I bit the bullet on Monday, and ordered 3 months worth of OneTouch Ultra test strips. Yeah, it’s bigger, yeah, it doesn’t have the cute little flashlight, BUT it does have graphs, which is helping me.
Sticking to one meter isn’t bad, I’ll have to start finding and shifting emergency meters.
Someone asked if was using the OneTouch software — I like EzManager much better and it not only downloads all of the UltraSmart data, but also the pump data — it’s an Animas product.
I had a better day, but the kiddos were really wound up after yesterday’s forced sitting still all day (also known as TAKS testing).
I think that not waking up helped, but I do need more hours. I’m going to try to go to bed around 9:30. Notice I said try.
The knee has been stiff all day, partly because the elevator isn’t working. I managed to get 15 minutes in on the treadmill not much but it’s the most I’ve been able to do all week.
Right now, before I can get anything else on track, I have to sleep all night. Which I managed last night, though I didn’t make it to bed until 11:30.
Knee is still incredibly stiff. I can’t decide what to do about physical therapy.
Students this time. I expected a disaster, first because the walk-through didn’t work, second because I found out shortly after I arrived, that the person who was supposed to relieve me had a car accident and wasn’t at school. I lucked out because a counselor brought me an extra student and I was smart enough to talk her into watching my student while I went to the restroom. I finally gave up on being relieved about 10:30, called the office and begged for someone to watch my room. The good news, is that I was assigned a new relief. He had other duties, so I didn’t get much time.
The other part that was nice was that I had only 12 students. A 13th was assigned, but he didn’t show and was withdrawn from school a few weeks ago since he was 18 and hadn’t shown up in weeks.
I eat with my students, which was actually pretty enjoyable. One of my students, a late arrival, took until about 2:30 to finish the test, most were done about a half hour before that. I did manage to get the students who finished early a couple of computers to play with which kept them busy. And I had plenty to do also.
We had another change in weather which is really giving me knee trouble. I did some of my physical therapy exercises, but sitting here in front of the computer isn’t helping much, but I just can’t bring myself to do more.
I may yet break down and get a stationary bicyle, but man, I love my treadmill, and don’t enjoy stationary bikes much. My biggest problem, is that I’ve never been able to find one that fits me.
Sleeping isn’t though. Just couldn’t get to bed before 11:30. I always have trouble going to bed after a bad night. Then I woke up around 5:00 am. Piddled around a bit on the computer, got a few things actually done, and then went back to bed to get warm and listen to the news.
I went back on the anti-inflammatory last night — and the knee is better. How much of that is due to the warmer weather though?
I am dreading today. We’re testing our 1st period class ALL day. They should finish around 11:00 am. I’ve got 3 DVD’s, hopefully that will keep them entertained.
I’m not going to say a whole lot about this, but part of the stress I’ve been experiencing this year is due to the fact that I cannot trust the students in my portable. I want to move them to my computer classroom, but they just cannot be trusted. At all….
I’ve taught for 14 years, and I have never witnessed the theft that I’ve seen out of these students. Anything that cannot be stolen is destroyed. I have no idea if it is one student or more than one student. I am not even sure if it is a current student.
It’s never happened while I was in the room. One time it happened when I went into the building into the restroom, but I’m pretty sure who did it. Fortunately that student is no longer enrolled in my classes, as I’ve caught him three different times, wrote him up and nothing happened.
Mostly I’ve been going through physical therapy. I have been getting home from school around 5:00 pm on Monday and Friday, eating, and then going to physical therapy and then getting back home between 7:30 – 8:00. On Wednesday’s I tutor, eat and go to physical therapy
and get home between 8:00 and 8:30. On Thursday’s I train dogs all evening. Also, every other weekend has been a major agility trial.
Plus I’m now responsible for planning 6 preps and teaching 5 of them.
There hasn’t been ANY free time, especially for writing.
Life has just been very difficult.
The knee was better until Friday. I don’t know if it was the physical therapy session, the lack of anti-inflammatory, or the horrible cold front, but I’ve been aching since Friday evening. A few times to the point I didn’t want to walk at all. In fact, it’s throbbing now.
Stem Cells May Be Key to Cancer – New York Times
One day, perhaps in the distant future, stem cells may help repair diseased tissues. But there is a far more pressing reason to study them: stem cells are the source of at least some, and perhaps all, cancers.
Yeah, I DID hate this meter, and I still am not real happy with it.
The Freestyle Flash is smaller and has the cute little flashlight for the test strip. Also I personally think it is easier to use. For one thing, if you don’t get enough blood on the first try, you can give it more and it will eventually read. Not so the Ultrasmart.
However, the copay on the Ultrasmart is quite a bit cheaper than the Freestyle. Plus I like having the graph in my hand. It makes it easier to see trends, both good and bad. If the Freestyle/Palm combo, I have to wait till I get to the big computer and run EzManager.
I think that the Lifescan tech support sucks, but the last couple of times the Freestyle sucked too. You should not have to wait seven minutes to talk to a tech when you are dealing with blood sugar readings. Yeah, I time these things.
However, they did send me a bottle of 25 test strips, which pretty much takes care of the strips I’ve wasted, and I’ve gone from wasting 3 strips a day to one yesterday and so far, knock on wood, none today. So maybe I’ll have figured it out.
I’ve been using it for a week.
Using the test strips is enough different from the Freestyle, that I frequently screw up the procedure, thus wasting the strip. In fact, Wednesday morning, I wasted 3, then called the company and had them walk me through the procedure. Did it again Saturday and asked for some free test strips to make up for the ones I was screwing up.
I will probably be sticking with it. For a pumper, having a graph of your blood sugars by meal is invaluable. Also, having all the log book information in my hand and organized in different ways is also invaluable. The UltraSmart does a bunch of stuff EzManager doesn’t do, both the Palm and PC version.
However, you can’t transfer data back and forth between the three, which is sad.
I did see that the FDA issued an approval on something Lifescan called an ONETOUCH ULTRA 2 BLOOD GLUCOSE MONITORING SYSTEM. I am wondering if that is going to communicate with the Animas pump.