Today I went to my first yoga class in 4 years.
Well that’s not 100% accurate. I did attend a Hot Yoga class about a year ago to try it but found out that it was definitely not for me. I spent the whole time lying on the mat just trying to get used to the heat. They recommend this for your first time in the class because it’s more important for you to get used to the heat than it is for you to do the exercises. Needless to say I was very happy to make the decision to not go back.
I used to go to Yoga twice a week before I moved to the big city and I absolutely loved it. I would end the class feeling very relaxed and energized for whatever the rest of the day would bring. My sleep was great. My blood sugar was great. My A1C’s were great. Life was great. Unfortunately when I got married and moved, life crept in. I started travelling frequently. Learning to live with someone was an adjustment. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Recently, my husband and I made the decision that we are going to start trying to conceive. This meant a lot of preparation on my part in order to get my diabetes in order. First and foremost was getting my AIC down to 7% and even below if possible. I finally achieved this in July of this year. Next step is getting my overweight body to lose as much weight as it can before I get pregnant. In a healthy and safe way of course. I met with my dietician a couple of weeks ago and developed a meal plan that was going to help me lose at least ½ a pound per week. So far it’s been extremely easy to stick to for everything but dinner. While I’ve been working on that, I thought I should also get back into yoga to introduce some exercise into my week as well as get rid of my stress and increase my relaxation.
My class today was Hatha Yoga. I got the following description from my yoga studio. “A gentle Yoga class great for beginners and those looking to work physically and cultivate your focus, breath and relaxation. Hatha Yoga is great for beginners and offers a great introduction to Yoga. This practice focuses on strengthening the body; enhancing flexibility and a calming mind. Hatha Yoga classes are great for improving your flexibility, endurance and muscle strength. This class is great for beginners and those still newer to Yoga.”
I have no idea why I stopped going. The last four years would probably have went a lot smoother if I would have kept up with it. Not to mention that I probably wouldn’t have gained the last 60 pounds if I would have continued going. Oh well. At least I’ve taken the first step and gone to a class. Now I just have to keep it up!
On a Diabetes specific note, I set my temp basal rate for 50% for 2 hours. It didn’t work. I ended up getting a low of 2.5 after about 50 min. I stepped out of the class, gobbled a couple packages of Welch’s Fruit Snacks and went back in just in time for the relaxation cool down. Of course that was way too many and I ended up going to 11.8 an hour later. For my next class I’m going to try dropping my basal a half hour for the class to 0 and see what happens.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Halls Oxygen – Sugar Free?
I’ve been fighting a cold for the last week and it is driving me nuts. I’m actually really lucky in that I’m hardly ever sick, only the occasional cold a couple of times a year. I’ve never been hospitalized. I’ve never had surgery. My mom always used to say that it was because I was breastfed for almost 2 years. (Probably a little TMI but whatever, it’s my blog and I can post what I want :-) ) Who knows if that’s true? I know there’s a lot of research and other hoopla regarding the benefits of breastfeeding and don’t get me wrong, I’m a HUGE believer in it. And in the Diabetic community, there is also a lot of info on how breastfeeding reduces the chance of your child having T1 Diabetes. Yet here I stand, a breast fed child that developed diabetes. But I’m digressing.....
I originally started this post wanting to talk about an experience I had while I’ve been sick with this stupid cold. I went to the pharmacy to pick up some wonderful cold medicine. I’m a compulsive shopper so of course I had to get cough syrup, daytime tablets, night-time tablets, and cough drops. Being a diabetic, the first thing that I looked for was medicine that had the lowest possible sugar content on it. I normally go for Ricola Lemon Herb mainly because I love the taste, but today I saw something new. Oxygen from Halls claiming to be sugar free. I turned it around and low and behold...I saw nutritional information with 3g of carbs per one piece. I looked at the Sugar info and yes, there was 0g. Further down I saw Sugar Alcohols and realized that that’s where the carbs were coming from. How can something be sugar free and yet have carbs? Just doesn’t make sense to me.
I originally started this post wanting to talk about an experience I had while I’ve been sick with this stupid cold. I went to the pharmacy to pick up some wonderful cold medicine. I’m a compulsive shopper so of course I had to get cough syrup, daytime tablets, night-time tablets, and cough drops. Being a diabetic, the first thing that I looked for was medicine that had the lowest possible sugar content on it. I normally go for Ricola Lemon Herb mainly because I love the taste, but today I saw something new. Oxygen from Halls claiming to be sugar free. I turned it around and low and behold...I saw nutritional information with 3g of carbs per one piece. I looked at the Sugar info and yes, there was 0g. Further down I saw Sugar Alcohols and realized that that’s where the carbs were coming from. How can something be sugar free and yet have carbs? Just doesn’t make sense to me.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Medtronic Carelink
Even though I’ve been using my insulin pump for almost two years, I only started using the Carelink software a few months ago.
I’ve always been a little obsessive on writing down my blood glucose readings, my carbohydrate intake, and insulin doses in my logbook. My CDE was amazed that I hadn’t started to use the Carelink software so that I didn’t have to continue manually tracking everything. I have to say that the transition was pretty easy. At first, I was only uploading my results before my meeting with my CDE but the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to upload every Friday and really use the available reports. The “Logbook diary” has become my best friend. It really lets me highlight where my lows and highs are and lets me look for patterns.
Now I just need to get started on actually writing down what I eat every day so that my dietician can start to call me an A+ student. :-)
On an un-diabetes related note, today a co-worker told me that her 13 year old son was so bored at home that he asked her to “pop out a baby so that he can take care of it like [his friend] does his baby brother” I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in weeks.
I’ve always been a little obsessive on writing down my blood glucose readings, my carbohydrate intake, and insulin doses in my logbook. My CDE was amazed that I hadn’t started to use the Carelink software so that I didn’t have to continue manually tracking everything. I have to say that the transition was pretty easy. At first, I was only uploading my results before my meeting with my CDE but the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to upload every Friday and really use the available reports. The “Logbook diary” has become my best friend. It really lets me highlight where my lows and highs are and lets me look for patterns.
Now I just need to get started on actually writing down what I eat every day so that my dietician can start to call me an A+ student. :-)
On an un-diabetes related note, today a co-worker told me that her 13 year old son was so bored at home that he asked her to “pop out a baby so that he can take care of it like [his friend] does his baby brother” I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in weeks.
Friday, August 13, 2010
New Infusion Site
Yesterday, I put my infusion set into my thigh for the first time.
I have always been a faithful abdomen user even when I was doing manual injections. Switching it down to my thigh is a huge deal for me. Lately my stomach has been looking like a road map of needle holes and I thought it might be nice to give the poor thing a break. I had an appointment with my CDE last week where I finally asked her about other options for sites. Right away she mentioned the thigh. She also mentioned the back of my arm, my lower back, and my bum. The thought of all four places gave me butterflies but the thigh probably presents the least amount of issues.
So when I went home for lunch yesterday, I dropped my pants and inserted into my left thigh. Surprisingly, it did not hurt as bad as I thought it would.
When I entered in my lunch bolus, I could actually feel coldness spreading down my thigh from my site. It was the weirdest feeling and probably all in my head. I could hear my tummy give a sigh of relief. Normally I clip my pump onto my bra mainly due to an unfortunate episode of pulling down my pants to use the washroom and pulling out my infusion set. The bra placement ensures that all of my pump stuff is above the waste and although I have not had another unfortunate incident I have had a couple incidents where my tubing ended up wrapped buttons. Those didn’t end badly thankfully due to my super quick reflexes. :-) Now with my site on my leg, it feels a lot different to have a pump in my pocket.
My blood sugars have definitely been interesting. Two hours after lunch yesterday my blood sugar was 11.7 mmol/L. I didn’t bolus right away cause I wanted to see what happened. By dinner it was at a respectable 7.3. Two hours later, 7.4. Unfortunately things started going downhill at about 10:30pm when I had a low. And then another at 1am. This morning I woke up with a hefty 9.7. My after meal, 16.7. Of course this led me to rage bolus a hefty 3 units of insulin. By lunch my blood sugars had barely moved to 15.9. Thankfully when I bolused for lunch, I must have hit the right amount cause my blood sugar is finally trending downwards to 8.3. We’ll see how it goes at dinner.
I think still going to give it a week or so on my thigh just to see how things go. Hopefully my body will get used to it.
I have always been a faithful abdomen user even when I was doing manual injections. Switching it down to my thigh is a huge deal for me. Lately my stomach has been looking like a road map of needle holes and I thought it might be nice to give the poor thing a break. I had an appointment with my CDE last week where I finally asked her about other options for sites. Right away she mentioned the thigh. She also mentioned the back of my arm, my lower back, and my bum. The thought of all four places gave me butterflies but the thigh probably presents the least amount of issues.
So when I went home for lunch yesterday, I dropped my pants and inserted into my left thigh. Surprisingly, it did not hurt as bad as I thought it would.
When I entered in my lunch bolus, I could actually feel coldness spreading down my thigh from my site. It was the weirdest feeling and probably all in my head. I could hear my tummy give a sigh of relief. Normally I clip my pump onto my bra mainly due to an unfortunate episode of pulling down my pants to use the washroom and pulling out my infusion set. The bra placement ensures that all of my pump stuff is above the waste and although I have not had another unfortunate incident I have had a couple incidents where my tubing ended up wrapped buttons. Those didn’t end badly thankfully due to my super quick reflexes. :-) Now with my site on my leg, it feels a lot different to have a pump in my pocket.
My blood sugars have definitely been interesting. Two hours after lunch yesterday my blood sugar was 11.7 mmol/L. I didn’t bolus right away cause I wanted to see what happened. By dinner it was at a respectable 7.3. Two hours later, 7.4. Unfortunately things started going downhill at about 10:30pm when I had a low. And then another at 1am. This morning I woke up with a hefty 9.7. My after meal, 16.7. Of course this led me to rage bolus a hefty 3 units of insulin. By lunch my blood sugars had barely moved to 15.9. Thankfully when I bolused for lunch, I must have hit the right amount cause my blood sugar is finally trending downwards to 8.3. We’ll see how it goes at dinner.
I think still going to give it a week or so on my thigh just to see how things go. Hopefully my body will get used to it.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Transitioning to the pump
I started on the pump in September 2008.
Back during my first appointment with my CDE, she had recommended that I go onto the pump. She had been using one herself for 5 years and absolutely loved it. The pump scared me. No rational reason why but the thought of being attached to something for the rest of my life freaked me the heck out. So I politely told her no thank-you and was very happy with my insulin pens for the next 4 years.
My husband and I got married in December 2006 and had always planned on starting to try for a baby as soon as he finished school in 2009. Unfortunately my A1C was at a whopping 8% in 2008. My edno (different from my original one as I had moved across the county by this time) of course told me that we shouldn’t start trying until it had gone down to at least 7%. He also mention that Levimir, my long acting insulin hadn’t been tested on pregnant women and that he would be ok supporting me through it if I wanted to maintain. This was so not an option for me as I just couldn’t justify forcing my baby to be involved in a research study. He/she would have enough problems being cooked in a womb with my blood sugars I just didn’t feel comfortable adding one more thing for them to deal with. It was one thing for me but something I wasn’t prepared to risk someone else on. My only other choices were going back to NPH, which didn’t do great things for my blood sugar, or going onto the pump.
So the pump research began. I met with quite a few pump reps from Animas, Medtronic, Deltec and Disetronic. I did up a spreadsheet comparing all of the various benefits and downfalls to each one, talked to my endo and CDE to get their thoughts and finally decided on the Medtronic Paradigm722 insulin pump. Mainly due to the fact that the reservoir could hold 3ml’s of insulin and if I wanted to in the future, it had the capability for a continuous glucose monitor already built in. Unfortunately my insurance doesn’t cover a CGM yet.
Absolutely love it and am happy to report that my A1C just reached 7% in June 2010.
Back during my first appointment with my CDE, she had recommended that I go onto the pump. She had been using one herself for 5 years and absolutely loved it. The pump scared me. No rational reason why but the thought of being attached to something for the rest of my life freaked me the heck out. So I politely told her no thank-you and was very happy with my insulin pens for the next 4 years.
My husband and I got married in December 2006 and had always planned on starting to try for a baby as soon as he finished school in 2009. Unfortunately my A1C was at a whopping 8% in 2008. My edno (different from my original one as I had moved across the county by this time) of course told me that we shouldn’t start trying until it had gone down to at least 7%. He also mention that Levimir, my long acting insulin hadn’t been tested on pregnant women and that he would be ok supporting me through it if I wanted to maintain. This was so not an option for me as I just couldn’t justify forcing my baby to be involved in a research study. He/she would have enough problems being cooked in a womb with my blood sugars I just didn’t feel comfortable adding one more thing for them to deal with. It was one thing for me but something I wasn’t prepared to risk someone else on. My only other choices were going back to NPH, which didn’t do great things for my blood sugar, or going onto the pump.
So the pump research began. I met with quite a few pump reps from Animas, Medtronic, Deltec and Disetronic. I did up a spreadsheet comparing all of the various benefits and downfalls to each one, talked to my endo and CDE to get their thoughts and finally decided on the Medtronic Paradigm722 insulin pump. Mainly due to the fact that the reservoir could hold 3ml’s of insulin and if I wanted to in the future, it had the capability for a continuous glucose monitor already built in. Unfortunately my insurance doesn’t cover a CGM yet.
Absolutely love it and am happy to report that my A1C just reached 7% in June 2010.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
First Blog Ever....
So I've never actually blogged before but I've read so many of them in the last little while that I thought that I would give it a try. Like my profile says, I'm a 30ish, type 1 diabetic female. Surprisingly I have not been a diabetic since childhood.
I had just returned from a friend's wedding in the Okanagan Valley and noticed that I was drinking about 6 - 8 litres of water a day and consequently going to the bathroom every 30 minutes. My mother right away told me to go to the doctor and get checked for diabetes. Everything inside of me rebelled. Diabetes was for old people.
I was about 24 when I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
I know what you're thinking, "didn't she say that she was type 1?"
Yes I did.
To explain a little, at the time I weighed about 220 ibs. I'm from a tiny little town and my family doctor wasn't exactly familiar with the different types of diabetes. She figured that anyone who was overweight had to be type 2. Of course, little ol' me, thinking that diabetes was only for old people, didn't question. I made up my mind that if I was going to have a chronic illness, then I was going to be the best diabetic the world had ever seen. :-)
About three months in, my blood sugars remaining in the high twenties even while on metformin and glyburide and losing 20 ibs mainly due to cutting my carb intake to nil, my doctor finally sent me to an endocrinologist in a larger town. As soon as the endocrinologist saw my sugars, she immediately said that I was definitely a type 1 and ordered a battery of blood tests including an A1C. I also got assigned a dietitian and a diabetic nurse educator that I would see every three months along with my endo. My dietitian put me right onto carbohydrate counting and my nurse put me on prefilled insulin pen injections.
Finding out that I was diabetic was one thing, finding out that I now had to go on insulin injections for the rest of my life was another.
The only thing that I really remember about that day was going out for lunch with my mom and trying to give myself my first insulin shot. Of course it wasn't at a full right angle and hurt like a bitch. Thankfully I figured out pretty quick how to make sure that that didn't happen again.
I had just returned from a friend's wedding in the Okanagan Valley and noticed that I was drinking about 6 - 8 litres of water a day and consequently going to the bathroom every 30 minutes. My mother right away told me to go to the doctor and get checked for diabetes. Everything inside of me rebelled. Diabetes was for old people.
I was about 24 when I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
I know what you're thinking, "didn't she say that she was type 1?"
Yes I did.
To explain a little, at the time I weighed about 220 ibs. I'm from a tiny little town and my family doctor wasn't exactly familiar with the different types of diabetes. She figured that anyone who was overweight had to be type 2. Of course, little ol' me, thinking that diabetes was only for old people, didn't question. I made up my mind that if I was going to have a chronic illness, then I was going to be the best diabetic the world had ever seen. :-)
About three months in, my blood sugars remaining in the high twenties even while on metformin and glyburide and losing 20 ibs mainly due to cutting my carb intake to nil, my doctor finally sent me to an endocrinologist in a larger town. As soon as the endocrinologist saw my sugars, she immediately said that I was definitely a type 1 and ordered a battery of blood tests including an A1C. I also got assigned a dietitian and a diabetic nurse educator that I would see every three months along with my endo. My dietitian put me right onto carbohydrate counting and my nurse put me on prefilled insulin pen injections.
Finding out that I was diabetic was one thing, finding out that I now had to go on insulin injections for the rest of my life was another.
The only thing that I really remember about that day was going out for lunch with my mom and trying to give myself my first insulin shot. Of course it wasn't at a full right angle and hurt like a bitch. Thankfully I figured out pretty quick how to make sure that that didn't happen again.
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