Reading my own HbA1c trend over four years

Started 13 January 2025 · 18 replies · 195 hearts · read 2.3k times

PetuaKampala, UG · 13 January 2025

1.5 years ago

Something I have been sitting with: Reading my own HbA1c trend over four years Not looking for advice so much as other people's experience.

Some background first, because it matters for the question.

What I keep tripping on is not the physical bit. It is the not knowing whether what I am experiencing is normal, and having nobody to ask who is not either selling something or frightened for me.

I have read the guides here, which were more useful than anything else I have found, and I still have a question they do not cover.

The thing that has surprised me most is how much of this is about other people rather than about me.

Sorry for the length. If anyone has been here, I would very much like to hear it.

LilPreston, UK

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

NorahDerry, NI

the opening post said something I want to sit with for a second.

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

JunoBrighton, UK

Building on what the opening post wrote rather than answering the original question.

I asked my nurse the same question and she said something I have repeated ever since: that the aim is to keep you on treatment, not to get you up the schedule.

MiraFacilitatorRotterdam, Netherlands

Thank you for writing this. I am not going to add information to it. I am going to say that what you have described is very common and very rarely said out loud.

HattieExeter, UK

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

TarnKeswick, UK

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

LinnetKendal, UK

Mine lasted about seven weeks and then lifted over a few days. I cannot tell you why. I can tell you it lifted.

BlySheffield, UK

Yes. All of this. I had the same in my third month and I remember thinking there was something specifically wrong with me, which there was not.

13me too 1

KeeleyBlackpool, UK

I would take that to a clinician rather than to us, and I would do it this week. Not because it is definitely serious — because it is the sort of thing that is much easier to rule out than to worry about.

BelCroydon, UK

#10

Two things that helped me, neither of them clever: small amounts more often, and drinking a lot more than felt necessary.

JuniperMachynlleth, UK

#11

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.

MaisieScarborough, UK

#12

Different experience here, for balance. Mine did not improve and in the end I stopped, and that was the right call for me. Both outcomes exist.

GillyWorcester, UK

#13

The phrase that unlocked my appointment was asking what specifically she wanted me to watch for. It moved us from reassurance to a plan in about thirty seconds.

MarnieAyr, UK

#14

No advice, just recognition. That sounds exhausting and I am sorry you are in it.

13me too 2

TobySwindon, UK

#15

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

BrodyDunfermline, UK

#16

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

MiraFacilitatorRotterdam, Netherlands

#17

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology.

AshSunderland, UK

#18

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.