It's Too Bad Kerri's Not Here To See This

Anyone else happen to notice who's on the Yahoo! homepage?

Makes me think of the OC every time.

I am NOT a Doctor

Well there ya have it folks. In case there was any doubt, I am officially out of the closet: I am NOT a doctor (yet at least). And that was a fact I was reminded of today.

I was talking to an idiot person today. And while yesterday you had the unique opportunity to go into my thoughts, I promised return visits another boring entry, and here you have it. Today you have a unique opportunity to listen in on a conversation I had. And while many PWDs have shared my thoughts, unfortunately, many PWDs have also shared a conversation along these lines.

Apparently Non-Idiot Other Person: "My friend has type 1 and doesn't have to take insulin."
Me: "Your friend must not have type 1 then."
ANIOP: "Yeah he does. The insulin made him sick. So he stopped and went on a diet"
Me: "Your friend has type 2 otherwise he would be dead."
ANIOP: "Nope, been doing it for 5 years."
Me: "There is no way your friend has type 1 diabetes"
ANIOP: "How would you know?!?"
Me: "Insulin is vital to life. In type 1 diabetes the pancreas ceases making insulin, therefore injected insulin is necessary for life."
ANIOP: "I know that"
Me: "Then what's your reasoning to how said friend can survive?"
ANIOP: "His doctor said he could"
Me: "Right..."
ANIOP: "Well he went to school and you didn't. You're NOT a doctor!"

Well there you have it folks. I'm not a doctor, apparently I just know more than some doctors. Either that, or this person just understood what the doctor said as well as he understood what I said.

Legal Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, I just play one online.

Diabetes Thoughts

A unique view into my head at the moment. A scary place, but one I will let you visit none the less. If you have diabetes (which I think most of you who read this do), this may not be so unique. In which case, come along for an exceedingly boring visit.

Is it too soon to change my reservoir when it says I have 1.8 units left and it has been alarming for the last 10 hours or so?

How does one count carbs when one has been munching on and off for the last half hour on those yummy honey barbecue pretzel bites?

How long has this site been in? I can't remember, so we'll say I put it in yesterday.

Am I high or thirsty? We won't know till I have to go upstairs for something other than a meter.

How come I can keep track of 1 cell phone, but my 3 meters always seem to be inconveniently located?

Is using diabetes as an excuse for eating a chocolate bar in a class when eating is generally banned okay? What if my bs is sitting at a comfy 98 and I'm just hungry?

And this has been Random Thoughts....tune back next time for another likely boring entry.

Bad Habits

I stink at logging. I was hoping the pump would solve this problem, allowing me to simply upload nad have beautiful logs to take to my endo. I was sorely disappointed when I saw that the CozManager does nothing like that, rather, I can get a list of everything happening. What the heck does that do for me? Nada.

I discovered the CoPilot, despite recalls preventing it from being used (for over a year- how long does it take to fix a bug?), I still used it. And it was...interesting. I finally got statistics, and that was fun. The insulin use charts showed me where I was doing a lot of corrections, but the log has crap all over it saying stuff like "imported from cozmanager" next to every bolus or bg level, making for a cluttered piece of mess. And the program decides if a bg was before or after a meal based on time of day. That's perfect if you eat at the same time everyday. I don't. That's why I pump. Why can't it figure out when you ate based on when the bolus was given, not time?

So I am back into an excel chart. I like it, I just need to keep up with it. Then hopefully I will have some good info to show my endo.

And I am realizing something- I have a lot of bad habits going on here.

My tests fall in no particular order. I seem to have gotten into a habit of just testing when I feel like it. This results in maybe 3 hours I tested every hour, then gaps of 5 hours without testing. Yeah, I get at least 6 tests in a day, but do they really tell me anything? I need to be testing before meals and two hours after if I really want to see how things are going.

Which brings my to my next bad habbit. I am a grazer. I eat what I want, when I feel like it. Yesterday I ate 196 grams of carbs for the day. Not bad. Except I didn't eat till 11, then ate around 11, 12, 1, and 2, about 20 grams each time. Then I didn't eat again till 7. Then I ate at 7, 8, and 10. Who the heck follows that kind of eating schedule? It can't be healthy. And the grazing results in a higher A1c according to Gary Scheiner in Think Like a Pancreas.

Allow me to break here to share something that annoys me with my pump, but yet I have no clue how it would be fixed. My bs is 77 right now. I'm cool with that. But I want to throw a load of clothes in and take a shower before I eat. I can do that, since I don't plan on dropping much lower. But it will be an hour before I eat likely. I enter my bg in my pump, so I know it's there and can upload it, see info in Copilot, and reference it when filling in my Excel sheet. But in an hour when I eat, I want my bolus reduced for that 77. I can enter the bg again when I bolus, but then that skews my testing averages. I guess I'd like the pump to offer the option to use the last taken bg as a correction (even if it was more than 10 minutes ago), or enter another bg then. What I do now is just cut about 10 grams of carb off the bolus to raise my bg a little.

So if I really want to see if my meal boluses are working, I need to both log, eat real meals, and test appropriately.

I like to think diabetes doesn't play a huge role in my life, and with pumping, it doesn't, but it does in this sense.

Sometimes

Sometimes I think back to the days before insulin. I think about parents watching their kids waste away. I think about the crazy diets and the outrageous drinking plans designed to slow an inevitable death.

Then I think about the 20 units I waste every three days, just thrown out with my tubing. Or more frequently, if I see bubbles in my tubing. Or the insulin bottles I throw out that are "almost" empty. Or the almost full bottle of Lantus I threw out a few days ago because it's been open since April- when I started the pump, and is probably about as useful as saline now in lower blood sugars.

I think about the fact that my doctor prescribes 6 bottles of Novolog as a three month supply, even though 4 would likely suffice. "Just in case!" she declared, when I told her 6 was in excess of my needs.

I think about how much good this insulin would have done back in 1920. The amount of insulin I waste in a week could have saved a few people back in 1920.

And I realize, I have come to take for granted the hormone my life depends on. Then I see visions of Katrina, and it's aftermath. And I shutter.

But I only think about this sometimes. Because the fact remains that while a complex genetic process can use bacteria or yeast to grow virtually unlimited amounts of a slightly genetically altered form of a hormone my own body faithfully made up until last year, there is no way to go back 86 years and help the prior suffers.

And this gives me new hope for the continued improvements in diabetes care I have yet to see. But in the mean time, I shall appreciate that piece of plastic technological wonder glued to my waist just a little more.

"It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. ... And one fine morning ---- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Off Topic Question for Parents of PWDs

This is what I was thinking about while I was trying to fall asleep last night. Don't ask me why. Lol. So maybe you can put my mind at ease now.

I know some of you have kids that were dx'ed before they were old enough to do their own shots. And I know some of your kids were also put on a pump before they were old enough to inject by themselves. However, knowing how to inject is an important skill for someone with diabetes to have. So how are your kids gonna learn how to do it? Are you just going to teach them sometime their pump fails, and hope you are there when it happens? I just picture some kid in a college dorm or something never having learned how to inject with a dead pump. I dunno...I'm paranoid.