When I was asked to make my benefits selections for my current job, one of my options was whether or not to select an optical plan. After looking over what I would be paying on a weekly basis, and what I would be receiving, it was obvious that I would be a fool not to sign up, and that I would do much better to select the more expensive plan (it covers antireflective eyeglass coating). After some issues with finding an available slot in my schedule, I went to my local Lenscrafters for a much-overdue eye exam.

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About a year ago, my PCP's office decided I needed to make separate appointments to have my blood work drawn, a week before my PCP appointments, extorting an extra co-pay so that my doctor and I can have some meaningful interaction (my insurance requires the lab work to be sent out, with about a five- to seven-day turnaround). There's nothing unusual about the blood work -- just the standard glucose panel (with HbA1c), metabolic (liver function) panel, lipid panel (cholesterol), blood count, and urinalysis.

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Since I changed my endocrinilogist last year, I've really been happy with my experiences with Dr. K. She's the kind of doctor that means business but doesn't come off as if she's judging you. She tells you what she thinks, but leaves it up to you what to do. So usually, I'm fairly excited (yes, I said excited) about going to see her. Even when I know I've been doing 85% of things wrong.

This appointment didn't feel that way though. I just really didn't want to have to go. I've been making some changes and my averages are down. I didn't want to hear that I'd been doing this and this wrong, even if she does leave off the judgement. I just wasn't willing to expose all those mistakes to the light.

And I feel torn between wishing I would have canceled and being excited about the outcome.

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The theme for this week is "Manage Your Healthcare Team". 
For me, and for many others with Type 2 diabetes, this is a laugh. Team? What team? I have a primary care physician who handles everything from soup to nuts, including my diabetes care. She'll refer me to specialists and labs as needed, but she doesn't have any direct correspondence with my ophthalmologist (for whose checkup I am long overdue), and I've never had a CDE or an endo.

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Yesterday was one of those days that I wondered if I should pack socks in my purse.

You ladies know what I'm talking about. It's that place where doctors put pictures on the ceiling to take your mind off what's going on. Yeah, you guessed it: yesterday I had my annual well woman exam.

In all my years of visiting doctors and having diabetes and explaining my diagnosis and saying why I take what meds I take and how my pregnancies went and that no it wasn't gestational diabetes this was not the appointment I had imagined.

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I've been seeing some of the usual (and not-so-usual) issues about logging popping up lately. If it were just a matter of copying
readings off a glucometer... well, that's what the separate-purchase cable is for, right? The issue is all the other stuff
we need to log to make sense of those readings. When did you most recently eat? What did you most recently eat? Did you calculate
carbs correctly? Did you bolus correctly? Was there an issue of delayed release ("pizza effect") or sustained high (some of us have
carb thresholds beyond which we have a nonlinear response)? Were you tired? stressed? What sort of exercise did you do over the past
couple of days? How were you feeling when you tested?

And that's just the Type 1 log for someone without any other medical issues.

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