Category: Blog

Throughout my adult life, I have been dealing with early stage periodontal disease.  It got so bad, I finally had endo surgery last year, at Baylor Dental College.  BTW, they aren’t kidding about the surgery part, though I have written about that before.

Yesterday, had an exam by the dental students and my gums were all 1-3, though I would admit to more 3’s than 1 or 2.  Also he said my plaque percentage was 12% and good is considered anything below 25%.  So I am getting there and also blaming my Quip toothbrush for some of the change.

I will start with the times I have called their 1-800 number I have been impressed with service.

I got a call from them and had to wait 2 minutes to talk to a representative.  I was then on the line for 20 minutes.

She got nothing I said correct, and frequently raid things off her screen incorrectly.  Like my phone number, my CC card, and address information.  Finally the call disconnected, not sure if it was my cell or her, but I wasn’t driving at the time, so I am guessing her.

I waited 15 minutes and she never called me back though she took my phone number.  Though she did repeat it back wrong.

When I called, everything was set up correctly but the shipping address.  They have to ship this med to the doctor’s office.  The person I got that time was great, and verified everything had been set up correctly but the shipping address. 

And so it starts.  $982 towards my deductible and max out of pocket.

I have been doing much better at logging since @OneDrop.  

I still skip logging a snack or two but I have been blousing for everything.  My doctor had me stop after the Victoza problem but my numbers were off. 

My numbers have been good lately after I started blousing for meals but at half the rate I was before Victoza. I had bad numbers yesterday but couldn’t work out. It was under 30 degrees and we were getting a fine mist of rain. It evaporated quickly thanks to our drought. I have made it today. 

I have been consistently been doing weight workouts for the last few weeks. I am dreading the resolution crowd who come and are clueless on how to behave. 

My TDD is half what it was before Victoza. I have 8 boxes of supplies and a drawer full of insulin.  The new costs are up in the CVS/Caremark app and the Aetna app.  

All fun.  

Adjusting my medication has been a challenge.  I signed up with One Drop when they had a promotional offer before Christmas.  Though right now, I want to maximize my insurance benefits.

Since I had been using the Medtronic sensor, and because I was hoarding supplies, I have quite a bit of test strips – and infusion sets, etc.

OneDrop has been helping me on using test strips and I’ll use it to insure I keep getting enough test strips – right now I’m limited to 4 a day

Anyway, when I first went on Victoza, I had a few lows.  The first change was to drop basal dosages by half and stop bolusing for meals.  The OneDrop system helped me realize that wasn’t working, I was running high.  For me, that’s a problem because it makes me crave carbs too much.  So I tried bolusing half the rate I was.  That works really well.

It took me a while to figure out that everything syncs, on the iPhone.  I have no idea if it does on Android.

It’s pretty easy to get that to work, I had the activity tracking on my Apple Watch working first – it was pretty easy to figure out, since I added OneDrop to one of my sources in Apple Health, and turned on all the categories.  I was logging my food with OneDrop that works pretty well.  It has most of the food I eat, even Jenny Craig, and can use the camera to read bar codes.  But I’m already a premium member with MyFitnessPal.  Guess what, if you have all your MyFitnessPal set up as a source and have all the categories turned on, that data will sync in OneDrop and you only have to log in one place.

Guess what – my scale will Sync too.  I have Nokia scale which talks to my WiFi.  Again, I had to go to sources, add it and make sure that all the categories are turned on.

And their Apple Watch app is nice – I can log blood sugar checks and bolus adjustments with it.

Like many of the diabetes bloggers I have signed up for One Drop, I picked their promotional 3-month unlimited test strip plan.

So far I am liking it.  

I am mostly using the Bayer Countour Next meter as I have several months of test strips.  I am having to switch to One Touch Verio when I run out. My Bayer script was for 5 strips a day, and I haven't been using that many with a Sensor. The One Touch is for 4 strips. So far with One Drop I have been testing over 5 times.  

I have an iPhone and Apple Watch and I am loving how everything syncs.  The Bayer meter and my pump only talk to each other, but the One Touch, my scale and MyFitnesspal all share data. Workouts come from the watch.  

The coach is good but she needs to review the conversation before asking questions. 

The app has really helped with the Victoza adjustment. The last week doesn't count as I had an upper respiratory thing and sugars were higher. 

So right now, basal rates are half of what they were without Victoza, and I have started bolusing for meals again.  That is also half. My total usage is about half the insulin I was taking before Victoza.   My weight is slowly creeping down and my insulin usage should follow now that I have numbers I like. 

I found out about a great deal in eyeglasses in my neighborhood so I decided to finally break down and get two new pairs.  That was the great de

Called my eye doctor and said, can I get my prescription, I'll pick it up in a little bit.  They said fine, no problem.

I get there and they can't find it, even though they printed it and had the doctor sign it.

I get to the eye glass place and notice that the date is over two years old.  Whoops, wrong one.  So I call them and go back and get the right one.

Glasses get made up, and it COULD be my brain, but I'm pretty sure the right eye is completely wrong.  Guess what, that happened with my contacts, and they had to replace the contacts with the right prescription.

So I am trying the glasses again in the morning, if they are wrong, showing up at the doctor's office first thing, getting the right prescription and getting the two pairs fixed.

I have been barely putting up with the office staff for the past few years but love the doctor and I think one of her assistants wrote the wrong number in the first place.

I'm on my 4th pen.

Blood sugar is stable — we eliminated the meal time insulin since that isn't approved on the package and caused problems, and reduce the basal to half.  I've been upping the basal by .25 units both patterns, morning and night until my fasting blood sugar drops to a good level.  I'm been waking up with blood sugars at 140. 

My TDD is down to 20 units from around 60 to 80 units.

My weight is slowing dropping.

All good.

I tried going off pump on Friday, but my blood sugar climbed too much without it.  It's easier to use the pump then give injections.

I currently have about 6 months worth of supplies and over a year's worth of insulin at my current rate.

Still hard to wrap my head around that I don't need to pump.  But then Victoza came out way before I went on the pump.

Which means I have a lot of extra insulin and infusion sets.  

It also means I will be paying Victoza next year instead of insulin, reservoirs, infusion sets and sensors.  And it means that my low blood sugar awareness is gone.  So much so that I feel comfortable working out in the pool at LA Fitness.

I think I've finally wrapped my head around this and have some good plans.

One of the first things I've done is gotten a new credit card with some good incentives.  Lower APR, $200 bonus, and some rewards.  I'm going to use it for medical expenses only and pay it off as quick as I can.

Here's the deal, old insurance had $400 deductible and $295 a month premium. 

New insurance has a $1500 deductible and $200 a month premium.   So the yearly cost is $460 more.  

Then I pay 20% of everything until I hit $5650.  Then I max out.  Those of you who are insulin dependent know I'm going to hit that quickly.

The nice thing about all of this, that I know health care is going to cost each year, until the legislature meets in two years and screws us further.

I've got a couple of more days left on this pen and I need to check the expiration dates on the other two.

I think that the insurance company doesn't want to cover it because they just bought a 3 months supply of insulin for me.  That's fair but they could actually tell me that up front.  So far, I've gotten –we didn't get anything from the doctor.   The doctor has their fax now so if I don't hear from the insurance company by next Thursday, I'll push the doctors office again.

I've got about a years worth of supplies if I use them correctly, maybe less, not sure because I've been hoarding.  I've got quite a bit of insulin too.  I think the best thing to do is try one more time next week on insurance approval.  Then try again each month until they approve it.

I can lose weight on the pump but I have to work harder at it.

I still want to use the pump for basal insulin until I'm totally out of supplies and not buy any more.