Charlie Gagnon always enjoyed being outdoors, exploring new places and going out to eat good food. After retiring as chief financial officer National Distributors in South Portland, Maine, he and his wife would travel each year to Florida, where they owned a place close to the warm sea and sand. They stayed active — Charlie’s wife, a retired schoolteacher, would average six miles a day walking and Gagnon would do his best to keep up with her. He also liked to swim and hike.
But like many people, Charlie struggled with his weight, and was eventually diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. His doctor prescribed various medications to help manage it, but his A1C, which measures average blood sugar levels, continued to climb, topping 8 percent. Charlie’s doctor told him he might need daily insulin shots if he couldn’t get his A1C under 7.
Charlie knew something needed to change. He heard about the Ibis Health program through his health insurance company and decided to give it a try. Ibis is covered by Medicare Part B, and Ibis members have experienced a 37 percent decline in hospitalizations because of the daily monitoring, coaching and support they receive from Ibis.
Diabetes is a pervasive disease that affects almost every part of the body, and often leaves individuals feeling powerless, according to Karthik Ravindran, MD, Ibis Health’s Medical Director. "You have this situation where sugars go up and down, and sometimes you don’t know why and you have to call your doctor,” Ravindran said. With Ibis, You don’t need the firefighter to put out the fire. You can save yourself without somebody else’s help.”
Ibis Health members use a connected tablet (the IbisHub), that helps them to track weight, diet, exercise and other health indicators. Ibis Member Advocates work one-on-one to help personalize the program to users’ individual needs and goals.
After joining Ibis Health, Charlie began tracking his blood sugar levels twice a day entering the data into his IbisHub tablet. His Member Advocate, Tawny, also started sending him articles to help him better understand his disease, including how his blood sugar levels might be affected by what he eats and when.
“The issue is, no one ever told me how to eat,” Charlie said, noting there are no nutritionists who specialize in diabetes near his home in Berwick, Maine. Nor had anyone ever explained to Charlie what his blood sugar numbers should be — whether it’s first thing in the morning when he hasn’t yet eaten anything or the evening when he’s been eating all day — and how any of it relates to his A1C levels which get measured every three months.
Armed with information provided by his Member Advocate, Gagnon began to make small, daily changes. He started limiting sweets and instead of three large meals a day and lots of snacks, he eats only a very light breakfast, makes lunch his biggest meal of the day, and keeps dinners small.
“I’ve just been eating differently,” Charlie said. “I used to have several sodas during the week; now I’ve cut back to treating myself once a week. … I’ve also gotten to the point where I don’t eat as much as I used to.
The changes Charlie has made are paying off. His blood sugar levels have stabilized and his latest A1C dropped by a full point, to around 7. Charlie hopes with continued work to get it down into the 6s, maybe even low enough to be able to come off some of the medication he has been taking for the last decade.
For the first time, Charlie said he feels like he has some control over diabetes. “I’m on the right track, thanks to Ibis coaching and education.” Charlie said. “I’m not giving up and I’m not ready to be supporting the landscape above my head.”
