A life in the day

In September, I posted my first progress report on my diabetes. It’s time for an update. I had various tests done at the end of January, and I finally got the results back. My daily blood sugar readings remain relatively good, although they are varying a little more than they did in September. The main long-term indicator for diabetes is the HbA_1c test. The target is a reading under 7.0. In September I’d gotten down to 6.2. This time I was at 5.9.

My blood pressure seems to run pretty consistently around 125/75. Although my weight has been sitting pretty still lately, I’m 40 - 45 pounds down. That means I still have between 30 - 35 (doctor’s recommendation) and 50 (my own hope) pounds still to go.

Cholesterol is good, too. The target for total cholesterol is under 200. I’m at 122. For the LDL (bad) cholesterol, I’m at 78, which is in the target range, of below 100, and my triglycerides, at 99, are well under the target of 150. Only my HDL (good) cholesterol is off. The target is to be in the range 40 - 50; I’m only at 28. Still not getting enough exercise, I guess.

The other news has to do with my hypothyroidism. I reported last month that there was concern that the Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis together with the diabetes was a sign that my immune system was attacking all my endocrine glands. There was a simple test for that, the GAD-antibody test. The result was … negative! Also, I had a thyroid scan, which reported no nodules. So the thyroid news is also good. When I was diagnosed my TSH test was 9.75 mIU/L. I’ve heard varying reports as to the target range, both 0.5 - 4 and the wider 0.35 - 5. While my current 6.96 is still too high, the progress looks good to me for one month.

And best of all, I feel good!