I was feeling a bit annoyed when I arrived at work on Tuesday having woken up at 2.8mmol/L and it only being the second day back and all but I got such a nice surprise in my inbox which helped snap me out of it so I thought I’d share it with you guys too.

I’ll start by saying that I have some of the most thoughtful work colleagues. A couple of them who sit nearest me have been privy to the incessant blood testing, swearing and cursing at high and low BGs and the constant wipping out of the pump and so now, whenever they see a site or hear a news article about diabetes it invariably comes my way. I get at least two a week. One of my colleagues even did a bloodtest on herself today to see how it felt since I have to do them all day and she was wondering if it hurt!

So anyway, on Tuesday someone sent me a link to the New York times with an article about how high blood glucose can have an effect on memory - that is, loss of it. I of course read the article and was suitably impressed so thought that I would share it with you because without being able to understand or access all the scientific mumbo-jumbo I can certainly attest to them being correct (at least, it’s true for me). The article has more of a focus on type II diabetics and the elderly and memory loss in old age but it has very clear implications for type I diabetics too I reckon.

I don’t think that until I got a good grip on my BGs and started having relatively few highs above about 13.0mmol/L I actually realised just how much of an impact all the high BGs I was having had on my work and school life. Goodness knows how many tests, exams, quizzes, reports and studies I did with high BGs and this article really made me wonder what kind of disadvantage I’d been doing myself by not paying due care with my diabetes? I got 50% for school certificate maths that I know had nothing to do with diabetes at all but I can think of plenty of other examples…

I suppose that it’s another aspect of being diabetic that we learn to manage/cope with/adjust for but it’s still nice to know that really smart people have got our backs!

- Aaron