Endo Visit: Blood Sugars, Basals, Biking, and the Women's Tour de France

I've mentioned it before on my blog, but I feel really lucky to have an endocrinologist who understands me and my needs.  Randomly stumbling upon how office's website was one of the best things that could have happened to me.

Every visit starts the same way.  He walks in, shakes my hand and gives me a greeting and then asks about the book that I am currently reading while waiting for him.  I'm currently reading Room, a national bestseller and we spoke about the content of the book for a few minutes.

Then we talked about my knee issue and everything that has happened because of it.  Biking does really good things for my blood sugars.  It makes everything so forgiving.  Eating desserts isn't an issue when I bike.  Actually, eating anything I want is okay when I bike for a long time.  When I mentioned this to him, he asked if I was going to be transitioning from running to biking in the future, which I answered with a "I don't think so.  Maybe triathlons, but running is my first love.  There is so much excitement in running, and biking doesn't have that."  We then went on to talk about the Tour de France, which seems to be the epic biking event in the world.  Did you know that there is actually a women's Tour de France?  My doctor looked it up for me while I was there.  I guess it just doesn't get any media coverage.

My doctor also told me a story about a sign he saw on a car that said 140.6, but didn't know what it meant. "I thought is was something important, but just didn't know what it stood for."  I told him it was the distance of a full ironman.  "Do you have a sticker that says 26.2 on your car?"  I answered him with an, "Of course I do."  I didn't mentioned that getting that sticker was highly important to me the second I crossed the finish line last year.

After biking and triathlon talk, we spoke about my blood sugars, insulin, and settings on my pump.  We changed one setting, just a minor adjustment but hopefully it will help.

The last thing we discussed was how diabetes likes to pair up with other autoimmune disorders.  Due to the results of my blood work over the past few years, I need to have a bone density test done.  My first question, "do I have to?"  Yes, apparently I do.  This will give my doctor more insight as to what is going on in my body.  I've never had one done before, but from what I've read it doesn't seem too bad.  I have to remind myself that any information is helpful, even if it is not desirable.

***I want to say that my doctor is in the vast minority because he puts so little emphasis on what my A1C is.  As a matter of fact, he doesn't ever tell me what it is.  We spend much more time discussing blood sugar patterns rather than the average, which is what the A1C is.  This approach works well for me, and averages don't paint a flu picture of what is really going on.  With all that being said, my A1C was 5.3 because the nurse told me.***

After a few more brief comments, I scheduled my next appointment and headed out to accomplish the next task on my to-do list, which happened to be getting a new pair of running shoes.