Was stressed out and not sure why. All my numbers were good. A1C down, weight down, blood sugar good, etc.
I’m switching to the One Touch Verio meter and ditching the Animas remote for a while as I am having trouble reading the old One Touch meter. The screen is very sweet.
I’m going to either the Medtronic pump or the OmniPod. I’ve heard from the Omnipod rep, not the Medtronic. I’m 90% sure I’m going with Medtronic.
Off to the pharmacy to get supplies and a shingles vaccine.
So far the only real contender is the Accu-Chek. I like it over the other pumps because it is a luer lock and I could use the same sets, though they don’t sell them on the website. Staying with the same insertion set lets out the Minimed and the Omnipod. Also the Omnipod doesn’t have enough basal settings.
I like that the Remote control is a bit more modern than the Ping meter, but I don’t think it has a food list. I also don’t think it has an IOB calculator.
Sad that Animas hasn’t updated their user interfaces or software in 4 years. The equipment is exactly the same as it was 4 years ago. In fact, I probably wouldn’t even have them ship me new equipment….
I was avoiding the scales and the meter today, since I had a bit of post-Halloween and Pep Rally day stress.
Pleasantly surprised at both a good blood sugar and a good weight! Still under a nasty decade.
My A1C is slowly creeping down. It’s at 7.9 now. I think the highest was 9.1 Also not bad considering we just had homecoming and Halloween, which seem to be the same holiday around here. Both are celebrated with costumes and candy.
I will be seeing my endo on Wednesday and my pump warranty is out in January. I’m shopping for a new pump and it is dismaying to find out that there has not been in advances in technology in four years. I am considering all the other pump manufactures now, and in particular the OmniPod. Good news is that a dog friend of mine just got one.
One frustrating thing is that the Animas people have not upgraded the pump, the meter or the EzManager software in the four years that I have owned my pump, yet my insurance people will have to shell out the purchase price of a new pump ad I’ll have to pay the upgrade cost of a new pump.
<argh>
Plus there is no guarantee that I’ll get insurance coverage on CGMS equipment which is the only thing that the new pump improves. In fact, from the website, it looks like they have gotten rid of the remote.
I have a bedroom full of clothing I can’t wear. Most of it too small. The weird part, even though I’ve lost a lot of weight, I’m not losing it in my midsection, so I am still wearing a lot of my old clothing. I have had to discard some skirts, as they don’t stay up all day. I’m not ready to get rid of any of my old stuff either. It’s a real dilemma.
You’d think after 8 years, I have the pumping stuff down.
Recently I had my first spurter. I have had them with blood sugar tests, but not with a insertion site. Looked like an ax murder.
Spent two days fighting highs, only to discover that the cannula was kinked when I took the site off. Obviously some insulin was getting in and I didn’t smell bandaid. Drove dog nuts and me too. Next time just change the site, it’s not like I don’t have enough sites.
Oh, and if you check the main site, you’ll see I’m losing weight again. Hopefully don’t scare myself out of losing it. And trust me, this is a tough time to lose weight.
Fortunately I’ve been in maintenance mode since school started. Haven’t really even thought about it, and am surprised, but I’ve managed to maintain the 10 pounds I lost this summer. Haven’t been weighing regularly so even dreaded getting on the scales.
Back before I got the lap band I was gaining 10 pounds a month, especially during the school year and especially when I was stressed out as much as I have been lately – though that was mostly stress from dealing with other teachers, not student stress.
I think that the fill I got before school started helped – though I haven’t completed adjusted to it. I still have moments when I eat too much but I’m learning to split meals in half.
Also learning to do Slim Fast at school.
After Thursday it will be very hard to get me to go out with out Dulce. Blood sugar wise, I’ve had a fairly decent school year. I’ve been very good at control during the day and I’ve learned, once again to tell demanding student – please wait a moment, I need to test my blood sugar (did that at least once yesterday).
Thursday I was having one of those diabetes days. Blood sugar was high no matter how much insulin I did each check, and in fact, she indicated as we were packing and sure enough I was at 220.
I corrected.
As we headed out, I thought it would be a good idea to get the gym out of the way on the way home. I was also working on her stay on the mat behavior while working out, so I didn’t give her picking up the leash much thought 15 minutes into the workout as she will sometimes offer that as a behavior when we’re training.
The third time she was adamant about it, I checked and was at 90. Time for me, personally to quit the work out and get some carbs in me before we had a bad evening.
Sometime this month is my 10th year diagnosed with diabetes.
We’d had a day off, probably a staff development day that I’d already done in the summer. I took the day to get some medical issues taken care of, my glucose tolerance test and a mammogram. Not sure why they didn’t get done in the summer but there you go. September is the start of a new insurance year for us teachers.
I went to a lab in Irving, and had to drink some foul sugar filled liquid every few hours. As the day went I got madder and madder, but I thought part of it was being near where my best friend was killed and going to see his memorial site – it was less than a mile away from the lab.
By the time I got to the mammogram site, I was so mad I wanted to hit someone and didn’t care who. I wasn’t very nice to anyone there, but they were okay.
Don’t remember the weekend much, but to this day, remember that feeling of anger when I first got up and persisted as the morning went on. By the time I saw my first students, I knew there was something seriously wrong with me and that I couldn’t handle the classroom. I had a call out to my doctor’s office while they were trying to reach me through the front office. I remember they sent a sub up to me to tell me that my doctor’s office needed to talk with me and see me immediately and that the sub was taking my classes until I was done.
They immediately booked me into a diabetes education class and hooked me up with Metformin. I figured out pretty quickly that Metformin was doing the job and switched to mix insulin. That didn’t do it either so we ended up with a mix and with a sliding scale.
Two years later I was on a pump.
Now, I’m on my third insulin pump, soon to go to a 4th, liquid metformin, and using an diabetes alert dog.
For 8 years I had pretty good control and then skidded off the wagon due to some environmental factors. My blood sugar was so high I was considering checking myself into a in-patient mental facility until I realized that it was the blood sugar.
It’s taken two years to get me back on the wagon, and the dog does a pretty good job.
I was asked for an update today so sent out the following:
I think well.
From a medical standpoint my official A1C was 8.1 when I started working with the dog à I got a Bayer A1C At Home test and it read 6.7 yesterday. I sent that to my doctor and he was quite impressed. Since I have spent two years over 9.0 and we were both upset about that, I’m doing much better. We’ll know better when we get his lab results back, I see him in October. It’s always best to compare lab results to lab results.
The biggest issue is that everyone wants to pet her. I explain to them that it is against district policy and against service dog rules and they still pout. Sometimes people get to her before I can get I also mention how tired she would be at the end of the day. That helps some. The cheerleaders wanted her to come to the pep rally and I thought that would be too much noise. They were disappointed. I also had students who wanted her to come to the game tonight which I also think would be too much. I also don’t take her into the cafeteria. Usually no call for me to be there but yesterday needed some lunch.
She spends her day in the cage, it’s next to my desk. She is restless when my blood sugar is high – this hasn’t been a good week between meet the parent and a late meeting last night, I haven’t been to the gym, so I have been a tad high.
I’ve found out how she alerts when she is in a cage at a meeting – at the AP Kickoff she kept rattling the door. They told us they would have food and they feed us cookies and brownies from Jason’s. I’m learning to bring my own food.
I have a few students who are allergic or afraid of dogs. She doesn’t seem to bother them. One student in particular is one of my favorites and I thought he was teasing me about being afraid. He really is, but as long as he doesn’t see her he’s fine. The others are even less vocal about it. Most of the day the kids don’t see her.
Bathroom isn’t an issue. She usually doesn’t go at lunch, usually goes during my planning period.
I’ve taken her small cage to student assemblies. For staff meetings I’ve just taken her, and she settles down fairly quickly, unless my blood sugar is high.
So far, she’s been to Conrad for the kickoff after school, and to Buckner after school. When I have to go somewhere else, I do tell them she’s coming.