A few weeks ago, sweet Mr. Jack had some routine blood work done and when he looked at his results online, he could not believe his eyes and made an appointment with his doctor for the very next day. At that appointment, his doctor made him report to the Emergency Room (a procedure we are all too familiar with in this little family...).
The problem was that his blood sugar was CRAZY high. Like, unbelievably high.
So lets talk about a little blood sugar measurement called your A1C score. According to the Mayo Clinic, these are some guidelines:
SCORE
4.5 - 6 = Normal
5.7 - 6.4= Pre-diabetes
7+ = Diabetic
Many people with Diabetes have a treatment goal of getting their score below 7 with medication, diet and exercise. Also note that this score is measured within one's blood cells and so it is actually an accumulated measurement of your blood sugar levels over the past 3 months or so. In other words, your A1C score signifies what your average blood sugar levels have been for a long time, unlike doing a finger-prick blood sugar measurement which only shows your blood sugar level at that exact moment.
Armed with this knowledge, guess what my sweetheart's A1C score was on his bloodwork was? Just take a wild guess. 6.5? Nope. 7? Nope. 8? Get this...SIXTEEN POINT FIVE. Yes, 16.5. That's like, off the charts. His doctor thought it was an error. Every nurse who kept checking and re-checking each said the same thing, "I have NEVER seen a score that high!"
Leave it to us to break new ground in the medical field...
So Mr. Jack was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. This is not too surprising because he has a very prevalent family history of this disease. But what was so strange to me was that we don't even really eat sweets, and we only eat whole grain carbs. So I was really baffled by how his blood sugar could be so high. Well, what followed our ER visit were three days full of guilty confessions such as,
"Well, you know how I told you I sometimes eat 2 or 3 oranges in one day... well, its really more like 5 or 6, maybe even 7 oranges in one day, most days a week..."
"Okay, I did stop for a giant stack of pancakes those days I had to wake up early..."
"That bag from Dunkin' Donuts you found in the car was mine, not my nephew's..."
Then there was the time when a nurse asked him if he ate sweets and he stated, "Ice cream is definitely a favorite of mine, and I eat it frequently."
Uhh...We haven't bought ice cream the whole time we've been married!
"Yes, I must admit that when I take Seth to the doctor every week, we stop to get ice cream and usually some other treat, too."
Oh, my.
Since then, Jack has enrolled in a long-term study at Yale where he gets regular checkups with a top endocrinologist. We feel very fortunate to have gotten a grip on things before he really became ill. In hindsight (isn't it always that way?) we have noticed some signs that something was not quite right. Even now, he gets some achy pains inside, and his vision gets a little blurry since his blood sugar levels and blood vessels are changing and adjusting so dramatically- but this time they are changing for the better.
Don't worry, he is doing well and has certainly learned his lesson! He had a BIG scare when we had to go to the ER for monitoring. Since then, he has been so incredibly diligent with his diet, and his blood sugar scores have been in a steady fall, and are now in the Healthy zone.
Within a week of our ER trip, we (1) Joined a gym, (2) Went to a yoga(!) class together, and (3) He asked ME if we could do a farm share/CSA this season! And I thought I would be begging him to pay for a CSA! Who is this man?? He's great!
Now I am the one who is sneaking sweets, so I don't tempt him!
