I've now lost fifty pounds since being diagnosed six months ago. It will be another month or so until my next A1c test, so I don't know where I'm at with that, but my morning glucose readings have been around 119 the last few days. I got a monitor in April and the first few morning readings were 199, 142, 157, 186 so that looks like some progress, too.

I'm having a very difficult time remaining compliant on my medications, though. They cause me excruciating pain so I take them for a while and then I have to be able to go do things, like serve jury duty, so I stop taking them because it's the only way I can function. Then I feel bad about being non-compliant so I take them again until the next important thing I can't possibly miss comes up and I stop again so I can function. I'm sorely tempted to just stop altogether because when I'm on the medication I can't accomplish anything, not even housework. But so far I keep going back to them. I tried talking to my doctor about the excruciating pain but she kept repeating it back to me as "mild discomfort" so I finally gave up. I do know the difference. I gave birth to an eleven pound baby with no medication. I don't confuse stubbed toes and excruciating pain. But I guess my doctor is not used to people like me so she treats me like a petty whiner.

Come August, however, I'm probably going to be semi-permanently non-compliant on my meds because grad classes start and, well, I kind of have to be there every day. It is my deepest hope that all the weight I am losing will eventually trigger a reversal of my insulin resistance and the non-compliance will be rendered moot. I've got about 20 more pounds to lose in order to go from a BMI indicating obesity to one indicating overweight. Seeing as I started out in morbid obesity, I'd say I'm making good progress and am not too far in left field to hope that the weight loss will have a strong positive impact on my diabetes.

So for now I'm staying the course - very low fat (20g per day), whole foods, plenty of exercise, lots of clean drinking water, and prayer.

I'm getting ready to go to church. This is a big week because Holy Week starts tomorrow. Today is Palm Sunday!

There is a luncheon after Divine Liturgy today and I've already figured that there's not much I can eat on my program. Salmon with lemon dill sauce (nope), steamed broccoli (yes), Lenten pilafi (Maybe. If I'm lucky, it's not got chicken broth in it because it's a fish/fasting day, but knowing how the lovely Greek Orthodox ladies cook, it's sure to have a ton of olive oil in it.), and salata (this is iceberg lettuce salad with tomatoes which would normally be great but the ladies make a very oily dressing and pre-coat the salad with it so it's off-limits for me, too.)

I'm eating a good, solid breakfast (not allowed before partaking of the Eucharist but I'm not communing until Saturday evening when I'm being Chrismated, so . . .) and bringing some nutrition bars in my purse in case steamed broccoli just doesn't cut it after two hours of standing in worship. That is the one and only thing I regret about being on a restricted diet: how it can be socially separating. It doesn't bother me that much, but it is there. When I am not doing what everyone else is doing, it is as if I am sitting apart from them in some way. I am living in a slightly altered reality from those around me and I don't think they even understand how deeply the differences go beyond the surface appearances of what I'm eating or not eating.

The comfort to this is realizing that EVERYONE has their cross to bear and every single person sitting at the table has something that is making an invisible chasm between them and those around them. It's not just me; it's the human condition to feel separate and alienated in some degree, whether it's the massive alienation of a homeless man or the miniscule alienation of a girl who sits and feasts on broccoli while everyone else eats whatever they want without much thought.

Lord have mercy on us all.

I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes on January 8, 2008. I haven't had an A1c test yet. The doctor told me that she didn't get the request in on time for the first blood sample and I "slipped through the cracks" on the confirmation test. The doctor guessed that my A1c was probably somewhere around 8. I am getting *fingers crossed* an actual A1c test in May.

Since diagnosis, I've lost 30 pounds so far (I had already lost a little over 40 pounds before diagnosis) and my blood pressure has dropped 30 points each on both systolic and diastolic measures. I've walked 185 miles since diagnosis and my resting pulse rate has gone down about 40 beats per minute.

I'm following Dr. Neal Barnard's program for diabetes, as a result of doing searches in the medical journals and diabetes journals and finding the NIH-funded study of his program that showed it to be as much as three times more effective in controlling diabetes than the standard ADA diet that's usually prescribed. And I *love* the food, so I'm really thriving on the program. I've looked at what's required on the ADA diet and I honestly don't think I'd be very compliant. At best, it would be a constant struggle for me.

Here's hoping I can keep this blog up and that my future entries will be at least slightly less boring than this first one.