I was at the hospital today getting taken through the insulin pump plug in and I’m all ready to do tomorrow with real insulin rather than saline solution. During the process of the morning we talked about the all powerful HbA1c and how that is the 3 monthly average and all that and it struck my just how much emphasis health professionals and we ourselves put on this little number.

Back in the dark ages when I had the reflolux and it was syringes and vials all the way, I didn’t really know about this ‘HbA1c’ but recently have begun to think more about it. Initially, it stemmed out of a conversation I had with my pump rep about whether going on the pump improved your HbA1c significantly and she said, rather surprisingly – “not really, no. But it does reduce the fluctuations significantly”.  So I’m left thinking about what this means for us given that my Dr puts such an empahsis on it and I start to dig which has lead me to the possibility that ever elusive HbA1c of 6.5 might not be the holy grail I thought it was. I realised a while ago (as you will know) that that average can hide a HUGE amount of variability within it’s digits which we can then use to console ourselves that we’re doing well and hoodwink our Dr with too.

I’m on a bit of a crusade with this now to educate myself and there is heaps of info on the net of course but what I found most interesting out of everything I found was a research study that came out of France recently stating that large fluctuations in BGs may actually be worse for you than persistantly high BGs. I’ve not got my hands on the paper yet (looking good for later this week though) but once I do I’ll be posting that little baby right here for you to have a read of. If that is the case, then the pump becomes a better option and pharmac who won’t fund the pump becuase “it does not contribute to a significant reduction in HbA1c” has one less excuse not to provide access to funding.

- Aaron