Yet another new member -- long

[Guest guest]

Hi Everybody,

I normally go by , but seeing as you have a who posts regularly

here, I'll use the name Jeanne. I do that on another large email list,

and a couple of real life friends are partial to using both my first and middle

names also.

I live about 90 miles NW of Savannah, GA in a very rural area. I am 62 years

old, confined to a wheelchair due to polio in 1954, retired from a position

as Director of Rehab Services for a large hospital system in metro Atlanta. I

moved here in 2000 to get away from burglar bars, noise, smog, traffic,

crime, congestion, etc.. Living on 72 acres in the middle of nowhere is

Paradise,

until you try to find a pharmacy that carries test strips and lancets in

stock [More on that later]. I guess the moral of the story is that all of our

life choices carry trade-offs with them.

I come from a long line of diabetics on both my mother and father's side of

the family. Until last month, I had never had an abnormal BG show up on the

blood work that I had done regularly for a huge lot of other diagnoses [it was

checked on those tests regularly due to my family history].

I DID have symptoms however. I've been thirsty all my life and am accustomed

to drinking at least 2 gallons of water a day. I've been struggling with

edema for well over a year. I've gained 106 pounds over the past 2 years,

despite being a vegetarian who hasn't eaten a bite of cake, pie, cobbler, etc

for

about 19 years or ice cream for the past 10 years. And for the past six

months, my vision has become more and more blurry. I don't know why it's taken

so

long for the diabetes to show up, unless its due to the fact that I've been

eating very small amounts of what I thought were healthy foods in an attempt to

lose weight while wheelchair-confined.

To the present:-- Major blood draw on August 17th came back with a BG of

154. I was scheduled for an A1c on 9/8/05 [delayed because my doc had left town

on vacation], and I was advised to try to *eat very healthy* in the interim.

Having heard about the ADA Exchange Diet from when I worked in hospitals, I

did some research about that food plan. At first glance it seemed really

simple, but then when I started plugging in the nutritional requirements of my

other diagnoses I couldn't make it work for the life of me. To make a long

story

short, I needed to increase the protein allowance [for my post-polio] and

decrease my fat allowance [for severe familial hyperlipidemia] but, because

fat has more calories/gram than protein, I would have to INCREASE my carbs to

meet the calorie goal I thought my doctor would want. Warning bells went off

because a friend of mine from another e-mail list had referred me to this

list, and I was reading all the posts religiously. Since I was still in Major

Overwhelm mode, I didn't understand everything -- but I did get the message

that

I shouldn't be TRYING to increase my carbs.

Finally I just threw in the towel and decided to forget trying to figure it

all out until I saw the doctor again. In the meantime I would just do what

she said: eat very healthy. I am a good example of what happens when an

educated American is told to eat healthy --- I gave up bread and potatoes, and

I ate

fresh veggies and fresh fruit [in plenteous supply here in the South]. My BG

at the doctor's office was 259. The A1c was 6.7.

I was fortunate that I had a caring and compassionate nurse assigned to do

my teaching. She taught me how to use my meter and then told me to test when I

woke up and at 4pm each day. I was OK with the FBG, but I didn't want to

waste a test that wasn't linked timewise to a meal. So I tried to explain to

her

what I had been learning. To her credit, she called over a nurse practtioner

who told her that I was right, that the literature supported more frequent

testing at defined times centered around meals. So the instructions were

changed to *Test when you first wake up and 2 hours after your evening meal.*

She

wasn't willing to go and ask the doctor to revise the prescription upward to

allow for more test strips and lancets, but she said I could test as often as

I liked but I would have to cover the cost of the extra supplies. I'll do

that for three weeks until I see the doctor myself when I'm going to make

another case for this. [You know, it doesn't seem fair to have to fight these

kinds

of battles when you're so overwhelmed by all the important things you have

to do.]

OK-- guess what food plan I got? Bingo --the ADA Exchange Diet, 1800

calories. The calories in themselves blew me away as my doc [this is my PCP ---

a

Family Practitioner] and my post-polio specialist [an internist and

physiatrist] spent about 9 months a couple of years back trying to come to an

agreement

on a calorie limit for me. The post-polio guy wanted 1000-1200 calories,

because he said I am able to burn very few calories since I can't walk, etc. My

PCP wanted 1400-1500 because she felt I needed that for cardio-pulmonary

health. They finally compromised on 1200-1350 calories. This is the same PCP

who

gave me an 1800 cal. diet. When do I start pulling my hair out?

I said some things about having to modify it to meet the needs of my other

diagnoses, and by then I think the nurse was ready to get rid of me, so she

just said esentially, *Whatever.*

I started testing on 9/9/05. My FBG was 231. I had only a few test strips,

so my housemate went off to the nearest town to get me some more only to find

that nobody had any in stock. They had to be special ordered, and we hope a

box of strips will arrive tomorrow. So because I had so few strips, I did just

the two tests a day. The second one on 9/9 was 212.

on 9/10, FBG was 214. I took my first Metformin with breakfast. Second test

was 169. I was pretty excited-- going from 259 on 9/8 to 169 on 9/10. Then my

strips were gone, and - I never thought I'd say this - was upset that I

couldn't test today.

I'm having an easier time planning meals by concentrating on carbs [right

now, just keeping them under 150]. It gives me the flexibility I need to keep my

fats low and my non-meat protein high. My biggest problem right now is

shifting away from long ingrained habits of what one eats for breakfast, of

confining snacks to fresh fruit, etc.. There have been a lot of good ideas on

the

list, but most involve either meat or fat, so I am going to have to be

super-creative. I'll be glad when I am less tired and being creative is easier.

If you are still reading, I appreciate your caring enough to do so.

Starting to thrive in 2005,

Jeanne in GA