Few days ago I woke up midsleep to pass urine. This happened 4 times in one night. The next day I remembered that recently I have been feeling burning sensation and numbness in my fingers and toes for the past few weeks. Since I am a doctor, surgeon, I thought of checking my blood sugar. Two months ago everything was perfect, my levels were OK as my HbA1c was 5.7% in a routine blood test. Yesterday I wasn't much optimistic. I was surprised to have my blood sugar level at 357, nearly 20 mmol two hours after dinner. The next day my fasting level was 11.7 mmol. I repeated both several times and I got the same results for my 2 hours and my fasting levels!! Now I am in a state of denial. Is it my device which is giving weird numbers? Should I change my device? But still why do I have these symptoms? Is it because I gained much weight over lock down? My BMI jumped from 28 to nearly 33, and I am not exercising at all!! I will check my HbA1c in the next few days and I really don't know what to do if I got a high number. I haven't seen my doctor yet. I am already a doctor but in this situation I don't know what to do. I am thinking a lot and I am worried how my life will be after all this!! Is it possible that I get back to normal levels with diet and exercise?!! Am I going to have these medications forever? How would this affect my social life, work, travels?!! I have lots of thoughts and this is the first time I am talking about this!! I still have a lot to say but I am totally confused!!
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As for exercise, the most important thing is diet, but... If you can do long, slow things, like a nice walk, that'd be good. Strenuous exercise will trigger the liver into dumping glucose, so just take it easy and don't overdo anything. (Even if it feels like not overdoing it.... Your liver can pitch in when you really do not want it to). I'm at home most of the week, but on the weekends, i go for walks with camera-gear, and that suits me and my blood sugars just fine. Should I have dinner at a place unfamiliar to me and my blood glucose shoots up because someone thinks sauce should be made with spoonfuls of brown sugar, I go for a half hour or an hour's walk to get my blood sugars down. I don't have to, but it makes me feel better mentally, to get them down quicker. If you travel, it depends on what path you choose. Medication of course needs to be listed for customs. But that's about it. Food, you can do the same thing you would do at home, if you choose diet: ask for a low carb meal. (Leave off the spuds, bread, pasta, rice etc, and ask them to replace it with veggies, leafy greens or extra meat). If you're abroad often, you might want to carry a card saying in various languages that you're a diabetic and you have dietary requirements, with many thanks to the kitchen. I plan to have some printed up when the borders open again and we get to travel. Will it sometimes go wrong? Sure. But slightly elevated blood sugars every once in a while won't kill you. So on holiday, I'd still try and stick to the diet, but not fuss overmuch if it gets botched for a meal here and there. Can't do more than your best, after all. This didn't happen because you gained too much weight over lockdown. The weight gain is a symptom of prediabetes, which occurs while you're headed for T2. It's not a cause-and-effect thing. When your body starts struggling with the processing of carbs, and isn't burning them off, they have to put them somewhere. That somewhere being your fat cells.And while eating more (or more carbs, as the case may be) while Corona is going on has probably sped up your sprint towards T2, it would've happened sooner or later. It's a genetic condition, and if you don't know you have metabolic issues, and ou don't cut carbs to avoid it as it is, you will become a T2 eventually. So if it wasn't now, it would've been a year from now, or five years, but it was coming. And it was NOT your fault. Okay? As for how it will affect your work... That's up to you. You try and do what you can with diet and exercise, but if you work irregular hours and night shifts, that might affect your blood glucose too. That is one reason why you might want to opt for metformin, provided the side effects don't hit you (can't see patients if you're in the loo every 5 minutes), as the slightly higher blood sugar levels from working shifts are mainly due to liver dumps, I'd think. But I'd say, try a low carb, high fat diet and walks first, see how much progress you make on that, and then decide whether to make changes in how you work or what medication you take, if any. But give yourself time to figure it out. Oh, and a lot of people talk about social life but mean pubs and drinking (I'm Dutch, sorry, don't quite always get the subtleties right), so if that's what you mean, there's low carb drinks out there. 
