February 16, 2015

A Dilemma for a Person with Diabetes

I find myself in a real predicament. This is a very real problem for husbands and wives, but I had not envisioned this happening to me. What you ask? My dearly beloved ignored prediabetes and said very little to me except to ask a few questions as if it were someone else's problem. On January 19, she was notified she had type 2 diabetes and the problems started.

She accepted a regular metformin prescription and not a prescription for extended release. I suspect she will have the common symptom of nausea and the rest of the side effects as she is of Asian nationality.  So far, she has had few problems.  When I try to discuss diabetes with her, she ignores my questions. She knows I blog about diabetes and she clearly stated that she did not want advice from me.

Her latest A1c is 6.9% and her A1c from a month prior was 7.0%. This is what the doctor used to confirm her type 2 diabetes. When we went grocery shopping, I did notice a few improvements in the purchases. She was looking at calories and not carbohydrates though. I did get to show her a few of the higher carbohydrates counts, but she said that I why she would only eat one serving. It will be interesting if this comes to pass.

She did surprise me when she started looking at her lab results and asking good questions about them and the ranges. The lab is using the old, and I mean old, prior 1997 ranges for diabetes even though she said the doctor told her she had type 2 diabetes. This brought out questions and I had her read this blog and the link it contained.

I know I will have to be very careful in what I say and how I say things, but if she is in denial, not much will make that change until she realizes she has diabetes. I am cautiously optimistic that a few statements made in the days since her diagnosis on January 19, 2015 will lead to acceptance.

Now she is taking a class with a dietitian and I need to be extra careful. When she talks about carbs, she is using the term to mean one carb equals 15 grams of carbohydrates. A few of my readers have asked me why I use grams of carbohydrates as they also learned what my wife has learned. Well, this is because I learned on my own and in reading labels of food containers; everything was in grams of carbohydrates. I naturally followed this and learned that it was easier for me than dividing everything by 15 to come to carbs. If I eat 35 grams of carbohydrates for a meal, this is easier than calculating 2 and one-third carbs.

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