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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happysnappr

I really don't like going to the doctor. The endocrinologist to be specific. Every time I go, I just seem to leave disappointed. Sometimes it's less disappointment than others. Sometimes I'm just so angry at myself and at this disease. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I get mad at the doctor (because OF COURSE, it's HIS fault I'm diabetic!). But mostly, the doctor just makes me feel alone in what I feel.

Today I had an endo appointment (if you didn't already guess). My last A1c was 6.9, my lowest ever. I was absolutely thrilled at that number, yet the perfectionist in me still wanted lower. And I honestly tried for lower (less in the last month or so though). But life got in the way.

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As if it weren't bad enough that I'm in a group OB practice and see a different doctor just about every visit, they've added a new doctor to the mix. So today's visit was with yet another doctor, who doesn't know me, and doesn't bother to read the chart...

For eight months now, another doctor, in another office, with another specialty (ie endocrinology), has followed my diabetes. Last OB visit was the first time they wanted to actually see my logs. So this visit I bring them, one chart for pre and post meal numbers, which don't tell the whole story, and another one that shows everything. You know, those lows between meals and the random highs that come out of nowhere.

Doctors who are not specifically trained in diabetes management have no business at all whatsoever looking at my blood sugar charts. (READ MORE)