I read those six words, all strung together in a terse message from my doctor’s office.

Not exactly the response I was anticipating when I reached out to them to express concerns over a minor health issue I was experiencing…

Let me back up a bit. In early January, I decided to message one of my doctor’s to discuss said minor health issue. A week went by and I didn’t hear anything from them, so I sent them another message, reminding them gently that I was hoping for a reply sooner rather than later. Several more days pass by and I start to get annoyed, but I still keep everything in perspective: Maybe they’re understaffed at the moment. Perhaps a computer error prevented them from getting my messages. Or they might be just crazy busy with beginning-of-the-year appointments and responsibilities. Whatever the case may be, I decided to message one more time, drawing attention to the fact that my first message had been sent two weeks prior and that if I didn’t hear back by the end of the week, then I’d just call the office to hopefully connect with a nurse.

Luckily, it didn’t come down to that because within 48 hours of me sending that third message, I finally heard back from someone. And this someone said something that left me a bit gobsmacked:

“…with an A1c of 7 – you need to be better with your control.”

I couldn’t believe what I’d just read, for multiple reasons. For starters, I’d mentioned in my first message that I *think* my A1c was right around 7, but I couldn’t be sure because it’s been a bit since I last had my A1c checked. So clearly, by reading the response from my doctor, nobody had gone in to check my records or look up my historical A1c – which may or may not have provided them with better context so they could answer my question better, but that’s besides the point. What had me most irate was the fact that I’ve been told – time and time again – that I’m doing a great job with an A1c around 7. I’ve had endos and nurse practitioners alike tell me that I don’t need to make any major changes and that I’m too hard on myself when I express a desire to get a lower A1c. So to have a completely different medical professional make a snap judgment right then and there that implies I do not have control over my A1c is obviously in direct conflict with what I’ve heard from others. How maddening is that?

Furthermore…I’m sorry, but A1c does not paint a complete picture of my “control”. I believe, along with many other people in the diabetes community (including medical professionals) that time in range is where it’s at. The amount of time I spend in range is leaps and bounds better than where I was in college – and honestly, so is my A1c.

This is why it’s incredibly frustrating to me that this person handled my health issue as though it was directly related to my diabetes and their perception of my lack of control. The three-sentence, curt reply to my initial message didn’t exactly help matters either, though I’m trying to not read too much into that…after all, you can’t gauge tone via written message.

I’ve decided the best way to handle this whole exchange is to bring my issue up again when I see this doctor later in the year. I’m not going to reply in the message thread, because I don’t see how that would cause any good, but I will bring this up when I go to see the nurse practitioner at my endocrinologist’s office at the end of this month. While she likely can’t fully help me address my health concern, she’s bound to provide me with some insight and some actual helpful advice that won’t involve her jumping to conclusions about my control. We’ll see how it goes.

For now, I will just have to try to keep my head held up high by taking control of the situation, if not my diabetes.