Your diabetes team at Virginia Mason is here to work with you as a partner in your good health. Our goal is to help you live a full and productive life.

You will be scheduled for checkups every three months if you take insulin and every six months if you rely on diet alone or oral medication for diabetes control.

You should use self-blood glucose monitoring. We will also instruct you on when to report poor control or complications to your health-care providers.

When you come in for follow-up visits, your health care provider will review the medications you are taking and the results of self-blood glucose monitoring. We will then evaluate occurrences of unusually high or low blood glucose levels, any changes you have made in medications, and complications or adherence problems you may have experienced. Additionally, we will talk with you about psychological and social factors and other medical illnesses influencing your health.

Follow-up physical exams will include weight, height (until maturity), blood pressure and foot checks. Lab tests that produced abnormal findings in previous visits will be repeated. We will run tests for glycosylated hemoglobin (A1c — an estimate of your average blood sugar level for the past 3 months) and, if appropriate, blood glucose. Lipid studies (blood tests for cholesterol) are checked annually in adults and every two years in children. A urine test is performed annually. If urine contains protein, we will do further tests to assess kidney function.