If you are a scale fanatic — and I am one — get a Tanita scale that measures in .10s. It’s made a huge difference, especially since I am only trying to lose about 1/2 a week. This lets me see the fractions.
Blog
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Changing basals for school
I had discussed changing my basal rates with my Endo a couple of weeks ago. My basal rates have been close to perfect all summer, but I am typically much more active during the school year.
I really have had trouble maintaining blood sugar since Thursday — partly because I walked the building so many times, been installing software and moving computers around in my classroom.
I have dropped my carb ratio to 1:13 and most meals it works fine.
I’m really worried about my basal tomorrow, so I deleted my sleeping in basal rate, and put in two new rates with the lower basal rate while I’m at school.
I’ve gone ahead and switched to that rate. I’d rather be a touch too high than too low, and am planning to watch my blood sugar as carefully as I can.
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Free food isn’t free
This is one of the most important of my new beliefs and it has taken a lot to figure this one out.
I’ve gotten in trouble in the past because I’ve thought that I was obligated to eat other people’s food.
For example, I went to a workshop this summer where they provided the food. I honestly should have brought my own that trip, while theirs wasn’t bad, it was restaurant portions, and I couldn’t tell the makeup of the food.
I would have felt better, been in a better mood, and learned more if I had brought my Diet Gourmet food and knew what was in it.
On the other hand, I was on a two day workshop where the food was perfect for someone like me, so you never know.
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Introduction
I’m going to start putting in some weight loss tips for the morbidly obese.
Yeah, I’m still that, but after having once lost 100 pounds, and now having lost 30, I think I’m an expert.
So I’m going to start documenting the things that have worked for me.
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Around 30 pounds are gone
And they have been gone for 3 days.
I’ve probably lost around 3 pounds this week, I’ll know for sure tomorrow. It’s been pretty interesting from a diabetic logic point of view.
Monday-Wednesday was technically staff development days, but my department finished their tasks on Tuesday. We’re not core curriculum, our subject areas are covered by the state tests and we don’t have to meet “No Child Left Behind” requirements — yet. We just have to agree to assist.
I had trouble keeping my blood sugar at a reasonable level. 4 hours after every meal, my blood sugar was in the 180-200 range.
Thursday, I had to find a teacher whose room is on the opposite side of the building and I had to install software. It took about 6 trips to get it done, but I did it but every since then, my blood sugar was in the 110-130 range after meals.
Last night, went out with the husband, we ate dinner, went mall walking then a movie. We had walked about 1 leg of the mall when I started feeling funny, stopped and blood sugar was at 90. This was less than 30 minutes after eating, and I had been extremely conservative with insulin. So I ate a lifesaver, and then looked for “good carbs”. Found a snickerdoodle cookie at a cookie vendor, which believe me is almost pure sugar, and ate it.
30 minutes later the blood sugar was 96, but we were still walking, just real slow.
Ate some popcorn at the therater and again bolus very convervatively and after the movie blood sugar was at 180.
Woke up and I was at 106, so I didn’t do badly at all.
I’m going to watch extremely closely, and I am going to up my carb ratio to 1:13 and leave that way.
I am debating if I should change the basals on Monday — I’ve been “sanctioned” to do so by my endo.
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This promises to be good.
Bearing the Olympic Torch for Diabetes Awareness
Our patients often teach us more than we could ever teach them. Gary Hall, Jr, an 8-time Olympic medal winner, is one such patient (Figure 1). I was with him when he won 4 of those medals, and I am heading to Athens to see if he can win more. This is the first in a series of reports as I start my journey to the birthplace of the modern Olympics; in this report I will recount my past 6 years as the physician on the team of an elite athlete.
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Almost my one year anniversary
It’s actually the one year anniversary of my ordering my pump.
I was diagnosed with probably Type 2 diabetes, in September 2002. I
spent a few very unsuccessful weeks with Metaforum and then went to
shots, after finding that the side effects of the meds didn’t go real
well with classroom teaching.Shots wasn’t too bad, but I gained weight, I have a needle phobia, and
you really don’t want a lot of syringes around high school kids, in an
urban high school environment.Plus I had lousy control. I’m “lucky”. I’m very sensitive to blood
sugar, and I’m not comfortable unless my blood sugar is between 120
and 160. My vision blurs and I become a b*tch as it raises. I even
get dizzy if I have more than about a 10 point drop in blood sugar —
which presents its own interesting sympthoms.I had been researching the pump and trying to get my insurance to pay
for it, with no luck.I realized quickly that I had to do something if I was going to
survive the school year. My blood sugar was exceeding 350 while we
were in staff development. So the first morning I didn’t have to be
in meetings, I went to the doctor’s office and told him I was going to
the pump, got in the car and ordered my Animas IR1200.Best move I’ve ever made. Took a while, but this week, my blood sugar
hasn’t exceeded 200. It finally normalized to pre-staff development
level today and I’m predicting a change in basal next week. In fact,
even discussed it already with the endo. -
Weirdness
Very odd — yesterday and the day before had the exact same insulin usage but with completely different food.
Stress level is fairly high but not near as bad as the last two years at this time.
The other weirdness is that my insulin usage numbers show its time to go to a lower basal rate, but I’m still seeing high numbers after meals. I’m attributing a lot of that to stress though.
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People are noticing
We reported back to work on Monday, and my coworkers have noticed I’ve lost weight over the summer.
That’s really cool.
When asked, I tell them I’ve finally learned how to live healthy. And when people who knew back when I lost and regained over 100 pounds, I tell them that I learned from that exerience, that there isn’t a diet.