Category: Blog

I’m on my way to Aldie Virginia. I have been involved with beagles for over 30 years. I have always wanted to go to Institute Farm and do something with my beagles.

My first Beagles were hunting dogs. I never hunted with them but I always wanted to. I have hunted once with one of the hunting Beagles and we both enjoyed it.

I did Obedience with Peppermint Patty and went to several national specialty’s with her. I was also shopping for a dog when I went to those Specialities but never found exactly what I wanted.

I did agility with Marcy and we went to the DFW specialty mostly because it was in the area.

After the hunting beagles I had a rescue which I did agility with. Search the specialties usually in the fall and the start of the school year I did not do specialties with her.

I got involved with the beagle rescue fund and since our major fund raiser is at the specialty I started going to again when I retired from teaching face-to-face. Two years ago at Purina Farms and last year at Ocala Florida. I really enjoy helping with the auction and selling concessions to raise money for rescue. I also like to support Agility that’s the topic for another post.

Macy is my first confirmation beagle. Though she doesn’t quite conform since she’s on the small side and on the fuzzy side. She’s cute but she wasn’t a very good agility dog either. In fact the only thing she’s good at is being very cute. Which is enough.

Dulce is my second conformation beagle, who also doesn’t conform. She does filled her inches but doesn’t have any. She’s decided to worry about everything especially my blood sugar and in fact she so worried she can’t do Agility. Which is sad because I really love Agility.

Summer is my latest beagle. So far she does conform although she’s blue. She has eight points confirmed by the AKC and five more pending. That means she has both her majors and 13 points. She’s been in training for Agility since the spring and she frequently forgets how to do individual obstacles or even how to do the sequence.

So I’m going to Aldie with one beagle who is entered in Agility but is probably going to be too worried to do anything. I’m going to Aldie with a second beagle who is entered in Agility but it’s more likely to forget how to do it. That same bagel does have a chance to do well in Conformation and is entered in sweepstakes and regular conformation.

I’m going so that I can help raise funds for rescue, Support Agility, maybe just maybe bring home a ribbon but mostly To have a good time with people who love beagles as much as I do.

So what is this have to do with Diabetes?Traveling is difficult with Diabetes: you have to take things that you can’t get it at Walgreens or Costco or Walmart. You have to travel with temperature sensitive medication with insulin pump supplies and glucose sensors and all the stuff that goes with it.

Plus I have to sleep with a CPAP machine so we just added to medium size boxes to what other people travel with. It’s a three-day drive from Dallas to Virginia. Two days in agility and three days of conformation. My Ford Escape is stuffed.

I finished one day of driving and started the second so far I have everything I need: medications, CPAP machine, and supplies.

Sent from my iPhone

This morning and was going through memories and realized that I was diagnosed with diabetes 15 years ago this month.

We had a flexible staff development day. I had done the training in the summer so had the day off and insurance had just rolled around. Since teaching and until this year my insurance went from September 1 to August 31.

Had scheduled a mammogram and a blood glucose test. The test was first and I remember getting really angry in the middle of it. Really angry.

To the point I wanted to slap people.

It got a bit better during the weekend but the rage was back on Monday morning. I got to work and it was even worse. So I called the front office and asked for a sub and called the doctors office. They were trying to call me because my results were red flagged. Went right in, and was given. Didn’t help.

Horrible week as my primary care physician was out of town. Missed the entire week of school as they immediately scheduled me for two days of diabetes education.

I went on insulin since meds didn’t do anything for me and insulin did.

Sent from my iPad

I had used a prescription company that packaged the drugs in advance and initially deal with the PBM and all issues.  It cost more, but I could also take advantage of some of the savings plans.  It was worth it until they stopped communicating.

Now I package my own medications.  My goal right now is to have all my pills accounted for before my big Virginia trip.  I’m about half way there now. 

PillSuite is great.  You get a pill sorter, a little machine to heat seal the packages and the packages.  When you get done, you get a packet of pills.  So far, I haven’t had trouble with the packages coming unsealed, and it makes for a neat tidy package.

I have been having problems with UPS deliveries for years.  This week was the absolute worse.

In an attempt to get my diabetes devices and supplies, UPS has screwed up numerous times and I have used numerous solutions.  This is especially true with Next Day Air shipments.

I would say that only half of the time do Next Day Air shipments actually arrive before noon.  This was a problem several years ago when I was trying to get a new insulin pump delivered to my school.  They either miss the time entirely or they deliver to the wrong person.  Even signature required, they don’t care who signs it, they just want a signature. 

UPS has even screwed up delivering to an attended mail depot!  One of the cases of delivery to the wrong place.

I’ve decided that the only solution is to have every single page held at the UPS office and going to pick it up myself.  Very inconvenient.

Here is what brought it to a head.  Last Saturday, I was receiving a CGMS transmitter, Next Day Air.

Got up before 9:00 am, started watching the tracking, and the UPS truck would come within a few houses, and then go off somewhere else.  It was stuck in one spot for several hours (must have been lunch).  I called customer service as 1:00 pm, interacted with UPS customer service at about the same time and they assured me it would arrive by 7:00 pm (6 hours late) even though they couldn’t get ahold of the facility.  Finally at 6:30, I call customer service again with 30 minutes of wait time, and he can’t find anyone at the facility.  While I’m on the line with him, the package gets marked “First Delivery Attempt”. 

Oh, the driver hasn’t been by the house.

I’ve tried to get ahold of someone at UPS about it ever since with no success – because the driver lied about the delivery attempt.

We won’t even talk about the delivery from Nordstrom that was marked damaged and then was never seen again.

Our benefits didn't change but I get a letter on September 2, telling me that I need to change my network pharmacy. 

Yeah, I found that out when I refilled my Celebrex (generic version). 

And of course, the network pharmacy name starts with the letters CVS. 

I would not have an issue if I was not being told my benefits had not changed. Just admit it and get on with it. 

The old insurance limited the amount I paid. 

Our prescription costs were managed and limited.  We paid so much for each tier of drug.  That’s gone now, and I have to pay 20% of the total cost.  The good news, is that the major of medications are generic, and some are even free.

Office visits and office procedures were also limited – which reminds me, I need to get my part of the colorguard back, since preventative procedures were free.  The preventive costs and procedures are still free.  But I also pay 20% of those now.

The good news is that is what we did for a year while I was waiting to go on insurance, so we’ll have to see how that all works out.

So the first part of the savings is to move all of the retired teachers (probably all teachers) in Texas from Express Scripts to CVS/Caremark and I quote, "Your benefits haven't changed".

Really, then why can't I get my Enlight Sensors?  Express Scripts was covering them.  CVS/Caremark refuses to.

Then I went to refill my Celebrex (generic version).  I have been getting a 90 day supply at Tom Thumb Pharmacy (attached to a grocery store).  I went to get my prescription this evening and was told they had to fill it as a 30 day supply.  I cancelled it, try to call CVS/Caremark and went to a CVS Pharmacy.  Guess what, I got to the pharmacy before I got a customer representative.

They were able to fill the 90-day supply and charged $25.00  I don't know what my copay was before.

Our benefits didn't change, but I have to go to Novolog (not a bad thing), and we're told our copays will be different depending on their contracts.

I had a complete pump failure last Sunday.  You have to understand that over night on Sunday means Tuesday morning.

With the insurance changes coming up, I had decided to investigate another method of diabetes management.

Now, I have some issues that are probably not going to change.  I have some eating issues and I've never been able to be on a schedule.  That cuts out 90% of diabetes management method.

In fact, that probably only leaves the pump.

I've had problems with getting too insulin in my system — and I did during the pump failure.  I took the choice of dosing every 4 hours.  One option I have been thinking of is trying one of the new long acting insulins, but I did not this round.  Even with dosing every four hours, I slipped up — I forgot to eat lunch, or didn't even plan for it, and went low doing dog agility.  I was able to fix it, but just didn't plan for the whole incident.  It is something I should get better at, but it probably won't happen since I've been living this way for decades.

The good news, is that so far, my blood sugar has been good.

Yesterday when I got home from the dog show I went to change everything out.  I got a critical failure.  The fun part, was that the Medtronic tech on the other end of the phone had no idea what that was, had never heard of that screen, and had to talk with someone else.  They were all "shrug", we have to send you a new insulin pump over night.

The definition of overnight, is Tuesday morning.

More fun.  My endo is still between offices.  Though I did send an email and I think I'll give his wife's office a call again.  They are passing the message along.  Of course, now we have no history.

Of course, the primary care can't help other than phone in a prescription for long acting insulin but then you have to get that stuff out of your system when you put the pump back on.

So I've got my phone alarm set to go off every 4 hours, I check my blood sugar and give myself an injection based on 2 year old numbers.  Of course the current numbers aren't much better.

The call got better — He put the voice message on about returning the pump and he got disconnected.  He called me back in the middle of the message, I ignored him and just kept listening.  He called me when I tried to call him.  I lost it at that point and demanded the supervisor, who was pleasant but of course, "overnight" means Tuesday morning.

Being delivered by UPS who have already lost two insulin pumps and have destroyed uncountable Nordstrom packages.

Last year I went to a diabetes conference sponsored by AstraZenca. At the time I was still using old, faulty, CGMS technology and a service dog.

Yesterday, a social media site posted a picture from that conference with some really nasty comments on the picture. Two different people found me from the picture and let me know. 

Here is the thing — if you just bring something like that up to someone without telling them you did something about, yes, you too are cyber bullying.  The first posted as a comment to a Facebook public post. The second reached me via messenger and she did say she asked Facebookto pull it.

First, the service dog in question has worked as a diabetes alert dog in my classroom and when I was out in about. She has had only one issue in public and it has been solved.  We were at Love Field when a guide dog attacked her.  As a result, for a while she would not tolerate other service dogs around us, but we trained and fixed that.  

At the conference, she reminded at least one participant that they had forgot to bolus for a meal.

She has flown several times, gone to lots of conferences and teacher training with no issue. I stopped using her when they upgraded my technology to some that works most of the time. I may be losing that technology in January with my insurance. Waiting for the state legislature to stop worrying about bathrooms and to fix real problems like baiting and switching their teacher retirees.