Saturday, August 29, 2009

YES!

I called the patient information network a few minutes ago, got my message.

"Jonah, your test is back [sic]. Your guesses were surprisingly accurate. Your hemoglobin A1c is 6.4%, like you guessed it would be. Your TSH is 0.88, which is normal- the normal range is .4-4. So, that's very good! Call me if you have any questions."

I love that he says "That's very good!" most of the time when telling me my A1c. When I was in his office on Friday, there was a drug rep in there, and I tested my blood sugar (88). The rep asked me if I was testing my A1c, and I said no, I was testing my blood sugar. He looked confused, so I told him an A1c is a sort of a measure of average blood sugar, where as I was testing my blood sugar of the right now. Then I went and sat next to the rep and showed him the components of my meter and the memory. He was fascinated, and said so (hopefully this was not sarcasm that my autistic brain missed). However, when I scrolled back he said that my blood sugar had quite a lot of variability, so I said I was doing exceptionally well for a person of my age (20 years) with my islet cell function (not enough for a cpeptide to measure anything). I told him I thought my numbers translated to an A1c of 6.4, and he thought for a moment, and said, "That's pretty high, right?" and I said well, it's high for a nondiabetic, but it's very good for a 20 year old type 1 diabetic." Eventually, I said, "You must not be a diabetes drug rep, right? What kind of stuff are you selling?" and he told me that he was there with blood pressure medicines. Which, so far, I don't have any reason to be very interested in.

So anyways, I am quite happy about the drop in HbA1c. I would love to see it drop even lower, but this appears to be my floor; my A1c readings not counting those within a week of diagnosis have been: 6.3, 6.3,6.3,6.4, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.9, 7.0, 7.2.
So while I've shown myself to be quite capable of getting higher A1cs, it also looks like what I get when I pour myself into it and my body cooperates is 6.3-6.5. And in light of that fact, 6.4 is a very nice number.

1 comment:

Lora said...

I agree. A very nice number, indeed.