Category: Blog

Good article on the different insulins. 

Let us now delineate the different types of insulin available for treatment to suit the specific needs of patients.

Source: Insulin therapy for diabetes – 2

I drive about 90 minutes to dog agility and about 40 minutes back.  That amount varies according to traffic.  Why?  She’s the best instructor for my dogs.

I’ve been taking Maggie and Marcie on Mondays, and Macy on Tuesdays.  That eats up a lot of evenings, and FUEL! 

Lately, Macy has been bored with the Tuesday night class.  She can do 10 obstacles, no problem, provided I have cookies in my hand, I make enough noise, and I move fast enough.  The other dogs have problems with 3.

Concidently, I have a really good friend who trains with the same instructor and her dog was having similar problems with the early Monday night class.

Her dog was moved up to Maggie’s class and Macy got her dog’s slot.

I even had a bit of a stress attack over this — but we did fine.  Macy even managed to figure out the dog walk even though we had not done it before.

So I trained Macy from 6:50 until 7:45, Maggie from 7:45 until 8:40, and then Marcie from 8:40 on.

Maybe we’ll make it through the Sanctioned Match on Saturday!

I’ve polled a few people in my building, both adults and students.  Of course, those students are computer science students.

All say that the pump looks “cool”.  They like the screen, but didn’t remember the old one.  Fortunately the UltraSmart II screen is similar to the old one, so they can compare.

So, it’s definately cool, both with the screen on and off.

Just got off the phone with Animas.  They verified that I cannot retrieve carb and blood sugar information from the pump itself, but that it is downloadable with Ezmanager.

No release date.

I do have an email out to ezmanager support, so we’ll see what they say.

It definately stops during basal download — the bolus’s show up on the pump but my TDD isn’t showing up.  Guess I’m just going to have to be patient.

A commenter asked about EzManager, and I’m sure I have posted about it in the past.  Check the software category.

I first started using EzManager BEFORE I got a pump.  In fact, EzManager may be one of the reasons I got my first Animas pump.

The current version of EzManager works very well with either a Palm device or with an UltraSmart meter.  I will have to review the new version of EzManager when it comes.

My medical team finds the daily graph a bit confusing and they prefer to get the log output.  I do better with the daily graph.

EzManger will track whatever you put in it, and you can either enter food data and exercise data through the Palm or Ultra Smart, or through EzManager itself.

The biggest problem I have had with EzManager, is with the food database.  You can not edit food database entries, and you can only delete entries by using a Palm device. 

Everything else works well.

As you can tell from the entry time, I’m not sleeping right now.  I haven’t been sleeping well all week again.

What woke me up?

A bit of gastric reflux, dogs and the lights from our local police car at a traffic stop in front of the house.  And maybe my pump alarm.

I WAS sleeping pretty good.  Until last Friday night when the A/C went out and I had to deal with it, and the finances surrounding acquiring A/C.  Friday night I couldn’t sleep because I was too hot and for worrying about money and getting it all done.

Slept all night on Saturday but couldn’t sleep at all Sunday night.  So every night, I don’t sleep my pain gets a little worse.  I wake up more easily etc.  The only way to fix it is to sleep it out.

That means when I finish this post, I go back to bed, and sleep as late as I can.  And if I wake up before 9:00 am, I mess around again like I am doing now, and then go back to bed again.  It also means maybe taking a nap or two, but making sure I get enough sleep so I can sleep all night on Sunday.

It might even mean taking some Sonata.  Which I probably should have days again, but I don’t like the way I feel if I don’t get enough sleep when I take it.

UPS had tried to deliver while I was at school, so I made arrangements to pick it up from the local UPS center, about 5 miles from the house.

They have an interesting system, they have everyone who is picking up packages come in the building and they start calling names — mine was the second name called that had a person, and about the 10th name called.

The first thing I did was to pop a battery in the pump.  Man, the screen is extremely bright, but then again, I have it set on constrast 7 (I just thought of that), and it is much easier to read.

The first disappointment came when I tried to upload my pump settings.  My current version of EzManager doesn’t work with the new pump for setup — though that makes sense because the set up screens are different.  Of course that just occured to me.

I do wish I had a way to program the pump remotely — it took a good 20 minutes to program mys settings.

I’m not sure if I can download anything until the new software comes — I tried, but it seemed to stop at 40%.  Anyone know when they are shipping?

The package they sent is the standard, new pump package, with a sample of the comfort and inset infusion sets, IV prep and IV Barrier tape.  Also shipped with a cartridge. extra battery cap, leather case, and a new Animas medallion. 

I really like the new programming options — you can now program your own times (with 30 minute increments) for ISF and for Corrections.  I’m trying something different — the time frames I usually eat, I’m using my Symlin settings so I don’t have to do as much math.  Right now, I eat lunch after 12:30 so from 12:30 to 1:00 I have it programmed to do a 20 ISF instead of a 10.  I’m also trying to find a way to enter the carbs without putting in a ISF for my evening timeframe, since I don’t need bolus insulin them.

I’m still trying to figure out if entering Carbs in the evening but no insulin will let me log though carbs, and I might not know what until the new version of EzManager comes.

Interesting story line on NCIS last week — blind photographer follows “fruity smell” taking photographs and discovered a dead guy. 

At the end of the show, the photographer smells it again — on Ducky’s assistant’s breath.  The killer was diabetic and was exhibiting the same fruity smell.

Interestingly insulin, they had a Byetta pen, I believe instead of insulin.

The house has not gotten cool enough for me to sleep well tonight.  I went to bed before 10:30, but kept waking up.  Finally got up for a while at 4:30, then went back to bed.

Sure hope we do get the A/C in today, because I don’t see it getting done before Thursday otherwise.

14-day average of between 150-155 mg/dl, with 6 tests a day and no more than 7 blood sugars over 250 mg/dl. I’m lowering your max number because you rarely if ever hit 300, and I think having a lower target might help keep your standard deviation down.