Do A Little Dance
I got a call today from Edgepark. Edgepark is the company that was hired by CIGNA to handle medical devices for diabetes care (or something like that).
So, I get today’s call. It was the third call that I was waiting for in my quest to acquire a CGMS (that’s fully paid for by insurance).
I was very excited to be told that I was approved for a CGMS, it and it’s monthly supplies were fully covered, and that he’d put it in the mail today and I’d receive it early next week.
I was denied the CGMS last year, and the process to get my pump actually took longer (over a month) to get than the mere 4 days it took to get me approved for the CGMS this year.
I’m very excited, and yes, I did do a little dance.
A1c - It didn’t use to mean anything
It’s probably only been during the last year that I’ve put any thought into my A1c and what it’s meant.
I can remember when it was in the 13-14’s and I was like “eh, whatever”. The A1c always told on me, it didn’t matter how good the numbers in my log were, the A1c would tell the truth. The A1c told the doctors that the numbers in my book were manufactured. They weren’t real. But the reality of it was, I didn’t care. I cared about my A1c about as much as I cared for my diabetes, and the truth is, I didn’t care for my diabetes back then and to this day, I still don’t care for it. I wouldn’t be hurt if it just packed up its bags and left me one day.
My A1c on the other hand, all of the sudden that number means something to me. I’m always concerned and when the doctor comes in it’s all I can do to greet them before I blurt out “what’s my A1c?”
The first time my A1c was below 8 it was because that was when my seizures started happening and there was an abundance of low blood sugars. That was years ago.
Then about 2 years ago, I dropped below 8. It was probably still because of the abundance of lows.
I’d even say that my current A1c of 6.9 is due in part to the abundance of low blood sugars that I have. But I’d also say that over the last year, it’s also due to me checking my blood more regularly, actually taking insulin at mealtimes, stuff like that. Just the general paying more attention to my diabetes.
What pisses me off about this A1c is the one I had 3 months ago was 6.5. That number was more likable. I have a whole list of excuses too as to why my A1c went up. I had a nasty infection for 6 weeks. During that same six weeks I couldn’t exercise, I was in a foul mood, I was stressed, and I was PMSing. Those 6 weeks were practically half of the 3 months between doctor appointments.
But then, I had to be honest with myself. If I had really wanted to fight to keep my A1c at 6.5, I could’ve done so. It was as simple as not not checking my blood because I didn’t want to see the high numbers. It would’ve been as simple as readjusting my basal rates, well, I had at one point, but it was too late. There was stuff that I could’ve done outside of my normal realm to control those numbers. But I didn’t.
So, I’ve got this A1c of 6.9 and I don’t like, and for the last 3 days, I’ve been checking my blood sugar EVERY.TWO.HOURS…I’ve been carefully calculating my carbs and making sure that I took my insulin before I ate and not after. I’ve seen lows, but not as many highs. It’s an improvement. And yet, my need for this 6.5 A1c has got me pissed off because of all the attention I need to pay to my diabetes. I’m not liking it, well, I never have liked it and that’s generally what has caused me to slack off in the past, but now I can’t slack because I’ve got this thing in my life called “triathlons”. I did one with high blood sugars, I liked it about as much as I like the idea of a hole in my head. Coincidentally, I did one with low blood sugars as well and I liked that about as much as I like the idea of a hole in my head.
And so, as I sit here, I’ve got 2 frustrations battling each other. The first being I don’t like my A1c. I liked it better when it was 6.5. The second being I don’t like all the work I have to put into my diabetes to get that 6.5 A1c. Can we say delimma?
Are You Low?
I’m out in the kitchen grabbing a cup from the cupboard this morning. I’m never in the kitchen on work mornings before I’m dressed at a minimum and if I’m in the kitchen on work mornings after I’m dressed it’s to grab my lunch kit from the fridge. I usually never am out there grabbing a cup from the cupboard on work mornings. Because of this, mom asks “are you low?” I answer honestly because I know she’s doing this for her safety: “yes” and as I walk to the fridge to grab juice she says “ok, I won’t talk to you then.” I get the juice from the fridge and mutter something about being “48″.
I feel bad for my mom sometimes, there’s been a history of her saying or asking the wrong thing when I’m low and her getting her head bit off. It’s not purposely done, I’m just more prone to senselessly causing an arguement/attacking when I’m low.
So now if I’m in the kitchen when I wouldn’t normally be, doing something other than getting a bottle of water she asks that question. And 95% of the time she’s on the ball by asking that question. It’s better for her to ask that than for me to be talking to her and out of the blue cop an attitude or get upset or angry over something and her having me yell at her for no good reason and then me having to apologize for my actions (which I hate doing, phf, apologize *rolls eyes*)
Courtney! You Need To Get Up!
I hear it in the back of my head “Courtney! You need to get up!” There’s a sense of urgency to it “Courtney! Get up now!” I’m lying face down on my bed, I open my eyes a little bit and see that the light is on. I wonder to myself, did I get up and turn the light on and then pass out, or did I pass out while the light was on?
What time is it? I didn’t know. I just continued to lay there, this isn’t the first time that this has happened to me, it happens often, during the night and during the day, although making myself move during the day is an easier task than at night.
“Courtney, just roll over, your machine is right there” my eyes move towards my machine “or reach out your arms and grab it” I’m still not moving. Well, my eyes were moving, I wasn’t moving.
Minutes go by, the voice in my head pounding at me; get up get up get up it repeats like a broken record. Finally I reach my arm out and grab my machine, I grab my poker and bring it close to my other arm which is wedged beneath me and I’m not in any kind of state to move it. I poke a finger, it won’t bleed, I’m becoming frustrated already, I poke another finger, only a little blood comes out, I poke another and another before I decide there’s next to no blood flowing to my hand, I pull my arm out from beneath me just a little and poke my pinky, the finger that never gets poked, it bleeds, I grab my machine, put a strip in it and apply the blood…it counts down, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…43 it tells me, I’m really low. I look around, there’s no glucose tabs near me and my juice boxes are on the other side of the room.
I lay my head back down. My eyes close. I think to myself “I’m just going to lay here a minute”…it was longer than a minute and the whole time my head was yelling at me “COURTNEY! GET SOME JUICE!” I finally slide out of bed and crawl to where my juice boxes were under my desk. I laid down on the floor right there, grabbed a box, ripped into the straw, stuck it in the hole and drank the juice before closing my eyes again.
At some point in the middle of the night I picked myself up off the floor, put the juice box in the trash, turned off the light and crawled into bed.
Is Your Diabetes That Bad?
It seems to be the thing these days, for me to be running around without a watch (I’m too lazy to get a new battery) or my cellphone (that thing’s a damn leash 80% of the time) and so when I need the time, the pump gets unclipped from my pants.
Last night I was at a friend’s house for dinner and we had all eaten and what not and one of the attending families had a little baby that was starting to get cranky so they were going to pack up and go. BUT! (and this is really important) dessert hadn’t been served yet. So, they started serving dessert. I was in talking to the host’s cousin, who knew nothing of my diabetes, when all this mumble jumble about dessert occurred, and I pulled my pump off my belt to view the time and he’s like “WHAT IS THAT” me, all calmly, “oh, it’s just my insulin pump” and I start to explain it, and he’s like, “no, I know what it is, but is your diabetes that bad”
I just kindof looked at him dumbfounded, how do i respond to it, I don’t recall how I responded to it, but then he said “can’t you take shots or something” then I explained that I had been taking 10 shots a day and to have tighter control of my diabetes being on the insulin pump was best.
It’s funny sometimes to see the misunderstandings that people have. It’s funny in retrospect I should say, and I guess it depends on what misunderstanding it is, because I do have my days where the misunderstandings could be considered an unforgivable sin.
15 Things to Be Thankful for
I’m starting something new this year, a list, 1 thing I’m thankful for in terms of my diabetes, for every year I’ve been diabetic. It’s going to be a new tradition to be done every year.
This list is numbered so that I know how many I had, not because it specifies priority.
- 1. Insulin Pump
- 2. TuDiabetes
- 3. Tour de Cures
- 4. My not completely shot eyesight
- 5. The Diabetes 365 Project
- 6. All my friends that protect me when my stupid decisions could kill me
- 7. Jules, because she hunted me down when I was dying in ICU
- 8. Other diabetic bloggers
- 9. My family that’s home in the middle of the night when I have hypoglycemic seizures
- 10. My not completely shot eyesight
- 11. All my fingers and toes
- 12. The fact that I made it 15 years with this disease
- 13. COBRA insurance
- 14. A job in which I can afford to pay for COBRA
- 15. My doctors
Darn Ketones
I woke up this morning, my blood sugar was 78 and I was nauseous. Nauseation is not a good thing. It’s especially not a good thing given my history of being nauseous and vomiting just a mere 2 months ago. Even though I was low I went ahead and checked for ketones. I was so not impressed to see that not only did I have ketones, but that they were hovering dangerously close to medium ketones. That was so not a good sign.
Of course, that was my only moment of sensibility today. Because shortly after I checked my ketones, I ate breakfast, took insulin, and instead of drinking water and going potty, I pumped myself full of diet mountain dew, waited about 4 hours went potty and oh, damn, didn’t check my ketones…
See, here’s the thing about ketones, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I’m healthy, my blood sugars are normal, I wasn’t fasting, and I wasn’t on an all meat diet. I shouldn’t have had ketones. And its the frustrations of the things that appear when I’m taking care of myself for no good reason that cause me to really hate diabetes.
If I’m as healthy as can be, I shouldn’t be encountering unexplainables…and it’s the unexplainables that really make me not want to take care of myself, because then, at a minimum, in the midsts of what would otherwise be unexplainables, I can explain them…
And they wonder why diabetes is so frustrating…
Future Blood Glucose Meter Offering
Something really exciting happened today when I called Minimed about my insulin pump. They had an option in the menu listing to learn about their future blood glucose meter offering. This excited me because before I got the meter that I have now, the one that talks to my insulin pump, the one manufactured by BD, I had been a loyal One Touch user for 14 (and then some) years.
So, I guess what happened is that back in 2006, BD said they were exiting blood glucose monitoring market. (Which is good if you ask me because I’ve heard nothing but complaints about their products.) They also said that they’d offer test strips for their machines through the end of 2007. Minimed sent us letters a few months back saying that we didn’t have to worry we’d have test strips because of Santiva, some company that’s going to make the strips…blah blah blah…
But here’s the deal, in Spring 2008 (which is like only 6 months away), we’re going to be given the option to get the new machines which are put out by my favorite people, LifeScan. And it will be built on LifeScan’s OneTouch® meter platform which means I can return as a loyal user to OneTouch. I’m seriously excited. It’s difficult to express on my blog how excited I am…but I’m really really excited!!!
I broke my insulin pump
When I got around to stripping down today after my ride to take a shower I noticed something very bad. VERY VERY BAD. My insulin pump had condensation between the plastic that covers the LCD screen and the LCD screen. Not a good thing.
At first I thought that if it dried out all might be cool. But then I consulted my dad. He said that it may never dry out. To make matters worse he said that it may never dry out, and to prevent the moisture from getting into the circuitry, I needed to keep it upside down. Like that was gonna happen.
I went on about my business for about an hour or so before I panicked and decided I needed to call Minimed and inquire about the state of my poor pump.
Luckily, it’s under warranty until 2011 and so they’re sending me a new one. Because it wasn’t but 20 minutes after I got off the phone that my pump decided that it wasn’t going to work. The esc button would turn on the light. The arrows weren’t working. It was bad times. And then it had the nerve to tell me that the brand new battery that I had just put in it like 2 days ago. Was dead. And it wouldn’t let me clear the error.
I panicked again, this time bigger than when dad told me it might never dry out. I had to call the on call endocrinologist (who just happened to be the same on that I had the pleasure of speaking with a month ago when I went into diabetic ketoacidosis) to find out how to convert my basal rate into a shot of levamir. He must seriously be thinking that I’m stupid. Regardless, I’m back on shots and as of this entry, it sucks. At a minimum, at least I was able to make the switch from my pump to shots ok, thanks to Dr. Edwards.
*sigh* I really do hate shots…I can’t wait to get my new pump on Monday morning…that’s what I’m currently living for, my new pump…*rolls eyes* my current one should’ve never broke. They should be built sturdy enough that sweat doesn’t get into bad places…heck, it’s not just about sweat, no liquid should be able to creep into any part of my pump, unexpected liquid that is…I know that it’s not liquid proof, I take care to keep it away from liquid…but this…this is unbelievable…it always gets shoved up between my sports bra and my back. That’s where all of us girls put our pumps when we’re being athletic.
Introducing Diabetes Posts
When I started Ride to Remedy I had decided that it was going to be all about my quest to help cure diabetes by riding my bike in the Tour de Cure across the US. While I will continue doing this, sometimes there just isn’t much to say about my rides. For the CA ride I was blogging every ride in which I trained, for the CO ride there wasn’t many rides in which I trained because I knew I could do 30 miles (if I could do 35 miles in CA why wouldn’t I be able to do 30 miles in CO). My next ride is in Oct in Fort Worth, TX and thus far, I’ve not ridden since my CO ride 2 weeks ago.
There is something important to me that I decided I should be blogging about between Tour de Cure’s and training rides and that’s diabetes itself. It is after all, the reason I ride. If I didn’t have it myself I wouldn’t be nearly as affected by it as I am now. Sure, my uncle has it, but would I have noticed if I didn’t have it myself, probably not. I would’ve been the self centered, self absorbed person that I can be (usually on a daily basis).
Without having diabetes myself, I wouldn’t have the connection that I have to the numerous diabetics and influential people in my life today. As such, I’m going to start posting about this disease that I have, the effects that it has on me, what I see it doing to people around me, the lack of proper medical support, and anything else that crosses my path concerning diabetes that I think is worth blogging about.