Living with Diabetes

Blog

  • Icy Weather

    We’re under a winter storm watch and the local stations ahve been showing roads with ice on them.  We’ve been lucky as we’ve gotten lots of rain — in fact, we just had a heavy rain storm come through — and no ice.  The weather people claim that the heavy rains means we’ve had a temperature rise — I wouldn’t know as we don’t have an outdoor therometer, and I won’t install weather bug or another type of invasive temperature service.

    The bad part is that the weather people keep raving on about the worse things that could happen.  Of course, very few of the things that they rant about will happen, and they do point that out.  My problem, is the joy they take in reporting this stuff.

    So I have some problems.  What IF the power goes out.  Well, I pulled out my emergency CPAP battery and am making sure it has a full charge.

    My next problem is tomorrow morning.  I have an appointment for lab work tomorrow — A1c, and the like and it really should be fasting.  The winter storm crap is supposed to be over at 6:00 am, but does that mean the people will be in the lab? 

    Guess I have to wait and see.

  • Bridling at Insulin’s Cost, States Push for Generics – New York Times

    Link to Bridling at Insulin’s Cost, States Push for Generics – New York Times

    I am surprised that there are no generic insulins, too.  But then making insulin is a completely difference process than making regular drugs.

      Of course, long acting regular insulin is fairly cheap and can be obtained without a prescription, per Lanting’s philosophy.  For example, if you go out to Walmart.com and find their mail order pharmacy, you can get regular insulin for 48.46 for 3 vials.

    Now a pump user CAN use that insulin, but you have to remember that most modern pumps use a shorter acting insulin and are programmed to deal with it. 

    The good news is that Walmart sells the more rapid activing insulin for the same price, and they also sell 70/30 for that same price.

    Lower cost alternatives ARE needed.  Not everyone is as lucky as I have to have great insurance, and even I didn’t at one time, and that could change again.

    And I will admit there are times that needing my insurance have kept me from doing other things.  It’s even kept me from other school districts.

  • Improving on blogging and Exercise Last Week

    I got all my workouts in last week and even used the pedometer most of the week. I even did well with the pedometer. Think I’ll ditch it today though.
    I will admit I do not blog as much as I would like.
    A lot of the time I want to blog I am either not in front of a computer or if I am there I have 90 other computer things I need to do that feel more important. So I am going to try usung the Pocket PC more to blog. Besides school has blocked most of my domains including this one.

  • Life is MUCH better

    Last weekend, I upped all my basals by .1 — and then after a couple of days, analyzed my TDD and dropped my boluses by 1 and increased my correction factor.

    I’m back to normal.

    Blood sugar has been under 110 the past couple of morning, postprandials have been good, and I feel better.

    The pedometer experiment has been interesting. I did just over 7000 steps yesterday and I’m currently at 7400 steps today. I know it will be higher tomorrow as I have a long workout scheduled.

    All in all, life is better.

    I did finally use the last of the Inset IIs. Still haven’t seen a survey from them, but they may still be suffering from the holidays.

  • Ezmanager

    Well, I’ve figured out a method of emailing my food to myself using the phone and then adding my meals to EzManager later. I do have to have a working Palm set up if I need to delete any foods. I can add phones no problem to EzManager.

    I may still carry both devices for a while, just because it’s easy to only enter the data once.

    Alternatively — I was just checking this out — I might copy carbs from Dhealth because I can enter them through the mobile phone.

  • I thought I was on the last one…

    But I really am now. I had one left in my Pump-Pak. I really do think they have improved the adhesive.

    They’ve done a nice job!

  • Another week end

    Got another week of cardio and strength exercise in.

  • Biting the bullet

    Though my blood sugar is better, I know what I need to do — besides, I’m going into the doctor’s office in a couple of weeks.

    Yeah, log everything.

    And while I could use Diabetes Pilot, I’m going to my Treo — and carrying two devices, and logging with EzManager. It’s the only software that I can find that gives the whole picture in one place.

    I could move my Sim card back to the Treo, but man, I like the Cingular 8125 too much.

    So I’m back to two devices, though I am kicking around the idea of using my old Zire.

  • dHealth

    I’m really impressed with Arthur at dHealth — you’ll see his comment below. We’ve been having a conversation off list which has resulted with me doing some playing with the mobile phone features of the website.

    He’s also going to send me a pedometer, so I’ll give that a try again, though I’m not wild about dealing with gadgets, plus pedometers rarely work with my clothing.

  • My blood sugars are finally unscrewing up

    My blood sugars have been screwed up for the past two weeks. About the time I started the Inset II trials so I was putting part of the blame on the short cannula. I might have been wrong on that.

    Last night, I just finally got fed up with having too high blood sugars all the time, downloaded my pump data, and then set down and added .1 to each of my basal values. It seems to have done the trick even though I don’t have carb counts on my Diet Gourmet meals, my blood sugar has gone to MY normal.

    Of course, this means checking more often.

    And I’m still on the Inset II.