Category: Blog

I’ve gotten several questions about this lately – from my mother to a Type 1 diabetic. 

Yes, I am a Type 2 diabetic but have tendencies towards Type 1.  Whether I have both Type 1 and Type 2 or whether my pancreasis  doesn’t function at all any more (Will Dubois writes about this in books), I am insulin dependent and have been for over 8 years.  Maybe as long as 10 years.

I was diagnosed almost 10 years ago.  I went to the doctor before school started and he scheduled a fasting glucose test for as soon as possible which ended up being a staff development day in September (I did the staff development in the summer).  I remember going to the lab in the morning, drinking glucose and getting madder and madder every minute.  Between two of the blood draws I went to Aubrey Hawkin’s memorial site (an Irving police office and gentleman who was a good friend of mine and who got gunned down on Christmas Eve).  That accounted for some of the mad.

The lab only gathered the samples, the results were read later and sent to my doctor’s office during the weekend.

As the weekend progressed, I got madder and madder.

When I had passed 5 people on Monday morning and just wanted to slap them, I knew something horrible was wrong and called my doctor’s office as they were trying to call me.  They told me to drop everything and come in NOW.  I called and asked for a sub for the day.

My blood sugar was out of site, they gave me metforum and instructions to attend a diabetes class.  I did the next couple of days.  My blood sugar wouldn’t go down, and so we almost immediately went to insulin.

That was then.

For the past two years, I’ve been so afraid of going low, I’ve been running too high.  I have been forgetting to check my blood sugar and in all ways possible been a bad diabetic.  I’ve been lucky and haven’t had any complications, except for hypo-and hyper- glycemic unawareness.

This is where the dog comes in.

She is aware.

Yeah, it’s a pain to drag her around and keep her with me 24 / 7 but with her around I can keep good control again and I’m slowly starting to feel better.

It’s nice.

It’s a drag to explain it all to total strangers.  It will be interesting to have her on campus.  But in the long run it will be better.

Seriously.

One that has all the tools, lets you pick which one you want, and the timing you want.

I’m getting more and more impressed with the new primary care doctor.  She sent me to a oby/gen I like.  I am getting Mirena tomorrow. 

I liked the orthopedist.  The xrays look bad, but he didn’t rush me on surgery, nor did he rush me on another series of injections.  I said I would probably be back in November, but that Celebrex would do me in the meantime.  That mobic was okay, but wasn’t doing the full job.  His PA is working on the mobic approval.

Getting there.

In some respects this is a fail.  First time with the Swivl and it was too high, microphone having trouble with audio.

So the first part of a training session is making sure that your blood sugar is in range.  I’m at 185 and did a correction to pull it down to 110, so I should be good.

Next I prepared a sample of high blood sugar.  I took a gauze pad from the freezer, tore it in half since she’s a beagle and put it in a small salt shaker.

Here are the two I am going to use today.

I am going to let the sample thaw a bit, while I gather camera and swirl and get rid of the extra dogs.

Had to go to two medical offices.

The first was at Forest Park Medical Plaza to get my lap band looked at.  We decided on a 1/2 cc fill.  Several of the staff visited with Dulce but more of the visitors did.  By the way, the band looks really good and I’ve lost 10 pounds since I was there last. 

Then since I was near school, I just had to stop by.  Got my room keys, and visited with a couple of people.  They were setting up computers for Parent Portal so I ended up helping and volunteering to help with that on Monday.  I think I’ll even see if I can get in early enough on Monday so we can have my lab for overflow if needed.

My room is a mess.

Then we went for my second appointment, to my new Ob/Gyn.  I have been having trouble seeing my old one who I liked, but they kept canceling my appointments both this summer and last so I couldn’t get in to see them.  I’ve run into an interesting issue so I wanted to get it checked out and the primary care physician wasn’t up for it.  They asked about her, but was cool with it as soon as they realized what her purpose was.

I’m not sure if she alerted or not.  I’m thinking not.  I’m on a bariatric diet which is hard on me blood sugar wise.  Full liquids.  Also weight wise.  But it will be worth it in the long run.

You have a school nurse?

Well, she’s downstairs, in a different part of the building.  She can’t tell if my blood sugar is low or high from there.  If I need her, we’re not having class that day.

That’s come up in idle conversation. 

Dog can tell if I need a piece of candy to fix the low.  Or a unit of insulin to fix the high.  I honestly think that any disruption that the dog will cause the first few days will be much less than any disruption caused by having the school nurse come up. 

Oh, that’s happened.  We didn’t have class that day.

My diabetes alert dog is alerting.  My meter indicated that I needed another unit of insulin to bring my blood sugar down to 100.  However, I’m the high 180’s. 

Frankly, I’m confused.  I don’t think it is a bad thing she is alerting – my meter clearly agrees with her.

I’m just not sure what to do about it.   I’m praising but not jack potting.

I do want tight control.  Thoughts?

Went well.

Dulce alerted when we got there.  Wasn’t real high but I did check and correct – and gave me a chance to do some talking about it whole issue.

They had good questions.  I think I had good answers.

Biggest issues were:

• distractions
• allergies
• fear of dogs

Waiting

I have been utilizing just about every resource the school district gives in trying to fix my diabetes control issue including the BCBS nurse.  I think they sent her to me.

Well she called this afternoon and asked how I was doing.

I told her, well, you probably haven’t heard this one before, but I’m doing loads better and it’s because I decided to train my own diabetes alert dog.

She thought it was awesome and very cool and couldn’t wait until she told her supervisor.  She agreed that it really didn’t matter how I got there, as long as I did.  I explained how it worked – that Dulce alerts when I’m just out of range so I can fix the problem before it gets too bad.

Now if I can just do a better job on controlling my environment!

Today I got up with the following plans:

Get nails done
Go to the gym
Deal with small problems

Didn't actually end up doing things in that order but picked up a small mocha on the way to nails and dosed for half, knowing the gym was the next stop.

Nail salon took longer, and Dulce alerted her way, stretching placing her feet in my knee several times and making eye contact. Dog was right, blood sugar in the 240s, did a half adjustment and headed for the gym where we are now.

Sent from my Windows Phone