About Me
Hi friends, I am Lorena Angell CPhT. I am a certified pharmacy technician. I see many people young and old trying to manage their diabetes.
I wish everyone could see what I see. It's a life lesson I will never forget.
I see people who are being proactive and monitoring their blood glucose levels before they cause problems. It makes me happy to see those types of people.
I also see those individuals who deal with the harsh effects of advanced diabetes. They are struggling to survive and it makes me sad to see their pain.
There are many wonderful things to help us manage blood glucose levels and I want to help create more awareness to them.
I am also a type 2 diabetic. Diabetes is a hereditary disease in my family. I was fortunate to catch my symptoms early. I got my a1c checked many years ago and I found out I was already diabetic. I learned how to completely change my diet to prevent further damage. I learned how to check my blood with finger poke glucometers.
Even though I had changed so much of my diet, the disease was already affecting my glucose levels. My doctor put me on Metformin. It helped my glucose levels a lot, but for me, Metformin caused brain fog.
I am an author of a Young Adult Fantasy series and I went through several years of writer's block and just couldn't finish the book series I was halfway through.
My doctor and I experimented with other options. Eventually, I tried Ozempic. It worked really well for my glucose levels and I got my writer's brain back.
I've learned so many cool things over the years about managing diabetes. Continuous glucose monitors are fairly new. I put them in the gadgets category of managing diabetes along with a journal or log book to write down results. Managing diabetes has been life altering, but in a good way. I feel much better and I have hope of living a long, productive life.
Managing diabetes is a team effort
My husband Larry does not have hereditary diabetes in his family. He is so lucky. He has a huge influence on my health though. The influence from a nondiabetic partner can be either helpful or harmful. In the earlier years of our 34 years of marriage, we were super stupid about glucose levels. Larry had a heart attack when he was 44. He had to make changes. It was then that I decided to get my blood work done. Diabetic! Oh crap!
Suddenly we were both really interested in living longer and knew we had to do things differently. We learned about healthy foods and how to replace or avoid unhealthy foods. Our learning was a team effort and we would plan our food shopping and meal preparation based on our needs. A diabetics diet is also good for those with cardiovascular problems. Bing, bang, boom! Two problems, one solution. Better food choices and more exercise.
Larry has been an intermittent faster who eats one meal in the evening. He has done that for as long as he has had health problems. He has sustained energy throughout the day. He gets tired when he eats at night.
His glucose levels are very different than mine. We like to both wear cgms and compare our results. Larry never spikes even if he eats a bunch of jelly doughnuts. I'm not so lucky. We are a team though. Diabetes and cardiovascular disease has changed the way we think about food.
We have both learned just how important it is to eat healthy.