I have an appointment on Monday to have bloods taken for my annual review a week or so later. As is often the case the mere hint of an A1c on the horizon has been enough to play havoc with my blood glucose levels over the past few weeks. Coming down with a cold hasn't helped either.
This time last year I was at a bit of a turning point. I had tried as hard as I could to improve my levels on MDI, and still felt there was improvement to be made. That review was undertaken at the hospital, and having discussed the ongoing challenges I was trying to tackle, the Registrar agreed that an insulin pump was a good option. I recognise that I am extremely fortunate to attend such a pro-pump clinic and after a few more appointments and a bit more prep, I was pumping before Christmas.
Regular readers (your gritty determination astounds me) will know that my journey towards an insulin pump was not entirely straightforward. I spent a great many years resisting the idea each time it was mentioned. Approaching a year into my pump experience I have just done a d-geek 'compare and contrast' exercise that convinces me more than ever of my position on the OCD spectrum - partly because it annoys me so much to have a key period of MDI results missing due to an *ahem* administrative error (I deleted them from one place before checking the place where I thought I'd copied them). I put together seven months worth of BG results side by side, matching 'tricky' periods like Christmas and holidays. I then examined them for a range of markers - BG average, SD, FBG in range, numbers of highs, numbers of lows and so on.
Without going into the minutiae (I appreciate I have to at least make a gesture towards allowing you to retain your will to live) the truth is I'm a bit deflated by the results. Since moving to the pump they are, in some ways, better than on MDI - but not really by very much. And if I'm honest I was hoping for the same transformations to my results that I'd seen in other people. People whose MDI skills I hugely respect, whose lives are busy and full of nice varied (and occasionally eyebrow raising) meal choices. People whose A1c's fell by a significant margin after a short time on insulin pump.
The trouble is I should be perfectly happy. My meter averages suggest that my A1c will be somewhere in the high 6's. To be disappointed by that seems ridiculous, but my last MDI result was 6.3. It is true that I'm having slightly fewer 'waffy' moments these days (thanks Dave!) but I've also had more readings in the 20s than I can remember thanks to multiple set failures which at one stage seemed to be happening fortnightly.
I still believe the pump is working for me - and having changed to Silhouettes a few weeks back I've not had a failure since - but by now I was hoping to have this whole thing sorted and be cruising along with more stability and less goalpost chasing.
I'll let you know what the result is when the A1c jury comes back in.
UPDATE: #teamsmug
