Seeing that this diabetes thing is here to stay, I suppose I should introduce myself.
My name is Bill (aka Notey). I was diagnosed as having Type 1 diabetes on Dec 1st. I had been feeling symptoms for a couple of weeks before that and finally asked a group of people in a gmail group I belong what they thought was the matter with me. In the group of 20, there are two people who have diabetes. They knew right away. I went to see the doctor and sure enough they were right. My fasting BG was 375 and my a1c was 10.1. I was in shock.
Five weeks prior to diagnosis, I hadn't had any symptoms and celebrated my 40th birthday by traveling out to Chicago with my wife to run the Chicago Marathon. It finished in 3:01 - 13 minutes faster than any of my previous 13 marathons. I think you can imagine my shock when I went from feeling immortal on the 40th birthday to feeling like my life was over 5 weeks later.
Thanks to my friend who has diabetes and also runs, the transition to this new life has been smooth. It didn't take long for me to get the hang of how much insuling to take based on the carbs in my meals. As a runner, I diligently watched my intake on Fitday.com throughout 2005 & 2006. Once I figured out how much insulin I needed for x amount of carbs, I was all set. I returned to running pretty quickly, but subsequently hurt my ankle. I'm getting treatment for my ankle and doing a bit of cross training. I'm chomping at the bit to get back out on the road. I'm taking a break from the marathon for a bit, perhaps I'll do half marathon in the spring and another marathon in the fall. I will not miss Boston next year.
My BG levels have been on the decline. My A1c has dropped from 10.1 to 8.5 to 6.3 each month. If this is my 90 day average and I'm dropping each month, then my BG levels were pretty high in September and October - which makes me wonder how I ran as well as I did in October and finished up my training so well.
I've posted a bit in the Exercise Forum and I'm sure I'll be participating more and more as time goes on because as I'm starting to realize, this diabetes thing isn't going anywhere.
