Diabetes Meetups

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Today I want to share my latest adventure this week, going to a diabetes meetup. Now I have been diabetic a long time and other than a stint at diabetes camp many years ago, I have never really met other diabetics face to face. As much as I love all my online D buddies, there is something special about meeting other diabetics face to face.

So this week an online twitter buddy told me about a local meetup and invited me to go along (if you tweet, check him out at @MarkMansheim, he is great!). So I put my nerves aside and planned to attend the monthly JDRF meetup. I braved rush hour traffic and made it on time to the restaurant. I asked the hostess where I might find the JDRF group. She pointed me over to the bar, where a gal my age was sitting. I went over, introduced myself, and the fun began. It turns out that many of the regulars for this monthly meetup couldn't come so it was just me and this person I just met, Melissa. You might think "wow, only one person showed up? How fun could this be?" but I will tell you, this was one of the best nights I had in a long time. Melissa and I hit it off and talked on and on about ourselves and living with diabetes.

As we moved to a table for dinner, I got a bit worried. I had checked online for nutritional info for this restaurant and found none. Being a fairly new carb counter, I was worried about what I would order. The last thing I wanted was crazy BGs because I can't carb count well. When looking over the menu, Melissa suggested the fire grilled pizzas. As much as I love pizzas, I don't eat them anymore unless they are frozen, lower in fat, and have a nutrition label! The pump is supposed to give you freedom to eat what you want but pizza has always messed up my BGs. I expressed my concern to Melissa about the pizzas. She told me that the pizzas were not greasy and fatty and that she had good luck with them in the past. Then I admitted I wasn't sure how to count the carbs (not feeling embarrassed as I usually do with a non diabetic). She understood and said she would help me out. So we decided to split the black fig and prosciutto pizza. It arrived at the table and we spent a few minutes discussing carb counts, made a

decision together about the carbs and started eating. It was the best pizza I have had in years and my BGs stayed in target both 2 hours after the meal and the rest of the night! Sweet success!

So the moral of the story is try to attend a diabetic meetup in your area. Not only could you find a new friend who gets what you deal with diabetes wise but you can get tips and new ideas to try. Melissa helped me think outside of the box I was in and just enjoy a pizza once and awhile. I needed that! And I was able to help her with BG and exercising problems she was having so she was able to exercise and finish with a good BG.

Be Happy,

Suzanne

Technology FAIL!

So I get up this morning and my DexCom sensor is starting to flake out. Inaccurate readings, it keeps loosing communication with the receiver, no direction arrows. So I take a deep breath and I restart the sensor. No big deal, after all I am on my 13th day with this sensor which is the longest I have gotten so far. So I pack up my stuff and head out to meet a friend for lunch at Red Lobster. I am envisioning cheddar bay biscuits and more carbs then I usually eat at lunch, yummy! Plus I am excited to see my friend.

Fast forward to sitting at the table after ordering lunch. I pull out my trusty One Touch Ping meter to check my sugar and bolus. Oh oh, WTF? The meter is on?!?! There is an error code?!?!?! Here is what I saw:

I start hitting buttons, pulling the batteries out, looking for a reset switch. No luck, the only way the error goes away is if I pull the batteries out which means the darn thing won't work. Then my DexCom receiver begins to beep at me. It is time to put the 2 start up blood sugars in so my CGMS will start working again. Houston, we have a problem here, the darn meter is out of commission! Of course I don't have an extra glucometer in my purse so I have no working meter and no CGMS data to use. There are 3 One Touch meters at home but that is not helping me. So I start to panic and worry that maybe there is something wrong with my pump too. I pull it out and see it is OK. So I bolus for my carbs, just guessing what my sugar might be. I am going to eat lunch out, I haven't eaten out in ages! Lunch goes well and off I go to get back home.

I get home and grab the One Touch Ultra Smart meter I use as a back up and calibrate my DexCom. It won't calibrate, I keep getting a sensor error. ARGHHHHH! TECHNOLOGY FAIL! So I put in a new sensor and I am now waiting for the sensor to be ready to go. Meanwhile I call Animas about the error on the meter and I am transferred to LifeScan techs. Turns out they have to send me a new meter, this one is toast. I will receive the new meter next week sometime, probably on Wednesday.

Maybe there is a down side to being so reliant on all this technology? Or maybe this was a good lesson about what I need to carry with me in my emergency supply kit that I carry in my purse. Now a One Touch mini, extra strips, and a lancet device are crammed in there. Lesson learned this time :)

Those Red Lobster cheesy biscuits sure were good though :)

Chh-chhh-chhh-Changes!

I know for me I have never been good at changing to new treatments when it comes to my diabetes. I don't know what that is all about but I got to thinking about it today when I got frustrated with my equipment. It got me thinking about how hard change is...

Here is what I mean. My family tried to get me to get a pump since the late 80s and I refused. It took me years after Humalog came out to switch from R to Humalog. I refused to go to go from 2 shots a day to true MDI after I went on Humalog. Don't even talk to me about trying the new long lasting insulins like Lantus, there was no way I would consider that. Switch from exchanges to carb counting, not gonna happen! Then I got sick and I thought I was having diabetic complications. This is it I thought, diabetes finally has caught up with me and is going to kill me. I was 34 and I was facing my own death from not taking care of myself. So I got an endo who realized how off the path I was and how resistant to change I was. So she met me were I was at and didn't try to force me to change insulins, carb count, or do MDI. She didn't even bring up the idea of a pump. She waited patiently for me to be ready for change.

So what was stopping me from trying different ways of taking care of my diabetes? Why was I so resistant to change? Was it fear of the unknown? Was it pure stubbornness? Was it just that I don't like change like most people? Maybe change is just too hard? Was it fear of failure? One thing I do remember my first endo telling me was that once you figure out what works, don't change anything. It was 1988 when I was told this. Definitely not good advice when I look back but what he said had an impact on my poor 13 year old brain.

So what changes have happened for me over the past year and a half? Well, I started carb counting and got on an Animas pump. I started testing 12+ times a day. I just started a DexCom CGMS in the last month. I totally changed my diet from a fried, high carb nightmare to a low fat moderate carb diet. So what motivated me to change? And not just small changes, but radical changes? Looking at it now maybe it was the fear of dying. I was willing to try anything to feel better and not die now. Then I realized I wanted to finally be in control of my diabetes and not have it control me like it always had in the past. This motivated me to change.

So as I sat here this morning frustrated with my DexCom not working right as I prepared to go to the gym, the old me started screaming in my head, "you should have stayed the way you were, you never went low then!" Of course I never went low back when I was on shots, my average blood sugar was in the high 200s! I was so tempted to throw the DexCom against the wall, just like I felt like throwing my pump away the first month I was on it. Then I went low (again) because I get nervous with the idea of changing my basal settings on the pump. So even though I have weeks worth of data that shows me I need to reduce my basal in the AM, I didn't make the change. I even ran basal tests so I knew I needed to reduce the basal! I just kept going low and having to treat the low every morning at the same time. So I sit at my desk this morning, upset and frustrated. I had to breathe and remind myself, change is good. Change is what has given you your life and health back. Breathe young grasshopper! So I changed my basal and I restarted the DexCom sensor, breathe in, breathe out....

Making changes in my D care freaks me out. Can anyone relate? Thanks for letting me vent, I feel much better now :)