Saturday, May 16, 2015

CF Awareness Post Question Day 16

Do people with CF always get diabetes?

Not always.  Because our pancreas is a mess, many CFers develop CF related diabetes (CFRD) which is different than Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes.  I don’t know the ins and outs of any of the diabetes so I can’t really explain them.  Similarly, many, if not all, post-transplant patients develop diabetes because of the need to take prednisone constantly to avoid rejecting the new lungs. 


In my case, a couple of years ago I was given an OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test) which came back as positive for CFRD.  So I received my fun little test kit to test my sugars.  Since then I have remained in the normal range when doing finger sticks for the most part.  I only ever require insulin shots when I am on a prednisone burst/taper.  I actually tend to have more lows than highs and insulin could make this worse.  Ironically, and I have no actual data to back this up just me, the prevalence of lows has decreased significantly since I had that large cyst removed from my pancreas in July.  My A1C, which is the marker for your sugar levels over the past couple of months, is only slightly higher than normal at 6.3, normal being 4.5-6.  But my A1C has gone up to 6.8.  It fluctuates.  At some point I will need to use insulin, whether it is before or after I am transplanted, I won’t know. 

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