Hitting myself up with a needle gives me the incentive to stay healthy

These days I try my best to keep from a regular routine of insulin shots. My PCP, or primary care provider, said a half-dozen months ago that I was on the edge of requiring insulin. I didn’t like that idea too much so I worked and dropped my weight by about 15 pounds and lowered what is known as my A1C level. The A1C is the HbA1c, or glycohemoglobin, test. Says the Nation Institutes for Health:

 “The A1C test is a blood test that provides information about a person’s average levels of blood glucose, also called blood sugar, over the past 3 months … The A1C test is the primary test used for diabetes management and diabetes research.”

The normal level is below 5.7%. Over 6.5 percent is diabetes. My level during my last check was 7.1, which was down from 7.4%. My goal is to get it to normal. You got to have a goal.

What really drives me to keep my A1C at sane levels isn’t all the really bad things that can happen to you from diabetes. I have peripheral neuropathy, caused by diabetes, which makes it difficult to feel my feet. My feet can also hurt like hell, feeling as if someone is shooting you in the foot with a nail gun. I have the pain in my feet controlled pretty well with medications. That is good because I have a lot of other pain to deal with. There are much worse actions diabetes can cause: blindness, gangrenous skin tissue requiring amputations, death, to name a few. But it is the desire to not have insulin shots several times daily the rest of my life that drives most of my activities designed to keep my diabetic numbers in check.

I don’t fear the shots or the pain. I have been giving myself monthly B12 shots for about five months. My doctor says she wants me to take B12 the rest of my life. The injections are not painful or if they are the pain is like a nanosecond long or shorter. Usually it is pain free cause I jab it in my arm and cannot feel the needle. The shots are a pain in another way.

The juice in the vial always wants to come out real-ll-ll-y slow.  It could give Heinz ketchup a run for its money. I always worry about getting bubbles in my syringe and hitting some pathway through my blood stream that would cause an aneurysm. Of course, you have to sanitize with alcohol wipes beforehand. Wipe the top of the vial. Create a sterile field on your arm. Then I have to go check to see if my arm is bleeding after I give myself a shot. So far it has usually taken about 10 minutes from start to finish to self-inject with B12. It was longer that that when I first started “hitting up.”

The reasons I take B12 is more complicated than taking the injections. The easiest way to explain the need for the shots is that I have a B12 deficiency, supposedly.

Naturally, I want to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible so I give myself the B12 injections and watch my diet and blood sugar levels as well as the old A1C. But shots are what give me the incentive to try and stay healthy. Getting older requires higher maintenance, just like your classic car. I don’t know if I would say that I am a classic though. I know some folks who would say that. And I know some people who would argue like hell with you about such a statement.