Living with Diabetes

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  • CDE Visit tomorrow

    I see my CDE tomorrow, and I always like to sit down before hand and right down my thoughts.

    I am NOT happy with any of my numbers right now. Everything is higher, including the AtHome A1c I did, my logs, my TDD usage, or worse yet, my weight. Weight has actually gone up lately.

    Part of the problem is the holiday season and the weather. With school out, I’m not as active. I wasn’t as active even last week because my students were taking exams.

    I need to pick up my cardio workouts and do more, but my knee is bothering me. I’ve been having random leg pains for the past few weeks, but it has settled into my left knee. I’ve been careful to keep it under my body and not turn on it.

    So the things I want to focus on is my random leg pain — who should I do see about it. Adjusting my basal rates so that I’m not chasing highs, which causing food cravings. I also need the tools to make an informed decision as to which meter I should be using since the PBM has sent information on both Lifescan and Accu-Chek meters. I’m leaning towards going to the Activa since I can download it.

  • OC Choice Awards

    Diabetes Mine: Shameless Plug, and Why the OC Matters

    Thank you Amy, for the nice mention on your website. Yes, I agree that the OC Choice Awards are kind of neat. For a very long time, I’ve been the only diabetes blog, and one of very few patient blogs.

    I will have to admit that my parent blog isn’t a patient blog, but Robert Cantor’s DB Medical Rants. He’s someone I really admire.

    I’m with you on the patronizing little pats on the head. Actually I get two different reactions — the figurative pats on the head, and then the people who really admire me for dealing with “really bad” diabetes very well.

  • Diabetes Discrimination

    Our regional news station — TXCN — has been running a story on Diabetes Discrimination. I haven’t seen a web link to this case, but basically an older man was not hired because the hiring company determined that his diabetes was under poor control. Basically he had sugar in a urine test, couldn’t remember his doctor’s name and didn’t know his last A1C results.

    Frankly, that fits my definition of poor control, but the good news for diabetics in Texas, is that the work place can’t discriminate based on that. That makes me feel a bit better, because WHILE I have pretty good control most of the time, I’ve had a few incidents each year since diagnosis where at the moment, my diabetes was out of control and it has disrupted my classroom.

  • Inset Adhesive Problems

    I use 43in 9mm Inset infusion sets on my lower abdomen. Lately, I’ve been noticing they don’t stick as well. The paper is actually coming up before I use them, and the kicker was this morning, the set was completely off.

    I called Animas, told them what was happening, and they are replacing the two boxes I have, and am taking the bad set, and the two probably bad boxes.

    I’ve been having problems for several boxes, and I finally decided that it wasn’t me. For the longest time, I was willing to accept that since they were longer, they were getting stressed more, but every one I open, has more and more paper curling off.

    The possible bad sets are lot 3340090, Ref 100-183-50.

  • Birthday

    My birthday — 46 is in a few hours. 46 bothers me. 46 is the year my father was diagnosed with congestive heart failure after being diagnosed with diabetes 3 years earlier — the same birth year I was.

    Granted, that was 36 years ago, and a wealth of knowledge and technology has come along since then. When he was diagnosed, they told him not to eat sugar and sent him home.

    In my case, I was sent home with oral medications and told to make an appointment with a CDE service as quickly as possible.

    I’ve got blood sugar monitors, and the pump. Stuff they didn’t even dream of giving to a Type 2 diabetic. Oh, I’m not even sure they had blood sugar monitors — it was 1982, and they darn sure didn’t have pumps. They didn’t put Type 2’s on insulin. I think he had a urine test but I’m not sure of that even.

    My goal is to avoid my father’s fate as much as possible by keeping the best control I can.

  • Cudos to Accu-Chek

    I am seriously thinking of switching to the Aviva meter. Mainly because the co-pay is considerably cheaper than the Freestyle strips, and partly because Freestyle is paired with two pumps I don’t care for. Also, my last two “visits” with customer service on the phone left an off taste.

    One of my issues with the Aviva meter, was the non-ability to download, which you now can. I sprung for the $29.95 for the Compass software, which I am impressed with. It was easy to load and works well.

    The good news, is that the IR port that came with my pump works just fine with the Aviva meter — one of the things I was hoping for. I didn’t want to have to deal with another peripheral.

    I sure wish the meter would work directly with EzManager and my Treo, but that’s just hoping for too much.

    And yeah, Roche is Distronic — or should I say Roche bought Distronic — but I kinda of like the Roche pump, too bad they have never been able to sell one in the US.

    I’m going to snag one of each of the Lifescan meters from my CDE on Tuesday, try each of them for a couple of days and decide which I’m ultimately going to switch too.

    All of them sadly, take up more purse space (and pocket space) than the Flash.

  • Why the Animas Sale is making me nervous

    First, I worry a lot. I get it honest. For example, I spent the last few days worrying that my DOTC agility entry wouldn’t get in. It’s a trivial thing, but we only go to a few agility trials a year — just the ones in the local area. Plus they have increased the entry limits, so I shouldn’t worry any more. But I do. First, I’ve screwed up my entries before, and have gotten the wrong address on the envelope. I do that about once a year. There is also the opportunity to mail the entry too early.

    But about Animas.

    I like dealing with a small company that is committed to one product. For example, Therasense was great. All of their employees cared, the few times I’ve talked with them. Before Abbott bought them, I dealt with customer support about 3 times. I will admit I’ve only dealt with Abbott customer support once, but I wasn’t super impressed at the time. Maybe they are better now.

    And maybe Animas won’t change. That’s what I am hoping for, but I haven’t been impressed by the diabetes support by the large companies. I also have not been impressed by the Lifescan meters. But I am going to give both the One Touch and the One Touch Ultra another try when I see my CDE on Tuesday.

  • How often should you test?

    Diabetes – How Frequently Should You Test?

    My primary care physician and I went around and around on this, and I finally solved the problem by going to a endo who is a pump expert.

    If you look at my logs, I tend to test 6-12 times a day. The 6 is on the way low side. I’m having a bad day if I am testing 12.

    Here’s my schedule.

    I always test first thing in the morning. That’s going to tell me how I did the day before, and tell me how today is going to go. If I am high, I screwed up yesterday. Also, I’ll have high blood sugars all day.

    I test 2 hours after each meal, that way, I can adjust any dosage that I was off on, and I often test before my meals — that’s often 2 hours after the last correction.

    I tend to test if I am driving and I haven’t eaten recently — that’s usually right after school. I also try to test before I go to bed.

    If I haven’t eaten recently, I will also test during exercise, and sometimes after, just to make sure I’m not going too low.

    I’m sure my phamarcy service would prefer I tested less, but they haven’t given me a problem over it.

  • Vote for the Best Diabetes Webblogs

    The Diabetes OC Website: Nominees for Diabetes OC Blog Choice Awards 2005

    Nominees for Diabetes OC Blog Choice Awards

    Please vote! And yes, this site has been nominated for Type 2 blogs.

  • I knew this would happen someday

    Animas shares soar after acquisition news

    I’d read an article perdicting this about a year ago, and figured it would happen someday, it will be interesting to see what happens.

    First Therasense, and that acquisittion sure has not helped the Navigator.

    Animas shares soar after acquisition news