Hello everyone. I want to apologize for this not being posted as usual at noon. I was working on it last night but had to stop to tend to some other things and I never got back to it. I was halfway through my Tai Chi sword class this morning when I suddenly realized I had never finished up last night and scheduled it to drop today at noon. So here we are, better late than never.
I just wanted to give everyone a quick update on how things are going with my diabetic family. I support my husband, my sister, and my mom.
I believe I have convinced my husband to at least try a CGM. He works in a secure building so has some paperwork to fill out about what brand he wants to use and how it works to get approval for it. I don’t think it will be a problem because he is going to use the same one I did a trial of – the Freestyle Libre 2 which uses a dedicated reader instead of a phone app. No cell phones are allowed in his building because of security issues. He’s hoping that he will be able to cut back on his insulin and may possibly be able to discontinue it altogether. He’ll be able to make those decisions when he has more data available on his glucose levels throughout the day. He hates doing fingersticks and only rarely does a fasting one so this will be super beneficial for him.
My sister sent me a text last week and she was all happy because her A1c is now down to 5.0. It was almost 13 when she was diagnosed in the fall of 2019. She struggled until recently to get it under control. What really helped her was when she got her Dexcom CGM. Her A1c was still close to 8 before she started using it. She takes both long acting and short acting insulin and oral medications but is going to try cutting back some on her insulin since she is now in the lower half of the normal range. I’m so proud of her. I know it took a lot of effort for her to get there.
My mom’s A1c is going to be up – probably around 8 or 9 maybe. She hasn’t been watching what she eats – especially since she and my sister are now talking again and spending time together. She was supposed to see her endocrinologist on Wednesday but the appointment was cancelled and rescheduled for a phone visit in a couple weeks so I won’t find out until then what it actually is. Mom absolutely refuses to take any kind of medication – even oral ones because she is sure that Metformin will give her non-stop diarrhea and she won’t be able to leave her house or do anything. I can’t convince her to even try for a week. I’m wondering if she would be able to use one of the weekly or monthly injectables without taking Metformin. She won’t self-inject but we should be able to find someone who would stop by and give her the injection every week or month or we may be able to get visiting nurses to do it since she does have a lot of arthritis in her hands which would make handling the syringe more difficult.
And so we carry on. I’ll keep you all updated on what happens with my husband if he gets approval for the CGM.
Brillig will be returning on Oct 21st with another of her wonderful diaries. I wonder what treats she’ll have for us?