Trying something new...

[gayathri]

Some of you may remember my experiement last year with Byetta - I was entirely off of insulin for about 3 weeks!
I also lost like 20 lbs in about that same 3 weeks, and felt terribly nauseous and tired the ENTIRE time. I eventually had to go back onto insulin and off of byetta, because I couldnt get over the terrible side effects of the drug. My favorite part of this was -getting to skip meals-.

So a new one has come out, Victoza - I'm trying that now, and so far, so good. I am slightly sick to my stomach, and have a raging headache, but its completely dealable. Blood sugars are great.

So, we'll see. Another week of taking half the insulin and then I'll up the dosage of Victoza and stop taking insulin entirely.

the good news also is that my appetite is suppressed, so these last few lbs I need to drop should also come off!

(the bad news is that 'those last few lbs' is more than I had expected - apparently Desis get the short end of the stick on the BMI scale - I'm not sure I can make the requested BMI. It might prove 'exciting'.)

We can go into the emotional stress caused by finding out that weight/ BMI directly correlates to managing this disease for me at a later date... ("What do you mean my dad was right? all I had to do was lose weight?") (gah. so mad at myself sometimes)


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Help me get to my goal!
http://main.diabetes.org/goto/gayathri

Comments

[unclebooboo.livejournal.com]

Good luck and keep us posted on how it goes.

I'm fortunate that metformin alone is still doing a good job for me. In fact, my newest doctor has dropped my prescription from 1000mg/day to 500 mg/day. So far, the fasting BG is holding steady, but I'm very nervous about giving up that extra bit of medication...

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Best of luck with it, G. There's a lot of reason to rail at the drug companies, but medication that really works is a true blessing.

We can go into the emotional stress caused by finding out that weight/ BMI directly correlates to managing this disease for me at a later date... ("What do you mean my dad was right? all I had to do was lose weight?") (gah. so mad at myself sometimes)

I don't know the details of this (either of the BMI correlation to disease management or to your history with your dad), but if I may make a suggestion, maybe it's best to let the past go. Reasons why:

• It is water over the dam, you know. Decisions we've made in the past have consequences in the present, but all we can do with them in the present is live with them, and (if appropriate) resolve to do better next time. Spending time wailing, "Oh, if only I'd done [insert action] when I was [insert age], how much better off I'd be now!" is a complete waste of time, and those regrets are heavy baggage. Think about whether you want to carry them around for the rest of your life.
  
• Related to that, we do often get second chances...and even third and fourth and fifth chances. In fact, it might be said that we get a lifelong succession of additional chances that don't really end until we're in the grave. Not a lot of people see that, though, and so their lives are a really unattractive double feature of "Oh, if only I had" playing alongside of "It's too late now". People who fixate on the lost opportunities of the past have a way of overlooking the opportunities of the present -- or, worse, of scorning or disparaging them, because they're just not as good as the options you had back then. This behavior is an excellent way to guarantee yourself an endless succession of missed opportunities.
  
• Parents are frequently right. They're also human, and humans, when we're right, are often right for the wrong reasons. A broken clock is "right" twice a day. Maybe your dad was really ahead of the research (how long ago was all this happening?) and his advice was 100% scientifically accurate and free of agendas...and maybe it wasn't. It doesn't even really matter, though. This is closely related to my first point: what is available to us, and what we are ready to accept and work with, are two different things. This can be true of physical readiness -- say, you've got an opportunity to go trekking in Nepal, but your current state of physical fitness isn't up for it -- or it can be financial readiness, or it can be psychological readiness. When changes in our lives present themselves, we're frequently not ready to accept them and go with them -- even in the most extreme cases, like when someone's doctor tells them that they must stop smoking (as in the case of people who are on oxygen due to COPD and who continue to smoke). Sounds dumb, but here's the thing: the unreadiness is as much a fact as all the good (or even imperative) reasons for the change. So, the change can be the "right thing to do", the advice to make the change may be "right" -- and it can still be something you can't do. You need to forgive yourself for that, and move on.
  
• Forgiving yourself for not having done the "right thing" in the past doesn't mean absolving yourself for not doing it in the future, and "moving on" doesn't mean continuing in the same pattern that's proven not to work. Moving on from a cyclical pattern of resolve followed by regret generally means getting unstuck, in some way, and that in turn often involves discarding some baggage that we've really grown to love and cling to.
  
• Emotional stress is a consequence of how we react to our own actions, the actions of others and our situation. No life is ever free of emotional stress, but there are strategies that can help to mitigate it and keep it down to a dull roar. I've got my chosen set that I'm learning to follow, and there are plenty of others. They're not a magic pill, they do take work, they're sometimes scary and the medicine is sometimes bitter...but in my experience, the scariness and bitterness is brief, and the getting-better part lasts.
  

[gayathri.livejournal.com]

So, the change can be the "right thing to do", the advice to make the change may be "right" -- and it can still be something you can't do. You need to forgive yourself for that, and move on.

This is a seriously good piece of advice. I'm hopeful I'm ready to actually hear it.

The doctor told me that South and East Asians present Type II diabetes as a lower 'overweight' BMI than other people due to how we often store fat - Apple vs Pear shaped people. Apple shaped people who carry our weight around our midsections are always at a higher risk for diabetes, heart disease, etc. So, according to the doc, they've found apple shaped people have to have BMI's under 23 to avoid the health issues of being overweight. (while Pear shapes can have far higher BMI's, closer to 27 or 30 before presenting the health issues.)