Why Do I Need to Do This Stuff, Anyway?

By Jan Chait It was the day I fired my primary-care physician (PCP). He was going over my vital signs with me and noted my blood pressure as being 140/90 (or something like that). "That's good," he said. "No," I responded — I never could keep my mouth shut — "that's too high for somebody who has diabetes." And that's when the tirade began, beginning with my audacity in talking back to him and then going into I needed to fire my endocrinologist, who never should have let me have an insulin pump, they're dangerous, yada, yada, yada. That was 13 or so years and 4 pumps ago. I still have the endocrinologist. Because those of us who party with the Diabeastie are at higher risk than the general population for all kinds of nasty things, more than our blood glucose needs to be monitored. By keeping a close eye on all of the other markers that can lead to diabetic complications such as blindness, end-stage renal (kidney) disease, heart attacks, strokes, and more; and by adhering to tighter control of things like — well, blood pressure for example — we can delay or avoid complications. How often should specific areas be monitored? What numbers should doctors look for? How will they find out? If my former PCP had known that the American Diabetes Association (ADA) publishes an updated Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes as a supplement to the January issue of their official journal each year, he might have known what the optimal blood pressure was for his pati...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs