Flashpoint

My GP and I have certain fundamental differences in approach and philosophies. He wants to paint by numbers with an objective of a long life. I want to feel good for as long as I happen to live, a quality-over-quantity preference. The last couple years of diminishing abilities has only reaffirmed my outlook.
Any doctor would have gasped in horror at my numbers in 2005 when I started seeing my GP. Perhaps a diabetes specialist would have had more experience with diabetics who were "living high" and had taken a more cautious approach to making changes. It's way too late to speculate now. Egged on by a couple friends who felt I didn't take care of myself, I went along with the changes promoted by my GP, the largest of which was doubling my dose of insulin. He did not change my daytime dose, but specifically prescribed taking an equal dose at night. Gauging my sugars by feel, I knew that most of the time my sugar ran high, it was doing so only at night.
I specify here that my highs and lows were relative changes to my own bodily system. The lows were not numerical lows by standard practices. My lows would be sugar-shock coma-inducing highs to a fragile diabetic.
This did work at drastically lowering my A1C.
This period of change, from spring to summer of 2005, also spelled the end of what I refer to as "The Healthy Years." My numbers improved, still not to the GP's satisfaction, but I felt like crap. The better my numbers got, the worse I felt.
With the onset of diabetes at age 4 and a hospitalization at age 12, 2005 at the age of 36, became my third flashpoint with the sugar. This was a period of massive change, and none felt then–or now–like changes for the better.
I encountered this GP in kind of a literal way, by accident. Results of a car accident had left me with a broken shoulder, and I ended up with physical therapy in the GP’s practice. The accident triggered a mid-life crisis. It became a practice run at being needy
My vehicle was a stick shift, unworkable with a shoulder brace and sling. I was living alone at the time of the accident and the medical aftermath. Some people in my life at the time proved themselves more loyal and caring–more there–than I would have expected. Some of the ones I would have expected to be there for me (because I had been and always was there in their times of need in so many ways) were either conspicuously absent or made the inconvenience factor well known when they were there.
I think part of the reason I have adjusted so well to the permanent disability was for having lived through that temporary bout. I looked at the new presence of an internist doctor in my life as fate, especially while in the middle of a mid-life crisis. Loose and independent threads had seemed to converge. With clearer thinking, with less acceptance of "fate" to where I ended up. With less criticism and disfavor from some of the people closest to me and if other factors had been different at the time, I would not have continued seeing my GP when the shoulder issue cleared up.
I do firmly believe that in the entire cycle of events, I would not be in this permanent predicament of neediness now.