New Year's Resolutions

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves, we must die to one life before we can enter another.” –Anatole France

‘Tis the season for resolutions and new beginnings. I love beginnings. I love the excitement of starting fresh, of new ideas, daydreams, hopes and wishes. I have a lot of expectations for 2012, all of which I hope will come to fruition, but only a few of which I would like to list as my official New Year’s Resolutions.

As a diabetic, of course the first resolution I would like to make is regarding my blood sugar control. My HAICs have been consistently around 7 mmol/g in recent years, and my goal this year is to have an A1C of 5.8mmol/g before the end of 2012. But as any good diabetic knows, blood sugar control cannot be measured simply with an average, as an average can never truly tell the full story.  If I achieve that average through a rollercoaster of blood sugars that’s as crazy as this:

than it is not a fair representation of my blood sugar control. I’d like my blood sugar control to be quite a bit more boring and a lot flatter, probably something like this:

My second resolution is to prevent myself from taking on too many committments (work, volunteering, schooling), and by doing so, allowing myself the opportunity to truly give myself 100% to the commitments that I do make. I have the tendency to take on more than is healthy- in terms of levels of stress- (ahem the 4 jobs I was working plus full time school last semester) and I’ve found this to be not only unhealthy, but unsatisfying too.  I wouldn’t call myself a perfectionist, but I do take a lot of pride in what I do, and I get very frustrated whenever I’m time crunched and forced to do a mediocre job. So this resolution is designed to hopefully allow me the opportunity to excel at and enjoy everything I do this year.

A third resolution I would like to make for myself, and one which is quite easily measurable by the public at large, is to truly keep up with blogging once a week. There are so many benefits of weekly blogs, from developing a stronger online community to expressing myself in times of excitement and frustration, and I do believe that the act of blogging itself helps me maintain better blood sugar control, simply by being a constant reminder of my diabetes. 

My fourth resolution is simple yet difficult all in one, and it is to smile more. Cheesy? Yes. Difficult to measure? Certainly. Important? Immeasurably.  Many people describe me as a very upbeat, smiley person, but I want every smile to be from the inside out. I remember a quote I once read in a running magazine, “Wellness is the key to a long and healthy life. Many people have the wrong perception of it. Wellness is from the neck up, and fitness from the neck down. Too many people work out every day, but go around with the worst attitudes, which just wastes all their physical efforts.” I think that statement captures the importance of attitude and happiness, and I would like to be a more smiley, positive person this year.

My final resolution fits in nicely with these ideas of wellness and fitness. I’d like to run in more races this year. So far I’ve signed up for the Warrior Dash in July, which I’m extremely excited about, and as the warmer months near I’d like to sign up for some more 5 and 10ks, possibly even a half marathon.

Here’s to hoping the new year brings all sorts of good, and fewer sorts of bad.

Why I Aim for Average

I have always been a high-achiever.  As a kindergartener, I would rush to clean up my toys the fastest so that I would be the first sitting down for story time.  In grade three I played a leading role in the class play.  In grade five I cried when I didn’t receive 100% on a project that I felt was flawless.  In grade six, unknowingly battling a life changing disease, I trained hard enough to place in the school board’s cross country event. 

Within two months of this achievement, however, I began to deteriorate.  It began subtly, I didn’t have the same energy on the basketball court or the soccer field that I use to have.  Then I badly sprained my ankle in gym class, the first time I had ever suffered a severe injury despite years of contact sports.  I developed a very bad ear infection and became extremely lethargic.  I missed days and days of school as I became sicker and sicker- my appetite dropped, I developed dark circles under my eyes and I lost 7 pounds in 2 days, an alarming amount on anyone, but particularly noticeable on my skinny, athletic body.  Then one night the reason for my illness was discovered, and I was woken up and rushed to the hospital.  My blood sugar tests had come in at a whopping 47.3 mmol/L  and I was nearly comatose.  On the ride to the hospital, my mom sat in the back seat with me and told me that the doctor had said it was very likely I had diabetes.  As an eleven year old, I didn’t know what that meant or how it would affect my life, but I knew that I was scared. In the safety of my mother’s arms, I cried. But that high-achieving person inside me made me put on a brave face for the nurses, who exclaimed at how courageous and well behaved I was as they pricked my fingers and hooked me up to an IV, for my aunts and uncles that visited,  and later for my teachers and friends at school.             

I soon learned that living with diabetes was a daily struggle to be average.  There was no such thing as 10 out of 10 or 100%.  My aim was to stay between the average, non-diabetic blood glucose range of 5-7 mmol/L, which, as any diabetic knows, often feels like an impossible task.  I still excelled in the areas of my life that I had always excelled in: I was an honour roll student and went on to become valedictorian of my high school graduating class, I raced my way to a spot on a track team, played on numerous competitive basketball and soccer teams, participated in enough high school sports to win me senior athlete of the year, sang in choirs and played piano.  But all these things were now accompanied by the new challenges of my diabetes.  I learned that my race performance greatly decreased if I had high blood sugars the night before a race, that low blood sugars during test writing would result in a similarly lower mark, that my coordination on the basketball court would deteriorate if my blood sugars dropped, and that my fingers would stumble over each other if I played piano when hypoglycemic.  Discovering these challenges of diabetes was frustrating, and I often indulged feelings of self pity or anger.  But ignoring my diabetes wasn’t an option simply because it was impossible to do. Ignoring it led to my blood sugars soaring or dropping, which would not only affect my mood, but also my performance in every aspect of my life.  So I fumbled along, trying to make sense of the disease I had and trying to prevent it from defining me.

It’s still a struggle, but finally I’ve accepted that being average in my diabetes means the possibility for success in the rest of my life.  And that, in at least one aspect of my life, success is being average, or at least, is having that average, non-diabetic A1C level.   So with the hope that I may one day achieve this understated goal, I’ll keep aiming for average.