Category: Blog

Scott’s posted an interested article again big pharm and their ads and credits me for dooming Exubera.  BUT wait a minute….! 

Collectively, patient groups can flex our collective muscle on many of these issues (such the role as Allie Beatty, Amy Tenderich, Kathleen Weaver and my reporting played in dooming Exubera).

Scott’s Web Log: Flexing Our Collective Muscle

In my own blog posts, I actually praise Exubra.  I can’t imagine using it myself, but I have a coworker — teaches the same subject at another school — who loves it last time I talked to her.  If a drug (or in this case a different formulation), helps people get healthier, I’m all for it.

I’m middle of the road on the drug ads myself.  I honestly feel like a drug ad sometimes, as I am taking many of the medications advertised on a regular basis.  I usually take the drug first and then see the commercial, but there are major benefits to drug ads.

For one, they are a major source of revenue for television, magazines and for even the internet.  I wish some of the ads weren’t as pervasive and intrusive — the E.D. drugs, but at the same time, I do think that they can be beneficial.

I certainly don’t believe that the big pharmacy companies are delaying a cure.  Frankly, I don’t think the medical community understands enough about diabetes to even have a cure — contrary to the information I receive one of my science teacher coworkers who works at Southwest Medical in his spare time.

So don’t count me against Exubra OR against pharmacy ads, or even against pharmacies.

My afternoon CS class got me off topic.  I’m starting to teach the kiddos about buying computers.  I like to do it in little chunks, and today I was showing off my convertible notebook.  Later in the week I’ll show off the MacMini.

Anyway, I ended up showing them my continuous glucose monitor.  One of my students asked “is your diabetes so bad that you need that?”. 

My answer:  “I’m so much into data that having it makes it easier for me to keep my blood sugar where I want it and not only do I feel better, but I’m a better teacher”.

Guess what?  She’s hispanic, overweight and diabetic.  Doesn’t take insulin.  Betting you that she’s a Type 2.

Maybe she’ll learn something.

Marcie’s Standard Run

Marcie’s JWW Run

Maggie’s JWW Run

Maggie’s Standard Run – A Q!

Things continued going well.  Marcie was very fast — even weaving in rhythm however, she’s not the confident, do what mom says dog that she was in our earlier days.

She made mistakes because I trusted in her, and didn’t handle as hard as I should have. 

Maggie finally finished Novice, so that made up for the rest of the day.  I have vidoes and I’m going to try to post them.

I think I finally got the spelling right.  The doctor doing the injections initially got caught in jury duty today.  So my doctor did them.

They have different approaches.  The first doctor said he liked just doing them with spray to numb them.  They didn’t see to take as long that way.

My doctor numbed with injections first, then did the Synvist with a light amount of cold spray at the beginning.

The first two shots made my knees hurt, but not excessively afterwards.  This one I didn’t feel until late afternoon.  I felt a bit of crunching running in class tonight (bone hitting bone, ouch), but not bad. 

Overall since the initial shots, I have been feeling less pain and doing more activity.

Just went out to try to order a set of sensors, and I’m off on my pricing.  They are $60 a piece, so if my sensors last 15 days, they cost $4.00 a day.   That does not work out to be much difference between the 3 day sensor.

So far, the current sensor is doing well, though I’ve only had it in one day.

Husband and I are taking a few days to vacation together.  We decided not to travel anywhere but to do local tourist stuff.

So I reset my 1st sensor — and took over this morning.  I will say Dexcom saved my butt as I didn’t plan ahead as well as I should have. 

We went to the Fort Worth Stockyards and took a walking tour there.  Dexcom showed I was around 100, but the good news was there was candy handy, so I spent grabbed some M&Ms, and munched on them as we walked.

By the way it was very nice.

Yep, I’m on Day 13 of my first sensor.  I do think I might go ahead and put in a new sensor tomorrow, but haven’t completely decided.

Numbers are still good, but I notice that as time goes on, I get more missing readings.

If I can consistently get sensors to last 14 days, then the cost will be $4.60 per day for the sensors.  The bad news that cost is still about twice as much as the 3 day sensors were costing because I was get them to last at least 9 days which comes to about $3.89 a day.

The receiver seems much more stable now — I really had an interesting day yesterday when about half the time I looked at the receiver I had ??? and lots of gaps in readings.

Last night there were very few gaps and Dexcom is reading close to the meter (but under it).

I go to the endo on Monday and I still haven’t figured out how to handle all the data — do I put it in EzManager for example.

I forgot how frustrating the first day of a sensor can be — and yesterday my sensor acted just like a brand new sensor.  Missing readings mostly but also off.  The weird thing, is that my sensor was slightly higher than the meter before resetting and now it is reading slightly lower than the meter.