb, which should lower my glucose levels.

Wrong! He told me he intended to flood my system with more sugars, with a different kind of diet. No meat of any kind, nothing processed. No flour of any kind. No added oils or salts. And obviously, no sugar. To keep the glucose levels level, I was to be careful with any starchy vegetables, fruits, and grains, but not eliminate them entirely.

Proteins would come from grains, nuts, and seeds. He suggested quinoa and chia seeds added either to grains or salads.

I thought the man was crazy, but it turns out he knew what he was doing. Score one for the doctor.

I started with an A1c of 11.5. Three months later, in February, my blood sugar was mostly down around 100 in the morning. My A1c was 5.5. Three months after that, my A1c was 5.4 and most of by blood sugars were below 120 after eating.

I’ve also lost 30 pounds in the process.

But with all the meal prep and figuring out what I can and can’t eat, and checking my blood 4 times a day, I have felt like I’m always playing catch up. My novel writing has taken a back seat as well. But since things are about to level out, I think I’ll have some time to get things going again.

I have been un-medicated since about halfway through March, and my blood sugars are still down in the normal range.

Anyway, I’ll write more about adjusting to this lifestyle change in my next blog. I hope to keep a sort of diary of my progress here and share it with you.

For now, have a wonderful summer. Eat plenty of nice fresh veg from your local vendors, and get out and enjoy the sunshine.

And if you like to read, I write fantasy romance, with a paranormal twist. And all my books are on sale at Smashwords this month. I hope to have another book out this summer, and I will be adding my book on cancer and a book on my experience with diabetes and Dr. Fuhrman’s nutritionist diet.

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/meleigh53

A piu tardi…