Today’s the day.

Making picks. Watching point totals go up (and inevitably down). Cheering on teams from colleges and universities barely heard of before. It’s the thrill of the NCAA Men’s Tourney and all the sports internet site contests and office pools. But for the first year in a decade, I’m not making picks. My claim to fame surrounding the tourney picks is that I don’t follow regular season college basketball – all my picks come from researching those sports internet sites – and I usually do quite well. This year, I just don’t have the time to spend 3-4 hours doing that.

Another sign that I am on overload is that I just couldn’t remember what March 14 means to me when I woke up this morning. Whose birthday? Whose anniversary? Nope, that can’t be it. Mom’s birthday was Sunday, parents’ anniversary was yesterday, Dawn’s birthday was yesterday…though I can’t trust myself with birthdays and anniversaries half the time anymore, so I must be forgetting someone. Through a 30-minute workout on the elliptical and having breakfast, I could not figure it out. In the shower, it hit me.

Two years ago today was the phone call from the nurse at my doctor’s office. She told me that the glucose tolerance test I had done several days before was abnormal. That I had the official type 2 diagnosis. That I needed to see my doctor within a few days to talk about treatment.

Two days later, I sat in her office as she wrote out a prescription for metformin. I declined it, opting instead to go to an endocrinologist. I’d already lost 12 pounds in 2 months through hard work with diet, exercise, and being under the control of thyroid medication. I remember being infuriated with her as she told me that the weight I had lost was a result of high blood sugar and not my hard work. There was no mention of a blood glucose meter, either. I had to depend upon Greg’s meter for the next month.

The endocrinologist confirmed that diagnosis was early. The weight loss was a result of what I was doing, not my blood sugar levels. My fasting blood sugar was 136, my A1C was 6.4% at diagnosis, and I wouldn’t be having a meal mimicking the glucose tolerance test ever again. If my blood sugar levels had been stuck in the 200′s or 300′s at diagnosis, it would have meant weight loss by hyperglycemia. But they were in the mid-to-high 100′s for the most part, with fastings even lower. Diet and exercise seemed to be the right treatment for me.

And it still is. Even if I don’t have the time for everything I want to do. I need to focus on the things I need to do, then prioritize the things I want to do. And the NCAA tourney is not top on that list.