Three months ago in this thread,
I posted this:
MixedGrains wrote:So today when my doctor walked into my exam room, he was beaming about my lab results. My A1C was 5.0 -- the lowest it's ever been. Last time I saw him, six months ago, when it was 5.2, he cut my last diabetes med (1000mg Metformin) in half to 500mg, and told me we could eliminate it completely if I got to 5.0 and stayed there. Considering that my A1C was once almost 8 and I was taking a horse's dose of Avandia plus 2000mg Metformin at the time, this is progress. So now he wants to see me in three months so that if I'm still 5.0 or below, we can take me off my last diabetes med.
So: last week I went in for more labs, and saw my doctor today. He walked in to the exam room with a harried look, and didn't have my labs in hand. When he pulled them up on his terminal, sure enough, I still had a 5.0 A1c.
Him: "We might need to cut your meds again."
Me: "If you cut 'em too many more times, they're going to be homeopathic."
Him, laughing: "What are you on, 1000mg tablets of the Metformin?
Me: "500mg tablets."
Him: "Twice a day?"
Me: "Nope, just once."
Him, after a pause: "Well, then, just...
QUIT!"
Me: "That's where I was going with this conversation..."
So it's official. I suppose you could say I'm in medical limbo -- a diabetic with no symptoms and no diabetic drugs. I might as well be a purple unicorn; it's clear my doctor has never seen anybody in this status. He keeps telling me "you're my best diabetic patient ... nobody else has done as well as you with this disease." When I asked if he'd ever even heard of another diabetic getting their A1c this low and getting off all diabetic meds, all he'd say was "It's rare. Very rare."
He wants to check my A1c in two months -- I don't think he's got a lot of faith in my little miracle -- but I'm good with that. My own prediction is that my A1c won't have budged.
Plant foods continue to be very very good to me. I haven't lost any more weight since my last update (I'm still fluctuating in a band between 370 and 390) but the reasons are no mystery; I just haven't found the personal reserves of will and energy to solve the relevant problems. I eat ridiculously healthy food, just too much of it. And I still drink booze.
I did visit my cardiologist about six weeks ago, for the first time in almost two years. I have some mild-to-moderate valve disease and he'd like to look at it every six months, but I can't afford that. He wanted my heart rate a bit lower and upped my tiny dose of beta blockers, but he says that -- according to the cardiac ultrasound -- my valve disease has not progressed at all. Obviously I was pretty happy with that news too.
Near the end of my visit today, in response to another "I wish all my patients would do as well as you" type of remark from my doctor, I sort of half-in-jest growled at him "Tell them to eat more plants. No, tell them to eat
nothing but plants..." That made him look kinda sour, and he changed the subject. I'm not sure how to parse that. My gut tells me he doesn't really believe my explanation for my success, but in that case, I don't know what he
does attribute it to. My other theory is that he just can't imagine any useful way to try to
sell my explanation to his other patients.