Me Too

I stole this idea and got the same results.

You Are Boston

Both modern and old school, you never forget your roots. Well educated and a little snobby, you demand the best. And quite frankly, you think you are the best. Famous people from the Boston area: Conan O'Brien, Ben Affleck, New Kids on the Block

What American City Are You?

Sometimes I Amaze Myself

Today I went up to the camp I work at. I had lunch there and did the unthinkable- I forgot to cover the lunch carbs with a shot. About an hour later I felt high. Go figure. At this point I realize why rather quickly (duh!). So I go out to my car to get my meter that is sitting in the freezing cold outdoors. I test at 130. WTF? SInce I feel high and 1 unit usually brings me down about 50, I decide a half unit would put me at 105. So I do it. An hour later my meter has warmed up some, and the half a unit is already making me feel better. I clock in at 180 this time. Okay, that is more like it. I figure this means I was to the tune of 205 before. I take another full unit. Now three hours later I'm ready for dinner and at a smooth 103. Sometimes I amaze myself at my ability to make a come back!

I dream of ...

diabetes. Anyone else do this? Once I dreampt that music came in regular and sugar free varities and I could only listen to diet music. This pissed me off because I love listening to music and all my favorite songs became out of the question.

But I just had that dream once. I do have a recurring dream though, that my two best friends have diabetes and I don't. It's an odd dream. And it's always the same. It's especially odd because in the dream I don't have any of the knowledge about diabetes I have as a result of having diabetes either.

Am I the only weirdo that actually dreams about it?

Funny Thing Happened

I have been working on a nursing paper for several weeks now, and just needed one more article to cite this evening. I have been on my library's online database for the last two hours, and finally found an article that was perfect to use. I typed up the final bit of the paper, then looked at the author's name to credit her, and realized I recognized the name. The author that wrote this article that is finally letting me finish this paper runs the site that I found huge amounts of help through when I was dealing with hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia and a "mystery GI illness" (which is now dx'ed) as a young teenager. I have barely given this site a second thought, but I met one of my favorite online buddies through it. What a coincidence! Check out her site here: http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/faculty/jfleitas/bandaides/

Sometimes I can Be an Idiot

Monday I went to school. It's a normal thing for me to do. After school, I drove home. My first clue something was wrong should have been when I turned on the air conditioning in my car. It was 10 degree outside, and I couldn't stop sweating.

I kept driving.

And driving.

Soon I was two miles from home, but all I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep, and eat, and get the sweat off of me. I watched the fast food restuarants wizz by me as I kept driving. It briefly occured to me that I may have been low, but hypoglycemic me decided I was just looking for an excuse to eat junk food.

I kept driving. One mile from home. And hitting every red light on the way. The steering wheel slipped in damp hands as I navigated the icey roads to my house.

I felt into my backpack on the passenger seat. There is always copious amounts of sugar there. At this very point in time I had 5 suckers, a full roll of glucose tabs, and a bite sized chocolate bar. I ate the bite sized chocolate bar.

While digging in my backpack, I felt the vinal case of my meter. "TEST!" Every instinct told me. But I was too focused on driving.

3 blocks from home. More red lights and a slow old man driver. Damn it. Slow driver causes me to hit another red light.

One my street. No cars- just stop signs now. Two to be exact. Drive...drive...drive.

I'm in my driveway now. I grab my bag. It's too heavy for me. I just want to drop it. The door feels heavy to shut too.

I make it in the garage. Oreos!!! I grab the roll of it, and head to the kitchen. Before even taking off my coat I start eating. Do I eat the oreos in my hand? Why no. I grab the diet coke and the hard boiled eggs in the fridge. Half a diet coke and 3 eggs later I start in on the oreos. Six oreos later I test- 39. Nice. I down a glass of milk, lay on my bed, and wake up two hours later.

Allison Got Me

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

Target
Babysitting
Camp Counselor
Tutor

Four movies I can watch over and over:
Chronicles of Narnia (saw it in theators twice, patiently awaiting April 4)
Father of the Bride 1 and 2
Parent Trap (reminds me of my favorite place- camp)
Runaway Bride


Four places I have lived:
Just NY


Four TV shows I love to watch:
ER
Strong Medicine (last week was the last episode :()
Late Night
Uhm...I think that's it

Four places I have been on vacation:
Brisbane Australia
Florida
Vermont
Ontario (family owns a vacation home there)

Four of my favorite foods:
Chicken Fingers (gosh I love those greasy things!)
Peanut Butter cups
M and Ms
Carrot sticks (honest)

Four websites I visit daily:
Blogs (I check my live bookmarks)
E-mail (I have several accounts, but we shall put them together for now)
CWD
Slickdeals.net

Four places I would rather be right now:
Camp
Vacation Home
College Graduation ;)
In Bed (which is where I am heading considering it is 1 am!).

Now I shall tag Skytor, Tommy , and Martha.

My All Time Favorite Geek Computer Things Part II

I told Kerri awhile ago I was planning a part two to this, so without further ado, here we go. Just click on the title of an application to go to the page where it can be downloaded for free.

Yahoo! Widgets
Ever see Dashboard on an Apple computer running Tiger? Okay, this is basically just like that. If you haven't, this is one of the coolest new trends going for computers. It lets you easily see all kinds of info, like weather, sports scores, movie times, calendars, clocks, and to do lists on you computer desktop in the form of "widgets." Widgets are even cooler because you can change the way they look through opacity and color changes. Very cool. Works on Macs and Windows and previously known as Konfabulator.



Inkscape
This program I really have no use for. Many of you will also have no use for it. Many of you will have a good use for it, but anyway you slice it- I think it is super cool. Basically, it lets you draw stuff. It has shapes you can choose from, and you can alter their colors, form, size, and orientation to make them look however you want. It also lets you draw in your own stuff and add text bubbles. Sort of like a really hyped up version of paint. Availible for Linux, Macs, and Windows machines.



Session Saver
Okay. So I kind of cheated on this one. Why is that you may ask? Well, because this is not an application in and of itself. To use this, you must be using Firefox. Yet it has come in handy for me many times, so therefore it only seems right to mention it. What it does is it saves your online sessions. You can set it to either automatically pick up where you left off online every time you get off (if you ever get off ;)), or you can set it to only pick off where you left off if your system "crashes." So basically how it works is, you have 3 tabs and two windows open, one which you are typing a lengthy blog entry in. All of a sudden you get the dreaded message "Firefox is not responding and must be shut down. Select 'End Now.'" It's happened to all of us, but Oh No! your lovely blog entry you have been working on the past half hour. Have no fear, you installed Session Saver. Next time you start firefox, all the windows and tabs you had open are exactly as you left them, even down to your blog entry. I even had my power supply die once while I was typing an e-mail. When I got the new power supply working and powered up again, my e-mail was still there. Very cool.

Netscape 8.1
Firefox and Opera have a special place in my heart as my favorite browsers. However, Netscape 8.1 came out last week and deserves a looking at, especially if you visit sites that require you to be in IE a lot, or share one computer that doesn't allow setting up separate accounts with many people. Netscape lets you set up accounts on the browser and save passwords and info. That way you know your kids can't read your e-mail or buy something with your credit card, but you can still save your info so you don't have to type it in everytime. Also, you can set parental controls on different accounts, so you can rest assured your three year old can only visit pbs.org and nickjr.com. Finally, it lets you view pages like IE displays them or like Firefox displays them with a click of the button, making there be almost no reason to use IE. Only availiblke for Windows right now.



Trillian
Another Windows only program, this is an easy way to stay logged onto all your im'ing programs at once. It also manages away messages for all of them. It has some cool smilies, and it automatically logs all you conversations so you can see them later, though this can be turned off. You can add skins too. Definitely worth a look if you use im a lot.





If you liked this list and haven't seen the previous list yet, it can be found here.

Feel free to suggest other software utilities you like in the comments section. I love hearing what programs other people use.

Take a Deep Breath In

Many blogs in the OC have mentioned inhaled insulin in their blogs, and this is even my second time bringing it up. Therefore, I hate to bring it up yet again, except for one thibg. I hear commonly amongst the bloggers that the news is doing a poor job presenting inhaled insulin. However, I found a new article that I think did a pretty good job balancing the pros and cons, so I thought I would share, even though you have all heard them by now. Enjoy!

Read the article here.

gerr....

Why is it that some days such minor things annoy me? Mostly I think it is anger compiled over many weeks now. I am so annoyed about so many things. For one thing, I am on my fourth semester of college, and my third semester of commuting. I am going crazy. I am sooo sick of commuting. I am spending way more time with my family than I should be at my age. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but seriously, they drive me nuts sometimes. When I live at school, I can do my own thing. Here they get upset if I spend too much time on the computer, sleep in, or am gone longer than I said I would be. I turn 20 in a few weeks, and I just don’t want to deal with this anymore. And now their new thing is calling me a lier. This irks the hell out of me, because I despise lying, and I have NEVER lied to them. I forget to stop at the store, tell them I forgot, “LIER, you just don’t want to help.” I tell them it took me 45 minutes to get to school this morning. My sister #1 informs me I am a lier because it took me only 20 minutes yesterday when she came with me. First off, it was 1pm, not 8am, secondly, we left from a mall 20 minutes from my house, not home.

Now that it is snowing at, my commute annoys me even more. Something about staring at break lights for the first 45 minutes of your day is not good for you. And drivers are just stupid. I hate waking up early, and I figured out I could get up an hour later every morning if not for the damn commute. I’m busy, and freeing an hour and a half up of my time, sometimes more if I have to go in more than once, is appealing to say the least.

I also rarely see my friends living at home. I see the ones from school during classes, and maybe once a week outside classes, but the students living in the dorms see each other all the time.

Finally, the upperclassman dorms are nice. Really nice. I had issues last time I lived in the dorm, but they all revolved around my room mate, and next semester if I live there, I will be an upper classman, with my own room as part of the apartment.

My dad supports my decision to live on campus again, but my mom, quite frankly, is being a bitch about it. She says it’s a waste of money.

My other thing I’m upset about this evening in my sister. Sister #2. No matter what, I cannot get along with this kid. She is 13. Every time we have to spend more than 5 minutes together, we just scream at each other. She is 13. I know that age is tough, but she seriously comes across to me as the most selfish, lazy, bratty person I know. I know this sounds horrible, but she constantly talks about people at school saying things like, “I am cool, she is not cool, so I can’t talk to her. That girl, oh, we used to be friends, but she is a slut now. That person is UGLY.” I hate hearing her talk about other kids like this. And she always talks about how smart she is and says things to my parents like, “Don’t worry if those two are total failures, you still have me to make you proud.” She is lazy too. If she has to work too hard at something, she quits, or cries if she can’t quit. I am constantly driving her around, because she is too lazy to walk. She cried because I wouldn’t give her a ride to school this morning because I was late. Then she tattled, hours later, then said I brought it up again. She has this stupid holier than thou attitude about everything. She drives me nuts. Then this afternoon I was taking a nap, and got woken up to take her to the dentist. It is a mile away. Then I had to take her to church. Driving her around I will not miss.

Now I still have a test tomorrow to study for.

/rant

Quick Question

What level do you treat a low at? I usually do at 65 during the day, but try to be around 100 at least before bed. I have seen some people treat anything below 90 as low. What do you do?

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

The title works better if you sing it sound of music style.

So we all know diabetes sucks. There's nothing new about that. I've seen the question asked "What is the worst thing about diabetes?" But really, why think about that, when you can think about what your favorite thing is? I'm torn on this one, because I have TWO favorite things about diabetes. How about that?

So my first favorite thing: gagetery. In case you can't tell yet...I will spell it out for you. I am a N-E-R-D. Now before you judge to harshly, I KNOW there are other nerds on here. I see you guys talking about the sets for the minimed pumps that will let you use luer lock sets. I also saw some other buzzing about how cool the mutliclix is. I have seen screen shots from software in other blogs. I will admit. I get excited over new diabetes products. I love my freestyle flash. I got the Ultrasmart just to try it. I am ecstatic that accu-chek invented the multiclix. I am getting the new software for my freestyle soon, and I can't wait. Yep, I'm a nerd.

The second thing, of course, is The OC. If not for diabetes, I couldn't enjoy this fine literary cluster.

So there you have it.

Copy Cat

So I'm totally copying Allison on this, but hey, she told us too ;)

Post a comment, and I will reply with something nice about you. Then you can copy cat this into your blog too if you want.

Travel Time!

Well, my last week of Winter break is upon me. And I get to spend it in Florida. I leave tomorrow. At 6:52am my flight departs. It is now 4:45. And I have just started packing. To help me cope with the huge amount of thoughts fluttering through my mind I made a list of things to do.

1. Replace meter battery. The low battery symbol on my Flash has been on for weeks now. It hasn't died yet, but I am sure it will on vacation. That's just the way things go.

2. Pack- duh!

3. Shave so I look half-way decent in shorts.

4. Do something with nails. If I am going to be wearing open toed shoes, something needs to change.

5. Put another lancet in my meter case, so I can at least pretend I may change the lancet sometime. Also make sure I have enough strips.

6. Add more music to my mp3 player for flight.

7. Make sure I have a half way decent low bs supply food.

8. Actually put on the f'ing id bracelet.

So far I have started packing, I got a manicure (but the pedicurist was not in, darn it), and I have taken care of the meter stuff. I am taking my multiclix, so I threw an extra drum in there. It amazes me that in the space of maybe two regular lancets, the drum holds 6. So by having a drum in the device, and one in the case, I have 12 lancets. A barely a sign of a needle (good for security, though I have never had a problem before). Anyone else amazed with this?

I am looking forward to my trip and a break from the snow, but at the same time, it means the end of break, and I am stressing about starting school again. I have a lot more books to buy too before school starts again. Oh well if I don't have them all the first day of school.

How Do You Do It?

There are so many blogs in the OC! I like to try and keep up with what is going on with all of them, but that can be confusing to say the least.

I used to just look at all the links in the OC, or on a blog with a lot of links, but I found I was missing some, plus it was time consuming. So I looked into ways to make it easier. The result: I created a live bookmark for all the blogs I visit. In Firefox you can do this, and then using the RSS feed from the blog, I can just scroll through a list of blogs and see at a glance which ones have new posts.

So what is your way of keeping track of blogs?

My take on inhaled insulin

I have seen quite a few posts recently surrounding inhaled insulin. I've posted my ideas about it in a few comments, but now a full fledged post about it will exist in my own blog.

I hate inhalers. I know inhalers. I have asthma. I have three inhalers plus two nebulizer solutions. I need to take them. I don't want to inhale insulin too. I want to pump insulin (I don't pump as of yet).

My concerns:

1. How the heck is it going to be dosed? Dosing insulin is a pain in the butt as it is. I need half units. Dosing asthma inhalers that have been around for years is still far from precise. Everyone I know takes a different dose of Lantus, Humalog, Novalog, etc, but with my one inhaler, Advair, there are three doses, 100/50, 250/50, and 500/50. Granted, you can change the amount of times you take it, but still not much flexibility. As far as another inhaler, albueterol, everyone I know who takes it takes teh same amount, 2 puffs as needed. Asthma inhalers are important, obviously, but there is much more danger in underdosing them than overdosing them. The answer? Asthma inhalers don't need to be precise. You take them, if they don't work, you up the dose, if you have to many side effects, you lower the dose or try a different one. I don't want to call it simple, because it is not, but there is not nearly the need for precision there is with insulin. .5 units of insulin is a big deal for me. I need to know that is how much I am getting, and there needs to be a mechanism to allow the person to control how much they take.

2. Accuracy of technique is another concern of mine. Non-asthmatics may not realize this, but you need to take an inhaler correctly for it to work. I didn't realize this for awhile, but I took my inhaler incorrectly, swallowing much of my dose, for the first few weeks taking it. I kept needing to go back to the doctors office for nebulizer treatments, then buy my own nebulizer. I realized I was swallowing a lot of my dose. No, that does not happen much anymore, but still, it was not fun when it did happen. Also, how much of a dose I get varies a lot on how deep I breath in. Varying doses and insulin = not good.

3. Inhalers aren't small. This is a minor issue, but my purse is full! I have my wallet, keys, meter, pens, check book, insulin, syringe, glucose, granola, and inhaler in there. Believe it or not, a vial of insulin and syringe take up less room than an inhaler, and the insulin inhaler pictures I have seen are bigger than asthma inhalers.

4. Lung damage. Of course this has been mentioned repeatedly, but I already have less than perfect lungs that already have to deal with 3 inhalers, two of them steroid inhalers. I can't imagine my lungs taking one more inhaler. Plus, it doesn't seem like steroids and insulin would mix well.

So in short, insulin inhalers may get a niche later on, but right now, I feel it has too many concerns for me to be even remotely excited by the prospect.

I've been tagged

Nicole tagged me to share five random facts.

1. I hate shopping. I really do. I can't stand going to the mall. I avoid it at costs. I have failed as a girl. Fortunately, I have a sister who looks out for me who loves shopping, so I usually look decent. :)


2. I'm going to school to be a nurse practitionar. It's a 5 year program, so in three short years I will be an NP (hopefully).

3. I have to younger sisters, who so far, are both healthy.

4. I love camping. I do it as often as possible, which usually means a few times during the winter (in a cabin), most of the summer (I still get summer break ;)), and several weekends in Spring and Fall.

5. My dad has type 2 diabetes, and totally does not take care of himself, which fraustrates the hell out of me.

And now I get to tag people. Sorry if someone else tagged you, but it is getting confusing, so I will just be checking to make sure you have not posted 5 random facts yet, not so much that you have not been tagged, though I won't tag you if I know someone else tagged you.


Elizabeth at Diabetes 24-7

Skytor at Dia-gonal

Ryan Bruner

Kelsey, at the Diabetes Diary

and

Supermom, at Butterfly Kisses and Bedtime Prayers.

My All Time Favorite Geek Computer Things

Friends, it is time I exposed you to my geek side. Yes, I have a geek side. A pretty hard core geek side. And now you shall see it, and possibly share in my geekiness. What an opportunity this is for you.

And without further ado- my favorite free computer things.

Firefox- This is the web browser I use. If you haven't already discovered it, it's pretty darned amazing. The pop up blocker is great, and it's fast. It also has tabbed browsing, so it's easy to go back and forth between pages. My favorite feature though is it's security. I get almost no spyware.



Opera- This browser is as good as firefox. Also fast, secure, and tabbed browsing enabled, Opera has it's fans. Opera is also highly customizable. I use both, but prefer Firefox merely through personal preference.



Supertux- This has been the demise of more of my time than I dare to think about. This is basically a highly addictive game the is similar to Super Mario Brothers. If you do not have free time, step away from the link!



TuxRacer- Another highly addicting waste of time. This game features the same Tux we met last game, however, instead of jumping on bombs to rescue his girlfriend, this time he is racing down hills.



OpenOffice
- Now that there is a good chance I have turned you on to two very addicting games, and encouraged you to spend more time online, I shall encourage productivity. This is basically a free kick-butt office suite that recently released version 2.0.



Gmail For some reason it would not surprise me in the least if many of you bloggers were already using this. This is an awesome e-mail service from Google. It has a very nice user interface, and some pretty cool features, including a new mobile service, which I used to check my e-mail during a recent camping trip, virus scanning, an RSS feeds right on the website. RSS feeds can enable you to check up on your favorite blogs at the same time as checking your e-mails. Don't let the beta scare you.



Well, I am sure I will think of more later, so we may be having a part 2, but for now, it's bed time.

Bad Day for Technology Here

So today my Inspiron 5150 (yes, I know it is notorious for PSU problems) died. I was just typing, and off it went. Power just cut out. I tried to turn it back on- no luck. Hours later I tried again. Then it worked- for about 5 minutes. Then total death again. Okay, time to call Dell. Thank God it is under warranty. The lady I talked to- what an idiot. My gosh. I told her my computer will not power on. So what does she ask? "Can you get online?" No dumbass, my computer will not do anything. She asked me this three times. So we continue on some further excersises in futitlity. Does my CD drive work? Well, it did. Does my monitor work. Uhm...no. So she tells me to clean out my fan. Right... She keeps telling me it's an OS problem and I just need to reinstall my OS. As calmly as possible I tell them I can't install anything, the farking computer won't power on, and that I have seen plenty of "OS problems" and this was not it. To get her off my case I simply told her a live cd didn't work either.

An hour later I get transferred up. She has me take out my optical drive, hard drive, wireless card, RAM, and modem. After taking out each item I have to try powering it on.

Well, she tells me it's a MOBO problem (I told them at the beginning the problem was likely PSU). Their solution? Next week I get a box, then I can send it too their center (I asked where it is, she doesn't know), and maybe three weeks later I will have a computer that works.

I'm a little pissed.

To make matters worse, my sister got home from work today, parked my mom's car she was using. Then she tried to start it. It didn't start. So my dad replaced the battery. Still no luck. So he jumped it with another car. Then the lights started flashing, the windows went up and down. and the doors locked and unlocked. It still won't start.

Friends, it was a bad day for technology in my house.

A Little Rant...

...About a couple things. Hope I don't end up complaining too much ;)

I also want to use this post to wish everyone a happy one-week-till-Christmas-day!

Firstly in the rant department, my c-peptide. C-peptide is a test used to show how much insulin your pancreas is producing naturally. The normal range is .5-2.0, or some labs use 3.0 as the top mark. Before this diabetes stuff, mine was 5.9. Clearly, double or triple the normal range. Typically this would mean insulin resistance, or type 2 diabetes. However, I was neither. My blood sugars normally ranged with highs in the 50s. Clearly too low. The diagnosis was clearly clear as hyperinsulinemic hpoglycemia.

But that was then.

Then the blood sugars were high. And the new c-peptide- .3. In the year between the two lab draws my c-peptide became a fraction of what it was. Now, this result is in the type 1 diabetes range. But alas, not that simple in my case. So the question becomes, what type am I? I don't know whether I have insulin antibodies or not, and that isn't accurate all the time anyways. I do not have the body of a type 2 person, I am not overweight, nor am I old. Or even close to old, thank you very much. However, type 2 runs in my family. Though I must confess to being the only person I know, or ever knew that had hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia.

The c-peptide fraustrates the heck out of me because .3 is low enough to need supplemental insulin (though apparently not all the time), but also high enough to show my pancreas is still plugging along- some. .3 also means my pancreas does spurts, like what likely happened during my crazy lows.

So this is either LADA or a honeymoon, but either way, it's here for good, and apparently, the c-peptide is only gonna drop. But maybe it will be easier when I don't have to worry about my pancreas kicking in once in awhile?

As far as blood sugars are conscerned, I have reduced the insulin to prevent lows. This works okay most of the time, but then there were a few concerning numbers: the first day I pulled a 429, a 467, and then two 600s. So back up went the insulin dose. Next day was good, but I had a few 50s. Granted, still better than the 20s. So I pulled the dose back just a little more (half a unit less). That brought me to now. Seems to be doing okay. On that dose I had a 190, and a 218, but oh well, I also had a 100! So I think that is as good as it's gonna get.

Moving on to my second "little rant." Even though I was recently dx'ed, I have been using a meter since before then. I got the Freestyle Flash because it has the lights, is small, and you get the free data cable to upload results to the computer. Well, the software has been recalled since AUGUST. Still no new version. Gerr... And then to add to my fraustrations, the website STILL says they have software to go with it. Talk about false advertising! I'm seriously considering switching to Lifescan, so I can use their software.

Just Thought I Would Share with Everyone

That finals are officially over! I am on break! No more school till mid January!