Living with Diabetes

Blog

  • I can’t decide about this

    Diabetes Advocacy: Call for Action from the Diabetes Bloggers

    First, my coverage is through an ERISTA insurance. I’m very fortunate that the current insurance does cover everything I need for my medical care, though it is expensive.

    First, I don’t like the way insurance is being done in this country now. I’m pretty locked into my current employer. Other school districts in our area who do not have the state insurance do not have as good as coverage. In fact, if I went to work for the school district I live it, I would be without coverage for about 6 months for any pre-existing condition (remember the ERISTA thing?)

    Let’s face it, we’re stuck working for a partcular group of employers once we get diagnosed for diabetes and I’m not sure that is right.

    I really think that insurance should be more assessible, and I’m not sure this law is going to help it.

    But I will pass the information along, and let you make your own decision.

  • It worked!

    This morning’s change worked. I ate breakfast, hit the temporary basal about the same time, and then did the workout. I took awhile to do my workout since I am doing laundry and housework at the same time, plus some computer work (the puppy stuff), but now my blood sugar is 114! No low!

  • Puppy

    I’ve started a puppy blog at http://www.kweaver.org/puppy in case any one is interested.

    Yes I think it’s time to get another dog. Both Marcie and Maggie will probably be retiring from agility in 2-3 years. I want a puppy so I can do the agility thing “right”.

  • Change in Exercise Procedure

    I’ve finally gotten back on schedule when it comes to working out. Between the PT taking up two hours of my day and the new schedule, it took a while. My blood sugar was higher than it should be and I was doing a lot of corrections. I’ve been exercising pretty steadily for the last 3 weeks, so today I made a bit of change.

    Before I was eating if I was low after exercise and this week found I was almost every day I exercised.

    So today, I turned on my temporary basal just as soon as I thought about working out. Especially since I also do Sunday’s exercise in sets, alternating working out with housework.

    This week I plan on going to the temporary basal as soon as I get off work. I did have to shift Monday’s cardio session to Wednesday as I have to take some kids to a tutoring session and will be getting home to late to work out.

    Planning and writing things down really does help.

  • Diabetes Detection Dogs

    Someone just commented on the blog and asked about diabetes dogs, and I want to give my thoughts on this. There are several issues.

    The first is selling of dogs to assist people with medical issues. I know of no reputable organization that sells dogs to the handicapped. By reputable, I mean Seeing Eye Dogs, Guide Dogs of America and Canine Companions for Independence. There are lots of other organizations with similar goals, missions, and funding. What all of these organizations have in common, is that they are able to gain enough volunteer and monetary support to run their programs and service their users. The users of these dogs do not have an income that will warrant the purchase of such a dog.

    Back when I was training K-9 police dogs, they went for $10,000 to $20,000. There are several reasons for that cost. First, training dogs is extremely labor intensive, as is training their handler. In addition, the police department is paying for future expertise as needed, both to update training AND for expert witnesses to go to court and testify in the team’s behalf. If you priced out the labor to train a guide dog or other assistance dog, it would probably exceed that cost. Thus the average family would never be able to afford it. That’s the reason for the volunteer and monetary support.

    I’ve trained drug dogs, taught others to train dog dogs and certified dogs for drug detection. Here’s what it takes to train a detection dog — a repeatable circumstance that can be documented and trained for. I’m do not believe that a dog can be trained using Person’s A symthoms and be reliable for Person’s B sympthoms.

    As a diabetic, I am not willing to be my life in the paws of other of my dogs. I have started to see that little Maggie sometimes reacts differently to me when I am low, but I think it is due to too factors: I’m searching for food, and I tend to fumble around more, so she sees it as an opportunity to get food. So here’s how I feel about the situation…

    If your family wants a dog, get one. If you are lucky enough that the dog is observent enough to pick up on your sympthoms use that as another sign in your environment that you need to deal with your diabetes, BUT I don’t believe that you should rely on it 100%.

    I also believe if your son is as poorly controlled as you say, your medical team should be using continuous monitoring and find out why your son is poorly controlled. I am not blaming you, I’m blaming your medical team. There is currently a 3-day sensor available (the precursors to the Guardian). I would also be bugging Medtronic and see if the guardian is a legimate answer for you. Frankly, I think a Guardian would be cheaper, even at its current price. Remember, you have to buy the dog, feed it and maintain its training.

    Oh, and remember that maintaining the training is duplicating the exact conditions the dog needs to observe. And that’s the primary reason I won’t be involved in that kind of training for myself or others. I don’t want to go into that condition unless I have to.

  • Lab Results

    My endo was worried about my kidney values, in January they indicated that I might be dehydrated but they are better now.

    Also, my A1C is better than it was — 6.6, but it has been better.

  • Weird Blood Sugar Resolved?

    I called Animas before lunch and they talked me into changing my site, and now, two hours after lunch, my blood sugar is back to 140, where it should be AND where it was.

    Whew!!

    I need to remember, when things are consistantly weird, change the set!

  • Bolus Problems Continued

    My blood sugar was 201, 2 hours after eating. I’ve called my Endo’s office to ask for assistance.

  • Disturbing…

    Something very strange is going on.

    I had the pump failure this morning and rebooted the pump.

    Did a site change.

    Ate breakfast, blood sugar was in the 230’s, 2 hours after. Corrected and by noon was 90.

    Ate lunch, blood sugar was in the 250’s, 2 hours after. Corrected and by noon was 107.

    Ate supper, and blood sugar was 180, 1 1/2 hours after, ate a pre-agility class snack, and was 130 after two hours (and two dogs) of class. Now I’m 260.

    I changed my correction factor, increased it by 1, as the correction factor seems a bit overkill, and has for days.

    But I’m wondering what’s going on with the bolus. It was fine the rest of the week.

    Think I’ll call the endo’s office tomorrow — BUT I don’t have a duty period tomorrow.

    — Added later

    The blood sugar IS going down. Man, I hate to sleep when things like this are going on.

    And the good news is that my TDD is slowly going down.

    For a second I thought I figured it out, but maybe not. I used the same bottle of Symlin this morning and lunch, but different bottle for dinner and agility snack. So I don’t think it is bad Symlin. And the insulin I used in the set change was the last in a vial. BUT the corrections are working.

    —- Later

    Just woke up sick to my stomach and sure that I was too low but at 165.

  • Best week ever…

    This school year.

    I shouldn’t jinx it, but we’ve only got a short day tomorrow (and teacher torture in the afternoon — it’s called early release), and I’ve got a tutoring session on Saturday.

    But man did I need that spring break. I’ve finally been able to enjoy my CS students. I didn’t realize how overwhelmed I felt. Imagine going from 2 preps to 5 preps (for the non-teacher, a prep is a subject you teach). Imagine getting a whole new set of faces and behavior to learn in the middle of the year.

    The AP kids are the most fun. We have the most outrageous conversations. Most generated by them == a bit of avoidance behavior, but I love the way they think. The key to teaching AP is to point them in the right direction, stay out of their way, and dig them out of their holes they did. (Remember, they were supposed to have PreAP the year before … and I did at least teach 4 of them PreAP and one of them Webmastering — only 3 are new to programming and they are good).

    I do have to teach PreAP and regular Computer Science. That involves introducing each concept (I’ve been doing that on computer-less Friday), assign them programs and give them a chance to solve them on their own, and then on the day they are due showing them how to do it. The really good kiddos — the ones that will go on to AP, will have solved the problem the day before it is due. The normal kids will take notes and figure it out about the day after it’s due, and the ones who don’t care never will. That’s the fun thing about teaching CS, you have three bell curves, not one.

    My philosophy, which I shared with them this week when I told almost everyone they were getting a failure notice, is that they can come and ask for help anytime and I promise I won’t make them feel stupid. And if I do, they have my permission to head me upside the head. I watched their formal teacher in action for a year, and his favorite thing to do was to make people feel stupid so they are afraid to ask me.

    The worst I ever say is — “gee, you can’t spell, but then I can’t either, but at least I spell it the same wrong way every time”. Or “Gee, don’t you hate that I saw that within two seconds of glancing at your screen? Don’t feel bad, it would have taken me hours if it were my program. I often make mistakes when I do solve a problem in class, a few times on purpose to show them how to dig themselves out of that particular hole. But most of the time, they are truly honest mistakes, and I think it helps them to see me make them AND for them to catch them before I do.

    My Algebra I kiddos are getting better. My 1st period group rarely gives me any guff anymore. I am still having problems with the 7th.

    Their favorite thing to do to torture everyone in the computer lab and every room on our hall is to turn up the sound as loud as possible. Well, I found a little program called Wizmo and it has an option to turn off sound. So I installed it on their computers and used Lanschool to set it up. I can actually turn off the sound on every computer with two mouse clicks.

    It was so cool. Had the math coach with me who feels the same way about this group as I do, and I just started laughing hysterically. They would blast the room with sound, I’d hit two mouse clicks as she was watching, and shut off every speaker in the room. They blast again after a minute or two (fumbling to turn on the volume), I’d hit two more mouse clicks, and shut off the sound again. That went on for 5 more minutes, I showed them how I did it even, and reminded them to BRING HEADPHONES! I also reminded them, it might take a few days, but I always win. Besides, I have the power of the gradebook on my side and they are NOT passing.

    This are the same little darlings that spent two weeks of flashing laser pointers in every one’s eyes including mine while I was teaching — they didn’t realize that laser pointers have nothing on the light from an overhead … and got that the #$#$# that had it and turned him in. Of course, the administrator didn’t do anything to him, but I got the laser pointer.

    Lovely children. Everyone should be blessed to have a classroom full of them. Do realize that I like most of the students in the class, it’s just about 6 of them who have to torture everyone around them. And I despise people who keep others from learning.