Fight Against Diabetes

I have been dealing with this pain on my right shoulder and arm for so long that I have quite forgotten when it started. A couple of years perhaps. I would wake up every morning with excruciating pain on my entire right shoulder, deltoid and arm. It would feel as if I had fought an intense battle the whole night. I would feel tired in the morning.  The range of motion was restricted for the shoulder joint and neck. Even reaching for the seat belt in the car was difficult. And I had almost come to accept it as part of my life. I thought it was the indirect result of my left wrist fracture sustained in February 2016. And it would go the moment the left hand was perfectly cured. But when after almost 3 years I realised that the left hand had become normal and yet the pain in my right hand was not going, I decided to take some remedial action.  Of late I have started winning the battle against the pain and minor disability caused by it. I want to write down what all I did and wha

I had gone to see Binayak on Tuesday and he told me, "you have never been better in life", while wrapping up the pressure monitoring machine. Pressure was 110/70 and HbA1c was 6.1. The Jardiance magic is working. Incidentally it was the World Diabetes Day also :-)  Of course I had supplemented the new line of treatment with very consistent and serious exercise. As of now I am running 4 km every alternate evening and cycling for 90 kms on the weekends. But seeing the figure of 6.1 on the AMRI report card made me feel ecstatic. I haven't felt so ecstatic since getting diabetes 15 years ago. I think my best so far has been 6.2. Now the challenge is to hold on to this and not let it go up. Binayak said he would observe my ACR after 6 months and then take a call on pressure medicines. He wants to bring it down a bit. Great. Let's see how it goes. There is an element of pain in the arms, palms to be precise, due to excessive cycling. But nothing major. The media

From today (Thursday 24th August, 2017) I start with a new additional medicine called Jardiance 10. One tablet every morning before breakfast. I have to be aware of all the side effects and also monitor the glucose control more closely. Hence the new blog.  In February 2016 when my A1C level was 6.2 Binayak suggested that I stop taking Diamicron because it causes hypoglycemia. By November the level rose to above 7. In August I discovered it had gone up to 8.2. I had also not been able to exercise the past few months due to my Achilles pain.  Binayak said the medicine is an SGLT blocker. I googled the subject to superficially understand what that is. Our kidneys secrete this SGLT protein to reabsorb glucose from the urine and send it back to our blood system. This is nature's way of protecting us against any possible food shortage. In today's context this is causing excess glucose in our blood because supply of glucose is abundant. Hence the SGLT blocker which will not