The Enlightenment: Why Did I Wait So Damn Long To Return To The Stomach?

As is par for the course with much of my decision-making, the original reasoning escapes me. Was it done out of boredom? Just a random change of pace? Perhaps I grew tired of my belt nudging it. Maybe it was the other morning in the shower when I felt the dense scar tissue building on my hips. Possibly, I realized those hundreds of microscopic white scars on my stomach aren’t going away, even after a 4 year break.

Or, in the more likely and less melodramatic version of the story, the moment happened in Metabolism class, when my teacher mentioned that blood glucose is absorbed most effectively by visceral adipose tissue, that stuff surrounding our internal organs or hanging over the belt, when signaled by insulin. Haven’t we all been told “stomach, butt, thigh, or back of arm”? But to hear that it acts fastest and best around the stomach, that struck a cord. Thus, I made the move back to the stomach.

That decision was two weeks ago. The disappearance of a few recent trends has been encouraging.

• First, my breakfast blood sugars are easier to handle and more consistent. Since college, over that four-year span of hip and thigh placement, I’ve struggled with the “dawn phenomenon”. In the last two weeks, that struggle’s evaporated. I know, small sample size.
• Second, those random spikes above 250+ aren’t as frequent (except when your pump runs out of batteries in the middle of the night, like last night, and you wake up after 3 hours without insulin to a blood sugar of 325).

I suppose this could simply the change to an area without scar tissue build up, and that may be true, but for now it seems like a night and day comparison to the hips/thighs.

So, at the end of the day, I’m left asking just one question: why did I wait so long? Well, that’s enlightenment.

If anything changes course, I’ll post an update on the bottom of this post!