In accordance with American Diabetes Month, dLife bloggers are focusing on how we can improve in different areas of our diabetes management.

Numbers. A decent one to us might be not so decent to you. It’s a matter of perspective.

The nurse couldn’t reach Susanne earlier so she called me at work to give me Charlie’s number.

"What was he?" Susanne asked a little while later.

"180," I told her.

"OK, not bad," she said.

Maybe you’d be pretty bummed with a 180.

Charlie sometimes seems defined by numbers.

"I'm 56!" he shouted at about 6:30 am this morning.

He’s like a walking, talking Styrofoam numeral from Sesame Street. The questions regarding Charlie are always the same.

"What is he?"

"What was he?"

"What was he this morning?"

"What was he when you checked him at midnight?

It could be the sort of questioning Geppetto faced from detectives the morning after Pinocchio’s "change."

What is he? He's a boy.

What was he? He was a wooden puppet.

What was he this morning? A boy.

What was he when you checked him at midnight? Uh, odd as it may seem, I typically don't get up at midnight to check on my puppets.

The numbers. The numbers. The numbers. Sometimes we feel like we’re being buried by the numbers. Maybe that’s why we find ourselves scrambling to jot down blood sugars in the car on our way to endo appointments. It’s no excuse, though. We could and we should do a better job of logging numbers. Maybe then we would be able to look at the week on paper and spot some trends.

Ha! Spot trends. That’s a good one.