A Visit to Lourdes?

UPDATE (April 2, 2013): Before you take Byetta, Victoza, Onglyza, or Januvia please read about the new research that shows that they, and probably all incretin drugs, cause severely abnormal cell growth in the pancreas and precancerous tumors. You'll find that information HERE.


Original Post:


I am feeling better and better on Januvia, to the point where it's getting a bit spooky.

I measured my fasting bg this morning (87 mg/dl which is about as low as it gets)and looked at my log to see what it had been yesterday, only to notice that I hadn't tested at all the whole day! This blew me away, because I've been testing at least 2 or 3 times a day since 1998--even when my insurance wouldn't pay for strips. I never had to remember to test, the way my blood sugar makes me feel most of the time would get me testing, plus the uncertainty of what was going on.

But I'm not experiencing uncertainty of late. My bg is pretty much what I expect it to be all the time and the very highest reading I've seen, when I tested the same food item that had put me over 200 mg/dl at the lab last year, put me to 134 at 1 hour and 87 by 2 1/2 hours--and that's with 55 grams of carb--a lot more carbs than I ever eat normally.

So for the first time since diagnosis, I'm Not thinking about every gram of carbs I eat and worrying about how it will make me feel or what it will do to my blood sugar. Oh, and did I mention I'm eating what is, for me, a normal diet? (30 grams per meal mostly, maybe a bit higher here and there.) Even more interesting, I keep forgetting to eat. Food has just receded to the background of my mind.

This, folks, is how I define "cured." It's blowing my mind, because I never expected this to happen for me.

The only remaining niggling concern is wondering about what else this stuff is doing to my body. Looking at every other drug approved as quickly as Januvia, it's almost certain there will be an ugly downside revealed after it's been in use for a decade or long enough for the real side effects to appear.

Do I care? Abstractly, yes, but to feel like a normal person again and put eating in the back of my mind for once, well, it may be worth just about anything that comes with it. I'm old enough that another decade of high quality life is about all I can expect and having seen my parents live to be very old, that has become a fate I dread.

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In other news, I'm still doing pretty good in the
Simon & Schuster/Borders First Chapters Competition on Gather.com though not as well as before, partially because it looks like friends of some authors are going around giving competitors the lowest score possible to drop their ranking. Whatever you do, don't do that! It's contemptible and lacking in respect for the other authors who have worked as hard as they have to complete a novel. The stories should be judged on their merits. That said, if you want to help me out, go read the chapter and rate it if you like it.

I've put together a web site with the link to voting and a bit more information about the novel here: http://www.phlaunt.com/DarkLordsHeir

The voting window for my entry closes either Tuesday Night or Weds afternoon (it's not entirely clear which.) Each entry gets two weeks though they will be displaying new entries until the middle of March. So time is getting short!

And to those of you who have read and voted (especially those who have told me you like the chapter) a huge Thank You!!!!