Linda, you need to work through the fear, especially about the needles. Better to manage your diabetes while you're younger than have to worry about more intensive health care maintenance a few years down the road.
Himself was diagnosed Type 2 when we still lived in Ohio - probably around 1997-98. He spent quite a few years keeping it in check with oral meds. One of the last oral meds he was given, just before he was switched to Trulicity, made him sick as a dog. Let's just say that I thought he had suddenly become bulimic. Every night, after supper, he lost his supper. He stayed on it for the suggested 30 days to see if his system would adjust, but it didn't. At least he lost weight. Yay? Anyway, enter Trulicity - probably five(?) years. He's never been sick. Never felt any side effects. It has stabilized his sugar (usually in the 95-110 range daily, but sometimes a little lower), brought his A1C down to 5.6 and steady, and since his top weight during this saga, he has lost about 70 pounds total.
Now, let's talk about the needle. The device is an injector pen. You must keep the pen against yourself at the injection site until the inject button pops back out on its own - about 10 seconds for him. That is to make sure the full dosage of medication enters your body. More important, he said that you should inject into the fattiest, fleshiest part of your abdomen (he made a circle around his navel that would be about a 12" circumference). Injecting into fat lessens the sensation. If the needle goes into muscle, you know it! He said that the few times he got sloppy and injected into muscle he had to make a conscious effort to keep his hand in place so that the injector stayed in long enough.
While Himself isn't happy about a weekly needle, he's glad to be using Trulicity. At 73, he's in pretty darned good shape for an "old guy". His Mom was diabetic for as far back as he can remember in his childhood. Mom died in 1985 when she was 64, even though she was religious about watching what she ate, taking her medications, and giving herself (well, Dad gave the shots) insulin on schedule religiously. The hardest part of taking Trulicity has been making sure one of us pack it into the cooler before taking off from home for a couple of weeks. And the one time that happened (hey, it's his med, I shouldn't be the last line of packing for it!), he was able to get duplicate injectors from the local Walgreens nearest to our daughter's place.
Good luck with this, Linda. If you have any questions, I'll pass them along to my guy.
