We are family!

So I have been super busy getting my house cleaned and ready for my little sister coming to visit. I will be picking her up on Sunday and I am excited to see her. We have lots of fun planned over the next week.

Here is my sister at Halloween, dressed as a zombie...

This will be a true test of all this diabetes technology I have as we will be running around Atlanta and eating out quite a bit. I will be interested to see how the DexCom CGMS and Ping pump help me keep good blood sugar numbers. Also we will see if my rudimentary carb counting skills have improved at all since I have only been carb counting for about a year now. I am nervous and excited all at the same time but ready for some well deserved fun. We are going to the Atlanta Aquarium, Hard Rock Café, lots of shopping (my sis lives in Italy and misses Old Navy so we will definitely be there!), visiting with my Dad, and the big outing is going to a local tattoo parlor.

Tattoo parlor? Really? Is that how sisters spend time together and bond? Well with these sisters, yes, we do bond at tattoo parlors. We are a little crazy! You wouldn’t guess from my Sunday school teacher appearance but I do love me some ink! This time around I spent a ton of time designing and contemplating my new tattoo. I wanted to do something that commemorated all the positive things that have happened to me over the last year or so. I am finishing grad school, I became a born again diabetic, and I lost a ton of weight. I realized the biggest thing I could commemorate is the change in my diabetes care as I lived with zero control for over a decade and I dodged some major complications (still not sure how that happened but I am thankful). So the tattoo I am getting will brand me in ink as a diabetic. For the first time in my life there is pride instead of shame and fear in that word. I am really excited about how I have changed my thoughts and feelings about diabetes and how it fits into my life.

So here is to good blood sugars while eating out and getting inked! I will report back with a picture of the tattoo and how my control is throughout the process of getting it and healing from it. This will be my first tattoo I have gotten while in good control so I will be interested to see if I heal better this time around.