This extra chapter was cut from The Journey Back to keep the book focused. The physical paperback is $12.95 with free U.S. shipping. Any $17 PDF-and-audiobook bundle is a separate optional digital add-on, not the price of the paperback.
I need to correct the premise of that question.
The testing never became anxiety for me.
I did not enjoy pricking my fingers. I have always had a serious fear of needles, and even though a lancet is not the same thing as an IV needle or a syringe, it still contains a tiny sharp that punctures the skin. I knew what was coming every time I charged that little plunger and pressed it against my fingertip.
Pop.
Then came the sting, the drop of blood, the strip, and the number.
I disliked the mechanism.
I was not afraid of the information.
Those are two different things.
If I had been anxious about the number, I might have avoided checking because I did not want to know. I did almost the opposite. I kept checking because I wanted to know what my body was doing while the information could still teach me something.
The glucose meter gave me the shortest feedback loop I had.
I could eat something, measure what happened, and begin comparing the result with another meal. I could check before exercise, check after exercise, and see that a hard effort might temporarily move the number in a direction I had not expected. I could compare a morning after better sleep with a morning after poor sleep. I could record the circumstances around stress, meal timing, medication, and activity.
That did not mean a single reading proved what caused the result. It meant I had another observation.
The question was always: Can I produce a response that is repeatable?
If something happened once, it was interesting.
If it happened under similar conditions several times, it might be a pattern worth examining.
If it did not happen again, then I had to resist the temptation to build a rule around one data point.
That is how the engineer in me approached it.
Ask a question.
Make a choice.
Measure what happens.
Record the conditions.
Try it again.
Do not confuse one result with the entire truth.
I was not repeatedly testing to make myself feel safe. I was trying to shorten the distance between an input and a response.
The hard part was that blood glucose does not exist in a laboratory where every other variable stays still.
I might eat the same food on two different days and sleep differently the night before. I might be under more stress. I might exercise at a different intensity. I might test at a different interval. I was taking prescribed metformin, and I could not look at one reading after a dose and claim that the tablet alone created that number.
The meter showed me the system in motion. It did not isolate every component.
That was why documentation mattered.
I logged what I ate in Carb Manager. I wrote down my blood pressure. I paid attention to sleep information from the Oura Ring Alen had given me. I noted when I exercised and when I tested. Alex was often there as I checked the meter, wrote down the result, and searched for context.
The number became useful when I could place it beside the conditions that surrounded it.
The physical cost was real.
I developed an improvised pattern in which I used several spots on each finger, almost like a small square around a center point. Then I moved to the next finger and repeated it. I could prick four or five locations on one fingertip before moving along.
I was checking so often that my fingers stayed sore. Because I type constantly, I felt every tender spot while I worked. Eventually, the skin seemed to become a little thicker.
That was not anxiety.
That was the price I was paying for the way I had chosen to collect information.
It also was not a technique I would hold up as the correct protocol for another person. My testing schedule and improvised rotation belong to my story. Someone else should follow the instructions for the meter and lancing device and the plan created with a qualified medical professional.
There was another limitation I had not fully appreciated when I began.
Finger-stick testing involves blood.
That made testing in public feel different from checking my watch or reading my Oura Ring.
I would not pull out the lancing device at a restaurant table. I would not sit in the middle of a business meeting and prick my finger. I was not comfortable doing it at Alen’s house even when he told me it was okay.
Alen is one of my closest friends. He was already familiar with glucose testing and had tested my glucose before I was diagnosed. He was not rejecting me or making me feel embarrassed. He was telling me that I could take care of what I needed to take care of in his home.
The boundary came from me.
I thought about how I would feel if I did not know much about diabetes and saw some man named Bob at a gathering suddenly puncture his finger and produce blood. In the world we live in, blood raises questions about hygiene, contamination, disposal, and disease. Even if the person testing knows exactly what he is doing, everyone else in the room may not understand what is happening.
I did not want my medical procedure to become someone else’s discomfort.
That was not shame.
It was courtesy.
It was also my way of respecting the space I was in.
Sometimes I would tell people that I needed to use the restroom, then go outside to my car and test there. The car gave me privacy. I could take out the meter, lance my finger, apply the blood to the strip, record the result, clean up, and return without turning the moment into a public event.
That solution created a tradeoff.
Glucose testing depends on timing. If I wanted a reading at a particular interval after a meal but had to wait until I could leave the table, walk to the car, and prepare the test, then the number represented the time I actually measured, not the time I had intended to measure.
If I planned to test at sixty minutes but could not do it until seventy-five minutes, I could not label that result as a sixty-minute reading merely because sixty minutes had been the plan.
The delay became part of the data.
That might make the observation less useful for a precise comparison, but pretending the timing was exact would make it worse.
This was one of the practical limits of trying to learn from ordinary life.
Real life does not pause because an experiment has reached the next checkpoint.
A client may still be talking.
Dinner may still be on the table.
The car may be three blocks away.
I may be in somebody else’s home.
I had to balance the value of a time-sensitive reading with privacy, cleanliness, relationships, and the fact that I did not want blood in a shared space.
The answer was not to pretend those considerations did not matter. The answer was to document what actually happened.
That same principle applied to every experiment.
When I ate the English muffin and saw a larger response than I wanted, that reading gave me a reason to look more closely. It did not establish a universal rule that no person with diabetes should ever eat an English muffin.
When exercise produced an immediate rise, the number challenged my assumption that movement would always make glucose fall at once. It did not mean exercise was harmful or that the temporary response represented its full effect.
When I checked after poor sleep or during stress, I could compare those observations with other days. I could not claim that one night or one emotion had single-handedly produced a particular value.
When I tested while taking metformin, I was seeing my body while medication, meals, sleep, activity, stress, hydration, timing, and other factors were operating together. I was not conducting a clinical trial on one tablet.
The meter could show me a result.
It could not automatically tell me why the result occurred.
That distinction protected the framework from becoming a collection of confident guesses.
The Four Loads grew out of connected observations, but I never want the language of engineering to make the body sound simple.
The body is an extraordinarily complex system. Similar inputs can produce different results in different people. Even in the same person, the response can change with the conditions.
Repeatability did not mean I demanded the exact same number every time.
It meant I looked for a response close enough, under conditions similar enough, to suggest that the pattern deserved more attention.
The tolerance could not be invented after I saw the result merely to make myself right. The timing could not be rewritten because I reached the car late. The meal could not be described as identical if one ingredient, portion, or preparation had changed.
The more honestly I recorded the conditions, the more useful the feedback became.
That is why I never reached a dramatic moment when I said, ‘I have to stop checking because this is making me anxious.’
That moment did not happen.
The lancet remained unpleasant.
My fingers remained sore.
Public testing remained awkward.
But the information still had a job.
It helped me learn how my body responded.
It helped me ask better questions.
It helped me recognize when a result repeated and when it did not.
It helped me compare what I expected with what actually happened.
Eventually, I became surprisingly good at estimating what the meter might show. I could consider what I had eaten, how long it had been, whether I had exercised, how I had slept, and how much stress I was carrying. Then I could make a prediction and test it.
When the result landed close to my estimate, that did not mean I had mastered my body. It meant I was beginning to understand some of its patterns.
When the result surprised me, the surprise was not a verdict.
It was another question.
What changed?
Was the meal different?
Was the timing different?
Was the exercise harder?
Had I slept badly?
Was I under unusual stress?
Was the sample sufficient and the test performed correctly?
Did the result repeat?
That is what feedback does at its best. It replaces a vague impression with a more specific question.
It does not remove the need for medical care. It does not authorize someone to change medication because of one home result. It does not turn a consumer glucose meter into a perfect instrument. It does not make every correlation a cause.
It gives you something you can observe and bring into a larger conversation.
I was fortunate to have medical support from Dr. Eric Watson and Julia Watson. I was taking prescribed medication. I was changing how I ate, slept, moved, and worked. I had family and friends around me. The meter existed inside that larger system of care.
That is important because the story can sound as if I solved everything by repeatedly stabbing my fingers and studying the numbers.
I did not.
Measurement was not treatment.
The meter did not choose the meal, take the medication, protect my sleep, manage the workday, or perform the exercise. It showed me information about the system while I was doing those things.
There is also a responsible way to handle the physical process. A used lancet is a sharp contaminated with blood. It should be handled and discarded according to the product instructions and applicable medical guidance. A meter and lancing device should not be shared. Hands, supplies, the testing surface, and cleanup all matter.
Going to my car gave me privacy, but a car is not automatically an ideal testing environment. It still requires clean hands, a stable place for the equipment, safe handling, and proper disposal. My personal solution should not be mistaken for general medical instruction.
The principle beneath it was simple.
I wanted the information without imposing the procedure on everyone around me.
That same principle carried into business dinners, visits with friends, and ordinary days away from the apartment. I could take my health seriously without making every room revolve around it.
Sometimes that meant missing the perfect testing window.
Sometimes it meant recording an approximate or delayed interval.
Sometimes it meant deciding that one additional reading would not add enough useful information to justify interrupting the moment.
Those decisions were not surrender.
They were part of designing a feedback process that had to exist inside an actual life.
I did not need every possible number.
I needed enough well-documented observations to learn something.
That is the difference between data collection and understanding.
More tests can create more data. They do not automatically create a better conclusion.
A useful reading begins with a question.
Why am I checking now?
What condition am I trying to understand?
What will I compare this result with?
Is the timing accurate?
Would the result change what I discuss with my medical team or how I structure a future observation?
If I cannot answer those questions, another number may only be another number.
In those first weeks, I checked frequently because almost every part of the experience was new. I was learning the meter. I was learning the foods. I was learning the timing. I was learning what exercise could do in the short term. I was learning that sleep and stress could appear in the glucose story even when the meal stayed the same.
The repetition built familiarity.
Familiarity made prediction possible.
Prediction made surprises more informative.
And documented surprises helped me refine the model.
That is why I would not describe the testing as anxiety.
Anxiety was not driving me back to the meter for reassurance.
Curiosity, urgency, and a desire for repeatable feedback were driving me through a physical procedure I disliked.
I did not fear what the number would tell me.
I feared the little pop against my skin, then did it anyway.
When I waited until I reached the car, I was not hiding the diagnosis.
I was protecting privacy and respecting a shared space.
When a delayed test weakened an experiment, I recorded the delay rather than pretending it had not happened.
When a result repeated, I treated it as a pattern worth investigating, not a law for every human body.
When it failed to repeat, I went back to the conditions and asked what I had missed.
That was the loop.
Question.
Choice.
Measurement.
Documentation.
Repetition.
Revision.
The goal was never to collect the largest possible pile of glucose readings.
The goal was to learn enough from the readings to make the next question better.
The lancet gave me a drop of blood.
The meter gave me a number.
The record gave the number context.
Repetition gave the context meaning.
That was not reassurance.
That was feedback.
Want to see how I connected the dots?
I wrote The Journey Back to share my experience and explain the Four Metabolic Loads framework. The physical paperback is $12.95 with free U.S. shipping.
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Educational only, not medical advice. Charles’s experience was alongside physician-supervised care and prescribed medication. Individual results vary. Talk to your doctor.