Category: Blog

Hey, I have no imagination.

But for two days (really three), I’ve made an effort to increase water consumption and food intake earlier in the day, and I feel better.

I was actually about to do 9 minutes on the treadmill and hey, considering I didn’t feel like any last week, it’s progress.

Also, I’m not spending the entire evening eating … so far.

I have been making a real effort to move the majority of my carbs and calories to before 5:00 pm.   I did a really good job yesterday. After my endos visit I went to Denny’s for breakfast, then had Diet Gourmet the rest of the day, until right before agility practice.  Did grilled chicken then, and oatmeal when I got home.  That’s something I could probably take with me and eat in the car on the way home.

Speaking of endos visit, this is the second weird one in a room.  He has given me no assistance, and has been letting me struggle.  He’s also given me the impression that the business side of his practice is not going well, especially this visit when I brought up the possibility of lap band surgery.  I asked for assistance, and like his emails he was reluctant.  He did say I was a good candidate, and again, the only negative to him seemed to deal with income.  He was very adament that he would have to be paid for any letters, etc.

The good news, is that I automatically get a copy of any labs, so I can forward them onto the lap band facility.  In fact, right now, I am thinking I should contact my insurance facility so we can head off any problems.  The good news, is that my primary care physician should be cooperative and it is his practice that diagnosed the diabetes.

The best news — his scale showed that I had lost three pounds.

I’ve had some good days and some bad days this week.  What was in common with the good days?  I ate more calories during the day, and bad? Slipped back into my old habits of not eating. Getting higher calorie lunches, starting with today will help too.

Hopefully tomorrow I will do better, as I almost screwed it up today.

Have a new pump, the last one isn’t vibrating hard enough for me to feel and I have it in my bra, so that is weird. And I have a Dexcom sensor that is actually working.  Of course, my blood sugar has been better — oh, and yeah, the higher calories during the day help that too.

I came out of my first appointment very depressed but I am feeling better now. 

I’ve decided to focus on a couple of goals this month:

1) Walk on the treadmill everyday for 3 minutes straight at least once, even dog training days.

2) Drink one bottle of water (I have only been drinking diet cokes)

3) Increase my noon time calorie intake by switching to the higher calorie diet gourmet meals

4) Eat one more snack during the day.

The best disappointment to me was realizing that this is a very long term project and I don’t do well them them.

Just got back from my first visit with TLC Edge. No wonder I feel like crap I am at my heaviest weight ever came it is bad. Thank you, Michael.

I liked the dietician, didn’t care for the PA. She didn’t Know who I was supped to see etc. It’s a long trip, but the dietician did help me see where I was going wrong.

The port is also a bit scary but the insurance specialist helped with that.

This afternoon I go to TLC Edge — a company owned by the people who do my primary care physician office management — and discuss weight loss surgery with them.

I just got off the chat line with my insurance company and they do say that lap band surgery is covered.  They would not give me the extra criteria but said my provider would know.

I’ve taken a step in a new direction — I’ve decided to investigate weight loss surgery. My primary care physician uses a company called Medical Edge for his administration (I assume it works that way, at least). Well, they have a company called TLC Edge and they specialize in LapBand Surgery.

First appointment is Monday.

As you can tell from my lack of posting, life is busy and diabetes keeps getting shoved to the end of the list.  I do see my endo in a few weeks.  I’m predicting an A1C over 8.0

Lots of days I’m lucky if I get around to testing my blood sugar.  Somedays I don’t get around to eating breakfast.

I’ve also been majorly stressed out over my job and its future.  We had a RIF and they eliminated 300 positions. 

Oddly enough, my pump warranty expires in February and I occasionally think about it.  I’ll probably get a Ping.  I probably will use my 3 sensors, two will expire in November, and I’m not sure when the third one does.  I probably won’t get any more sensors.  Sadly, the worse your blood sugar, the worse the sensors work.

I’ve even tossed around the idea of seeing if I can switch to Byetta and drop insulin and Symlin entirely. 

Not doing well, am I?

The good news, is that periodically try to fix the problem.  Today I updated my spreadsheet and recalculated my bolus amounts.

The blog at http://www.kweaver.org/cs has more detail about it.  Diabetes and my personal life have gone to the back burner, but I decided last Friday I am taking control of my life.  Well, hopefully not completely taking control, that would probably mean losing my job tomorrow.

Yes, a somewhat real possibility, my school district is RIFing a large group of people.  Fortunately not as many as they originally expected, as a lot took the voluntary RIF.  Three people in my building, include the home ec teacher across the hall.  She took the RIF rather than maternity leave. (Yes, I know it isn’t called home ec anymore, but I still call the custodians, janitors.

So back to the diabetes news.  I was quoted in the New York times this weekend:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/business/12novel.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

I’ve been using that device for several weeks now, I got it the same day that the Dexcom upgrade came.  It’s interesting.  Also difficult to deal with — my limit is two medical devices at a time, I’ve found.

I’ve also quit working with the Fit4Diabetes folks — they are great, and really worth it, but I’m ready to manage the exercise thing by myself.    That’s something that has been at the forefront of the back burner stuff. 

As always, it’s an interesting school year.  My responsibilities have expanded yet again, not only do I teach a full load of students — well, I do have one reduced sized class, but I am also the campus technologist.

That means I collect the technical assistance requests and pass them up to the district, and I have a few other tasks.  So far, this year, it has included making sure that everyone in the building gets fingerprinted.  Fun part if that the directions didn’t match the actual process.

So I’ve got added stress AND added walking time, since I end up spending a lot of my time troublingshooting.

BUT the biggest problem this week was Hurricane Ike.  Yeah, we live in Dallas, BUT we get our food from Diet Gourmet and their kitchens are in Spring, Texas in suburb of Houston.  They didn’t evacuate but didn’t have power until Tuesday.  Thus we didn’t have food until Friday.  I REALLY rely on Diet Gourmet which is a good thing.

I didn’t even think of using a Dexcom sensor until Tuesday (dumb), which did help, but my mission to reduce insulin TDD was momentairly stalled.  The good news, is that the TDD has stabilized.