Untested Theory

I do not test my blood sugars for reasons that make logical sense to me, including the hastening of neuropathy problems in the fingers and moral outrage that pharmaceutical companies’ financial interests take priority in this country over the long term interests of patients. Other alternatives exist but are suppressed for the profitability of test strips and lancets. I am not alone in this; one of the doctors I saw about a specialized problem in the past year is a Type 2 diabetic who also does not home test. Like me, he relies on A1C tests to gauge his progress or lack thereof.
Readers, however, should keep in mind some things about this (non) practice. The first is that I fell into it out of necessity during financially destitute times, not an intentional rebellion from the inescapable status of being diabetic. I had been diabetic for fifteen or more years by that time and paid attention to what my body would tell me.
Non-testing could be dangerous to those who can’t or won’t pay attention to their bodies’ telltale signals and I do not advocate the practice even while discussing it. Knowing the signs can take time, so newer diabetics need to go through the regimen up until a time that other home testing alternatives are made available.
I stopped even urine testing due to financial constraints sometime around 1989 to 1990 and managed the sugar by feel. One key aspect of this, something I had to "unlearn" from prior diabetic education and parental control. In that abandoned approach, the theory impressed on me was that the insulin was taken only at certain times and the rest of your life was to be planned around that until the nest scheduled dose. I think most people can imagine the post high school difficulties in this, with college schedules and variable work schedules. Employers certainly understood it: I had been told outright in 1987 that I would not have been hired if the boss had known I was diabetic. Wonder how many bosses since just never said so outright after such statements became illegal.
The new approach I adopted was to react to what my body told me. This is not just a matter of eating when my body said it needed food, but shooting up with more insulin if my body said it needed that. This had not been an approved method of treatment growing up. Starving the patient was the directive on food, and taking insulin outside the approved times was also not allowed. This mentality left me with long stretches of feeling uncomfortable and probably triggered some aspects of old bodily damage.
My refusal to test my sugars outside occasional A1C lab tests (the same method that doctor I mentioned uses) does not equal not taking care of myself or emotional denial of my condition. I feel uncomfortable whenever the body feels that the sugar is too high or too low, and will make efforts to moderate extreme feelings.
But as I managed by feel for more than two decades, my body diverged entirely from the medically approved number scales of any blood testing. I feel good at what are considered to be horrifically dangerous numbers. Any and all efforts to control the sugar by the numbers has resulted in the manifestation of side effects and complications. I felt healthier when I was a purely "bad diabetic" by professional standards. In the decades of no testing, even by A1C, my body regulated itself to a place it wanted to be and I could fully function in every way, but the numbers rose to levels that make my GP wonder why I had never been in a coma. I had managed by feel and in light of the problems that have developed as a result of "taking care of myself better," I wish I had stayed with the "lifestyle" that had worked so well for me for so long.