Let's see, where to begin?

So... the title “Born Again Diabetic” (which, I love) suits me perfectly.

For the past 27 years, I’ve been nothing but average (if not worse) in terms of the care and upkeep of my diabetes. My A1c readings over the last 7 years or so have had a

Yes

I have actually plotted them in Excel and can clearly see that my control was worse around the Winter holidays (aka: food fests) and better in the Spring/Summer when I'm generally more active.
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nice cyclical pattern with a range of 7.9 to 9.2, and I honestly have no idea what they were for the 20 years before that, but I’m assuming about the same (or again, if not worse). This past year, however, I've made tremendous improvements in my control and am really excited about that. This previously lackadaisical management, however, may be catching up with me (and it scares the shit out of me).

Anyway, a month ago I was told by my ophthalmologist that my background, nonproliferative diabetic retinopathy (which had been first diagnosed about 5 years ago and had remained relatively stable) had grown

Well, actually

New capillaries, not legs (though 'legs' works nicely with the whole 'stepping up' analogy, huh?). This new capillary growth is known as 'neovascularization' in medical lingo. So, that's a nice big word I've added to my vocabulary recently. Gotta love opportunities to learn new things!
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legs and stepped up into the proliferative category. He (of course) told me that I would need laser treatment and while I was able to hold myself together in his office, I started to lose it in the elevator ride down to my car (where I then had a complete and total melt-down on an excruciatingly sunny spring afternoon).

After that, I pulled myself together, waited for my eyes to un-dilate (re-constrict?) and went home to start coping with this news. (actually, my melt-down was probably the absolute beginning of my dealing with the news, I guess, huh?). So for the following two weeks, I researched all I could about retinopathy and laser treatment. I felt a little more in control of the situation by learning as much as I could about it (even though I know this is a somewhat false sense of control, it still made me feel better, and it was the best coping mechanism I could come up with on such short notice).

Well, I had the procedure done in my left eye two weeks ago and am scheduled to have the next laser treatment for my right eye a week from today (Monday, the 5th). I had originally planed to post all about what I've learned about retinopathy, the details of what the procedure was like, the side effects I've experienced, and share some good resources on retinopathy and laser treatment. Unfortunately, after I'd written all this down, I came up with something like 6 pages worth of story-time (i.e., too much, and way too disorganized). Thus, I'll post those details later, once I've editted my writing down a wee-bit better.

(Foregive me, I'm new to this posting business).

And PS, I know the title of this post is a really bad pun, but I couldn't help myself.