Blog

  • D-Blogging

    I will admit I “cheated” in a way, I wrote my blog entry last night, and kept it inactive until I got up this morning.

    I wanted to make sure that I remembered and got the entry up. Welcome to all the commenters, I’m going to get to everyone else’s blog this evening after I’ve gotten my workout in and have eaten dinner.

    Sorry about the commenting being off. I wish someone had told me. I thought I had it fixed, but it just wouldn’t stay that way.

    Hopefully the commenting is back on.

  • D-Blogging

    I will admit I “cheated” in a way, I wrote my blog entry last night, and kept it inactive until I got up this morning.

    I wanted to make sure that I remembered and got the entry up. Welcome to all the commenters, I’m going to get to everyone else’s blog this evening after I’ve gotten my workout in and have eaten dinner.

    Sorry about the commenting being off. I wish someone had told me. I thought I had it fixed, but it just wouldn’t stay that way.

    Hopefully the commenting is back on.

  • Diabetes Sucks

    It really does.

    I’ve been diabetic — officially diagosed — over 4 years now. I’ve done it a bunch of different ways.

    When I was first diagnosed I was on oral meds. It drove me nuts. Nothing I did really affected my blood sugar. And I couldn’t get my blood sugar down fast enough to suit me. You have to know that I went from almost normal blood sugars, to really screwed up blood sugars in the space of literally hours (for those who are new to me and the blog, I was pre-diabetes for years, but didn’t get diagnosed until I “flunked” a glucose tolerance test. I suspect that I had been doing a pretty fair job at controlling things through diet and exercise, up until the test.

    I switched to MDI pretty quickly and tried that route for almost a year, but kept gaining weight. I also had a problem with rollar coasting blood sugars.

    My life has really changed for the better because of the pump. It allows a lot of flexibility — and I don’t even utilize everything that makes it good. For example, ever since the recall, I have not been using the Food list, and I should. Lately I’ve been slowly working on customizing mine.

    I also don’t use the temporary basal enough. I’m trying to use it more though.

    I really think that more Type 2’s should consider pumping. It really DOES make a difference.

    However, diabetes still sucks.

    I’ve gone low with no explaination, I’ve gone high with no explaination. The only way to deal with it, is test often, and fix whatever goes wrong when it goes wrong.

  • Whew!

    Man, it’s important to have a good medical team, and to keep good eyes on your numbers.

    Yesterday freaked me out, but I knew it was coming — all weekend I was lower than I normally in on the weekend, so I wasn’t surprised to see some lows yesterday.

    Decreasing all my bolusess so far today has worked (I haven’t seen tonight’s numbers yet).

    I also dropped my morning basal by the lowest amount. I’m always nervous about adjusting basals, and like to take that slow.

    My numbers were very “normal” all day. A bit high after breakfast, but I don’t think I’ve every really gotten the bolus right for that particular breakfast and I am always high after it.

    Correction worked and was around 100 before lunch, and was right at 140 2 hours after. It was at around 100 again before dinner.

    I know that the changes I’ve been experiencing has been due to weight loss. As of this morning, I’ve lost over 40 pounds since I started seeing an encronologist for the first time (spring break, year before last). I’ve also lost over 35 pounds since I started on Sylmin, and I’ve lost 25 pounds since the start of the school year. It shows.

    Unfortunately my energy level to get through the day isn’t higher. Part of that is just due to the schedule I have. However, I do handle my dogs better in agility and can run courses better.

  • Today

    I just checked my weight, and I also just downloaded my pump, and I’ve hit a couple of new lows — my average TDD is less than 33 units a day, AND my weight is the lowest it’s been in the evening.

    I am thinking of making my official weigh in day Wednesday, since I tend to weigh the least that day of the week. I tend to eat more on the weekend because a) I have more time, and b) some eating is boredom eating.

  • Running a bit low

    Actually I fill like I am runing a lot low. I was running a bit low all weekend, and then this morning, two hours after breakfast was at 90, and a bit confused. It got worse.

    I ended up eating about 4 lifesavers with no insulin.

    My blood sugar at lunch was 90, and is 130 now, 2 hours after lunch with a few gulps of real Coke.

    This is probably a side effect of the weight I have been losing.

  • GERD

    Last night was the first time since I’ve been playing around with medication that I slept all night. I did a Protonix in the morning and again at night. So that looks like that is the best solution. That was even after eating a salad after 8:00 pm and some Snickers minatures (blood sugar was lower than I like to go to bed with).

    I’ll have to contact the doctor’s office and get that going.

  • Finally

    I finally got my MacMini set up downstairs in my “gym”. It took reinstalling everything, because I never could get the display to work with it, with the resolution I had set up on the good monitor upstairs, and I couldn’t get the MacMini to stay at a lower resolution. Very odd.

    But that’s okay.

    More weirdness. I bought a cheap Mac keyboard from Fry’s, and it wouldn’t work on it, even though I could get a PC keyboard to work through it’s USB port. And Fry’s could get it to work on their computer. I got a replacement though and it works fine.

    I’ve pretty much have it set up the way I want.

    I’ll probably get a second one later, as I love the form factor. I would like this one to be wireless and to have more memory.

  • Diabetes sucks — or is it just my life?

    Last Friday I was freaking out, because I wasn’t using as much insulin and I had a hypoglymic episode. Today I was fighting high blood sugars all day.

    So here’s what my day was like —

    Once a semester, I take a class period off, and teach a class on operant conditioning for one of my best friends. We show operant conditioning in action with Marcie, my beagle. We’ve done this for a bunch of years.

    So I left the house early, with her in tow.

    A meeting was scheduled in my classroom at 8:00 am, and the presenter met me outside my classroom as I am dropping my things off, so I take an extra few minutes to set up my computer and video projector for her.

    I then have 1st period, and I get two new students. One a new enrollee, who knows from where, and another kid is a REALLY poorly behaved student. Also one of my kiddos showed up, after a not seeing him for about two weeks, and he had to make sure everyone knew he was there. At first I thought it was the dog, but once I got rid of those two — the one went to content mastery, I sent the other out because he wouldn’t calm down.

    4th period, just as I finish lunch, my ELI specialist showed up. I knew she was coming but not sure what she planned. She observed me teaching 4th period, and we spent my planning period going over what happened and how I should do thing.

    I “fixed” the things she pointed out and taught my 6th period class. It was a good thing, but hard on the blood sugar apparently.

    I was absolutely done in 7th period, but I did finally make it home. Of course, no planning got done, and no papers got graded and I’m going to have to do all this weekend.

    My blood sugar is finally back down, but I’m up to 40 units again today with no additional calories.

  • Count me as one who loves Symlin

    Close Concerns

    Not only have see better A1C’s since starting insulin, I’ve done something I haven’t been able to do without it.

    Lose weight. I’ve lost around 25 pounds since starting Symlin in June. I had previously lost around 15 pounds over a year time period, and it was a horrible struggle.

    Losing weight on Symlin is extremely easy.

    I’ve reduced my daily insulin usage from over 120 units per day to recently around 33 units. My A1C went from 6.9 to 6.0

    I have not gone completely without problems. With the weight lose comes constant diligence to insure that I don’t go low. In fact, I had two hypoglymic events last week. It’s taken some time to figure it out, but I’ve determined that I can no longer dose prior to the meal, but have to dose immediately. I had been dosing 30 minutes before the meal to avoid a high blood sugar reading post prandial. We’re figuring with the weight lose, I’ve also gotten a reduction in insulin resistance.

    I’ve gotten very good at tweaking bolus rates.