Category: Blog

Airline’s medicine ban leaves passenger in coma – 01 Nov 2006 – Health & fitness

My biggest question — did the insulin freeze? And is it still good?

A diabetic man fell into a coma because airport staff refused to let him take his insulin on board a flight from Auckland to Christchurch.

Have chest pains and tell them that you are having them.

Okay, I’m 99.99999% sure it is gastric reflux.  I break through my medication (as they say) every fall.  Every fall my gastric reflux has sent me back to the doctors for more medication.

But I was a bit alarmed myself when I was having chest pains after lunch, and walked across the hall to ask one of my coworkers what I should do.  Moving around help, as by the time I got there, solved the problem.

But I called my primary care physician anyway.  He called me back on a real phone (in his office) last night when he got my message.

He called the pharmacy and had 300 mg Zantac waiting there for me, and I slept better last night.  We’ll see how it goes.

He also wanted me to talk to the cardiologist for it and told me to go to the ER if they lasted more than 10 minutes.  So I work almost equidistant to two different hospitals so I wanted to know which one — they never WOULD say, but that’s okay.  I think I’ll go to Medical City Dallas, if I have to.

The bad part — well, the two major sympthoms of gastric reflux I am having are sympthoms of congestive heart failure — I know that’s the sympthoms my dad had before he did.  Yeah, the chest pain and the coughing thing.

I really do think it is just gastric reflux.  It sucks.

Life has gotten full again.  I did complete all my workouts for last week — Week 8. 

I went to an orthopedist yesterday, not one that the endo suggested, but one I found on the Simvisc <sp> site that was close to school.  Had to leave early to see him, and one of my coworkers took my class.

I was a bit disappointed at one point — he did a full set of xrays, and when I told him the criteria I had for fixing the knees: reduce medication and not mess with blood sugars — his answer was shoe inserts.  I thought that a bit odd.

However — the xrays did show a problem with weight distribution.  He sent me to a place that makes the shoe inserts in the same building and they were able to make them while I waited.

I think they are helping, I wore them doing dog agility last night and I don’t think I was as stiff this morning, though I did take a higher dose of Mobic last night too.

We’ll have to see how this goes.  It would be great if it worked, the inserts are only $70.

At the end of our faculty meeting today, the principal shared with us that one of our collegues had gone in for surgery to remove a blockage and a tumor was discovered.  I think he said that they found that he had both stomach and liver cancer too, but not entirely sure about the liver cancer thing. 

It was a rough way to start the day.  Kinda of makes you wonder if all the finger sticks, knee pain, etc. is worth it all.

The good news is that the vending machine is only taking correct change and it hurt to much to walk back up to the room to get change and go back and get something to eat.

The bad news is that the PSTA put Hersey bars in our boxes, or maybe that WAS a good thing.

The good news is that I’ve eaten dinner and the TDD for the day so far is around 24.00

Though Macy says she’s happy because she’s got people who love her and plenty of toys to play with. 

Something dawned on me tonight when I was writing an email.  I don’t keep this in the front of my mind, but it IS on the back of my mind.

I’m 46.  I try not to think about that very often. 

When my father was 42, he was diagnosed with diabetes.  When he was 46, he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, told to put his affairs in order, put on oxygen, told not to be exposed to any illness, and sent home to die.

The good news, it took two more years for it to kill him.

Thus, I’m a bit paranoid. 

I think that is a much better attitude than living with the hope that there was be a cure in 5 years.  In fact, I’m sick to death of hearing people repeating that little information.  What does that do for anyone?  I think a lot of them don’t take as good care of themselves as they should, expecting that cure.

There is not going to be a cure for my kind of diabetes in 5 years, and even if there were, if I don’t take extremely good care of myself, I’m going to be dead in less than those 5 years. 

I also find my own doctor’s concillartory message — there will be inhaled insulin in 5 years.  Yeah, right, meal time insulin and the whole process is a pain in the rear.

So I’m on a pump, I test empteen times a day, and I keep my blood sugar as normal as possible.  Not to live — but to keep from dying.

There have been good side effects from that — one of my students asked me why I hadn’t given the diabetes speech this year — well, I haven’t had a treatable hypoglycemic event in a year, and the last time was when we played Symlin games.  I often eat a bit of sugar to keep from getting there, but haven’t gotten there.

And at lunch, they were trying to get me to eat some homemade ice cream — they were nice about it — and not pushy, but I made the choice not to.  Then made the statement, did you realize that my blood sugar hasn’t been high even to make me bitchy in years — and my department chair said “and thank god for that!”.  I didn’t realize it was that bad, and repeated to the same student who asked about the diabetes speech — and he AGREED!

Yes, Type 1s are taking care of themselves to keep living — but remember quite a few of us Type 2s are just trying to keep from dying. 

I feel the need to add a bit more to this — when I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, I wasn’t promised a cure. I was told to use my CPAP machine every night or I’d die. Of course, getting woken up by an upset technician during the diagnosis helped to. And my doctor DID mention that he sent someone for sleep apnea surgery, but he wasn’t going to do that anymore, because the patient died. Fatalist? Maybe, but you know what, I put that CPAP machine on every single night. And I also check my blood sugar empteen times a day, and strive for tight control. I haven’t had an AIC higher than 7.0 since I started this.

It’s been interesting.  First of all, right now the dealership I am working with claims they don’t have the 2007 Freestyle I want.  Also the guy I was working with forgot he had today off.  Weird.

I tried a PT Cruiser but all three cages will fit, BUT I can’t get anything else in it. 

One of the things I track with my insulin spreadsheet is my correction factor.  Also known in the diabetes world as the rule of 1800.  Amazing on how well that works. The rule of 1500 doesn’t always work for me, but that’s another blog post.

Anyway, I noticed this morning that I was approaching 43.  My pump is programmed for a correction factor of 42.  It’s currently an hour and some odd minutes before lunch and I am hungry!  Did a check and I’m just a tad over 100.

Time to break out one of the chocolate candy sticks.  I love them.  Less than 100 calories, about 10 grams of carb, and all the taste of a real chocolate bar.

I also need to remember to buy more.

Means the TDD is still going down.

Plus I think I’m losing weight.  I’m not tracking it, but I am at the lowest I’ve been in a while.

And hey, I’m not gaining like I was when they first gave me back my classes!

First managed to get the strength portion of today done, but had to reschedule the cardio.  I’m going to have to watch that.

Second, car dealers, don’t try to make someone think they made an appointment when they didn’t, it ‘s just annoying.

TDD is still slowly dropping — mainly because I have been making a smart change, which is to drop my temp basal to 30% two hours before a dog class for the two hours of the class.  Worked for agility and worked for tonight’s obedience classes.

We’re getting closer to our first conformation show — I haven’t said much about it here or the Macy’s blog, but it’s Saturday and Sunday morning at 8:00 am (argh!) but at least it will be over fast.

It’s been a wild few days. Monday night the fan inside my car squealed.  When I turned it off, did class, and got back in the car it started making a horrible noise.  It wouldn’t have been too bad, except that it was an hour to drive home.

As I was driving it dawned on me that I was paying a $500 car payment every month for the past 6 months.  Well, that sucks when you are driving a 6 year old car.  I’d much rather do that for a new one.

Got home and husband was playing internet poker and was acting ugly about talking about it.  We’ve been married for 20 years and every fight we’ve had was related to cars.  Or buying cars.       

So I went to school Tuesday morning and called the local car dealer to school (Troy Aikman Ford), and asked if I could drop it over during my planning period.  They said sure.  They diagnosed it, but couldn’t repair it then but let me have it back. 

In the meantime, I got from work and Rich had printed out a really nice thing comparing several small trucks.  We decided to go look at an HHR.  It was TOO small.  They also brought out an Equinox which also TOO small.

So I got my truck back today during my planning period again, and I stopped and talked to the internet sales manager and I looked at a Ford Freestyle.  I am pretty convinced that’s the car I want.  I may have to wait until Ford has the right incentive though, unless they can find me a 2006.

However, I did get yesterday’s workout in.

If you have the option of going with a flexible spending account DO IT!  It is SO nice.

We have “debit cards”, so that makes it even better.

Here’s how it works, you sign up in advance — and I was chicken and afraid that I wouldn’t use the whole amount, so went for $1000 the first year.  I went to $2000 last year and got real brave and went to $3000 this year.  I think that’s the max.

What it means is that your out-of-pocket expenses are deducted from your paycheck with pre-tax dollars.  That does two things — automatically saves you money,  but it also allows you pay those expenses with the debit card.

So I have my Medco account set up now, so that it automatically uses the debit card.  When I picked up Requip at the local pharmacy last week, I used the debit card, and again this week at the contact lens doctor.

The neat part, is that you have access to the whole amount from day one.  So if I wanted to go wild and buy a Dexcom system this week, I could.  Or I can be conservative, which is what I am planning.

It didn’t quite work this way last year, but hopefully this year, my out-of-pocket expenses will be just about $3000 before I met the deductible and I won’t have to pay for any of my supplies, etc. out of after tax dollars.

And my contact lens doctor pointed out to me — if you don’t spend ALL the money at the end of the year, you can always buy an extra pair of glasses — her business does VERY well because of that.