Something important to understand is that diabetes is not an illness in the infection sense. Diabetes is a propensity that shows up according to your genetics, your diet, and the luck of the damned draw. Diabetes is a rate of progress in everyone, and what you can try to do is exert some control over the rate of progress.

I ended up pulling a lucky card in the random drawing. My diabetic propensity is apparently quite high once triggered, but it appears that it was mainly coming from things over which I had some control. No one can explain why I was at an A1c of 10.6% with no prior warning and no physical damage. That is a high number. By the same token, I now have 12 months of results in the 5.0-5.3% range, with all other measures not even triggering me as prediabetic. Taking metformin is now optional for me, and my physician thinks that “annual” is probably unnecessary for my annual physical exam.

So far… a bullet was dodged.

And yet, diabetes is a progressive condition, and my propensity is apparently high. But so far, at least, so good… maintaining a diligent lifestyle with 0% tolerance is not at all challenging.