About 3 years ago I started getting tingling in my toes. That soon evolved into pain, and numbness. Eventually, I ended up having a small stroke. During the stroke it was discovered that I had an a1c of nine which is extremely high. I’ve gotten it under control now but the damage is done and I have full-blown neuropathy on my feet.

Thank you for sharing and sorry to hear about your health issues. I get my glucose checked at least once a year, but only since talking to my brother about his health issues did the term A1C come up. I don’t understand why my doctor hasn’t had that test on the docket for labs. Seems like a good thing to keep track of given, ya know, the family history and my line-riding of the glucose scale.

If you are stressed about it, I would recommend possibly getting a glucose monitor for your own mental health. You can check it more frequently and see what your glucose does before and after meals, that can give you some more information to go off of if you are trying to get your doctor to order specific tests. I imagine if you asked him he would order an A1C test though! They are simple and quick, and as the other person said, they give you a good idea of how well your blood sugar is controlled over the course of several months. It’s really the way they diagnose diabetes in the first place generally. Activity and diet control are the number one ways to stay out of diabetes, however. Some people’s genetics are so tilted towards diabetes that they will enter it eventually regardless of how they eat, but that’s a pretty rare case. If you are really able to keep yourself in shape and control your diet for calories and carbohydrates and fiber, your chances are become so slim that I doubt your doctor would worry about it much anymore. I know that’s a difficult thing to do though, so as others have said, frequency of urination is often one, especially at night, neuropathic tingling in your toes, slowly healing wounds, fatigue. These are often among the first symptoms, but you’re many times. People never catch it until they enter what is called dka and have to go to the hospital to get out of it. If you are already tracking it with your doctor, and checking your blood sugars, then you are ahead of the game! There is no real indicator besides your blood sugar and your a1c, and then physiological symptoms you may notice. Even if you do go into diabetes type 2 at this stage in your life, if you are doing the other things I mentioned, and tracking your blood sugar, it would most likely be a an autoimmune-induced late onset type 1 diabetes. Even if that were the case with modern devices like CGM or sometimes even cgm and insulin pump combos. Your health can remain basically the same even after that kind of diagnosis! At this stage in our science, both types of diabetes are completely manageable if you are willing to be very compliant with your regiment. The bad parts of diabetes always come from specifically uncontrolled diabetes. The issue is that the molecule of glucose is large and can cause damage in the bloodstream, so when that level gets out of control, those molecules can clump and affect your tiny blood vessels. That is where the worst things come from, general organ damage including eyes and lack of circulation to the smaller ends of your extremities, usually your toes first. There is really no actual risk to having diabetes if you control it really well, you can essentially have full-blown type 1 diabetes with no insulin producing cells and if you are tracking it well enough and good enough about your diet and exercise and medicine. You can live a completely normal life and it won’t even shorten your lifespan. That’s the hard part for people though. Having really good control because it’s a pain in the butt. Source: I’m an ICU nurse

Thank you so much for your insightful comment! I think I’m going to look into getting some sort of monitor just so I can, as you outlined, get some peace of mind. My doctor also suggested in our last visit that I invest in a blood pressure cuff to check for high blood pressure so finding both medical instruments might be worth purchasing together!

I hear you on the uncontrollable diabetes and difficulties for people. My dad, when he was diagnosed, was a consultant and had to move around to various parts of the country a lot. It wrecked his body and lead to the start of his issues. He went from drinking a 6-12 pack of beer almost daily to quitting cold turkey. He probably wouldn’t have made it to mine and my siblings graduations had it not been for his fortitude. Anymore, diet seems to be a huge part in the equation and unless you’re loaded, it’s really difficult to eat well. I wish our system of food processing was better and we didn’t constantly have to fight the battle against proper nutrition and affording other necessities in our lives.

My hope, from this post, is that I can get a sort of “scared straight” result that’ll snap me out of my current funk leading to the harmful, antithetic actions I’ve found myself repeating. Thank you again for your comment!