Wordless Wednesday (on Friday)

Wednesday the 3rd was “Wordless Wednesday” on the suggestion list for 30 Days of Diabetes Blogging,and their helpful suggestion was to post a pic or a video about the three most important things that help my diabetes management. Its not Wednesday, but does that really matter? :) So here goes!

 1.

 Obviously my meter is one of my most important tools. It tells me if I should or shouldn’t eat, and what, and when, and how much insulin I should take… etc etc etc

 2.

I am a freakishly devoted logger. Even with my meter having nice storage capabilities with graphs and time stamps and all kinds of records, I log everything. Everything I eat goes in there. That way if I remember eating it and can look it up, I can also see how it affected my next reading. Every number goes in there, from BG tests to insulin doses to BP readings while at the docs. One thing that its REALLY done for me is the reason they recommend keeping a food journal. Its shown me what I eat and when so I can see where my problem food areas lie.

 3.

And of course, the bestest guy I’ve known (aside from my daddy!). Dustin was already in my life when I was kinda forced to make the big changes to my diabetes care. He learned right along with me about counting carbs and stuff, and of course he’s the one who has to deal with me being super cranky when I get low. So yeah, he’s a pretty important part of my diabetes management  :)

a very linky post

Among many others, the Diabetes Research Institute is focused on finding a cure for diabetes.  A fun way that YOU can help their campaign is by donating to “Be Part of the Cure”.  Not only will you be donating to help find a cure, but with just a $10 donation, you can upload your picture to go on the C-U-R-E banner, which is just pretty cool.  You can even search the photos to find yourself or anyone else you might know!  If you donate a minimum of $50, you get a mousepad with the CURE mosaic on it.  In addition, the first $25,000 will be matched by Animas and Lifescan, so there’s another reason to donate!

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to check out the video at BigBlueTest.org, developed by the Diabetes Hands Foundation.  If they reach 100,000 views, Roche Diabetes Care will donate $75,000 which will benefit Life For a Child and Insulin for Life.  What that boils down to is that every view of the video will translate to a weeks worth of insulin for a child who can’t afford it.

AND!

On November 14, Diabetes Awareness Day, be sure to do the Big Blue Test!  Help raise awareness about how important testing and exercise are for all diabetics.  Here’s what you need to do: 

1. On November 14 at 2 pm, test your blood sugar.
2. Get active for 14 minutes.
3. Test again.

4. Go to BigBlueTest.org and input your results.

That’s it! Click some links!

feelings.... nothing more than feelings....

So I posted yesterday about recently going off of my insulin regimen as an experiment, per se.

One of the things that I thought was really interesting was my feelings while I was doing it. Even though I’ve technically been a diabetic since 2005, I didn’t really take control of it until about a year ago. That was when they wanted to put me in the hospital for severe DKA and instead just put me on insulin. Since then I’ve paid attention to my meds, paid attention to what I eat… all of which means that I’ve complained about testing and shots and carbs and math too.

And yet, something felt wrong. It wasn’t that there was actually something wrong. At first I thought I was just stressed because of my new schedule which included school. But that wasn’t it. I finally figured out that I was missing my regular diabetes schedule.

You may ask (and I was), how can you possibly miss poking yourself 4-5 times a day with a needle and having to count every bite of food that you eat?? And believe me, it wasn’t the poking myself that I missed, it was the routine!

Its strange how quickly we can become accustomed to doing something, even something unpleasant, and integrating it into our daily lives. It was still somewhat of a relief when I gave up my experiment and started taking the shots again. Not only did my schedule fall back into place, but I felt like I had control again, so that was refreshing.

Although, I am more than a little OCD, so it really comes as no surprise that I was glad to be in control :)

the one that needs a disclaimer...

Disclaimer: I would like to point out at this time that I am NOT a person with a medical degree (yet), or a certified diabetes educator, or anything like that.  I am just a person with type 2 diabetes making my own decisions about my health.  This does not mean that I don’t follow my doctor’s recommendations and orders, it just means that I might make decisions at times that might make me look like I’m not a good patient.

Now on to my post :)

For about a week in the middle of October I stopped taking my rapid-acting insulin.  Don’t panic, it wasn’t a bad thing necessarily.  I am a type 2, I have been eating healthy-ish, I was (am) taking not only long-acting (Lantus) and rapid-acting (Novolog) insulin but I was also taking Metformin and Januvia as well. 

My Lantus dose was normal (for me), but my Novolog had gotten to the point where I was taking only a little with my meals.  One day I ate my bagel for breakfast and totally forgot the shot.  About an hour and a half later I remembered and tested, panicked, thinking I would be high, but I turned out to be lower than my fasting BG was.  Weird, right?

So I thought about it and decided to do an experiment and see if I could get off the insulin and start being just on the oral meds.  I made sure that I tested all the time and paid really close attention to what I was eating and whether I was high or low.  And I had plenty of both highs and lows, which was interesting.  What I discovered is that at this point in my life I can’t just take oral meds.  My numbers never really got out of control, and they actually stayed really steady for the first few days.  But then they just started slowly climbing.  At the end, I was having only slightly elevated fasting levels, but as soon as I ate something I would be living in the 200’s for the whole day. 

That was when I gave up.  I mean, I had the means to control it at my disposal, so I went back to it.  I have no problem being on insulin.  I have very tight control.  I am not one of those people that is scared to give it a shot (pun intended).  Yeah, I was kinda pushed onto it, and of course if I could get away from it I would.  I’d love to lose some of that weight that might be associated with being on insulin, but I don’t have a problem where I’m at today.

And now I actually have an endo and a lot of changes are being made, and I have a ton of appointments in the next couple of months.  I’ll be posting more about that in the next couple of posts too.

Diabetes Awareness Month!

Holy moly! I have not posted anything in so long!

I’m sure that my loyal follower(s) have been sitting around crying over my lack of totally fascinating posts, and for that I am truly sorry!


November is Diabetes Awareness Month with World Diabetes Day coming up on November 14! There are all kinds of things going on this month, so be sure to check out other blogs around the community and see what people are doing! Sarah at Sugabetic started SAE Day which is to encourage you to Support, Advocate, and Educate about diabetes. That’s November 1, so I’m sorry I’m pushing it out there a little too late!

On WDD, November 14, be sure to check out and participate in the Big Blue Test to raise awareness for diabetes!

November 9 is D-Blog Day, started in 2005 by Gina Capone. This years topic is: 6 things you want people to know about diabetes. You can find out more by checking out her post here.

November is also NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month. The basic idea is to post something in your blog every day for a month. Actually, I think you can try to do it any month you want, but November is the big month and they award prizes and everything! If you’re interested, you can check out NaBloPoMo.com and give it a try.

In honor of World Diabetes Day and Diabetes Awareness Month, and since it is NaBloPoMo, I am going to attempt the 30 Diabetes Blogs in 30 Days. They’ve got some great ideas on their site as to what to post about, and since I’m a slacker at posting sometimes, I’m going to take advantage of any help they want to provide! So here goes!

The suggestion for today is an introduction… “Tell us about yourself! Why did you decide to start a blog or share your blog with us?”

Overall, I’m pretty normal. I’m a geek… I love my World of Warcraft, my chainmail armor, my Stargate TV shows. I am also a student aiming for a degree/certification in medical assisting. I’m hoping to one day be a wife and a mother. I have an absolutely wonderful boyfriend who makes me feel special even when I’m being cranky.

I’ve talked before about my varying degrees of success with having Type 2 Diabetes. I decided to start blogging because my situation as a T2 seemed to be so different. At the time I wasn’t finding many T2’s that were taking insulin, especially, so I wanted to talk!

Anyway, enough about me for the day :)