Diabetes Blog Week – Share and Don’t Share

Often our health care team only sees us for about 15 minutes several times a year, and they might not have a sense of what our lives are really like. Today, let’s pretend our medical team is reading our blogs. What do you wish they could see about your and/or your loved one's daily life with diabetes? On the other hand, what do you hope they don't see?


This is a very hard topic for me. I’m a very open person and share pretty much everything with my diabetes team. There are two things though that they don’t see.

The first is something that I choose not to share and is probably pretty common. I don’t always tell my team about my bad food choices. Or at least how often or how much I eat them. My name is Erin, and I’m a carboholic. I LOVE sweets. I LOVE bread. I LOVE Fruit. I LOVE chips, pretzels, and anything else salty. It’s a real struggle for me to limit my choices which is probably why I’m at the weight I am. My team is very aware of the fact that I’m overweight. They weigh me every time I come in so I’m probably fooling myself that they don’t know. I still pretend they don’t know though as it makes me feel less guilty.

The second item that they don’t see but I would love for them to be a part of is the frustration. They get a little bit of it during my visits especially when we’re talking about an especially irritating issue but they don’t “see” it. They won’t experience it with me. They don’t see the times when it makes me cry. They’re not in my head while I run every possible scenario for hours. They don’t see when I can’t concentrate on work. They don’t see me snap at my husband or son when I’m having a low. They just don’t see, they only hear.

Diabetes Blog Week - 2013

 

This year I’ve decided to participate in the 4th Annual Diabetes Blog Week. It was created by Karen at Bitter Sweet Diabetes back in 2010 and has continued ever since. The purpose is to get to know all of the other Diabetes blogs out there. There’s a topic posted each day so each of the participants write about the same thing. Please click on the graphic above to learn more.

Insurance Problems

Most of the time my insurance is really great; but there are times, like today, when I really want to much them in the face.

This morning I received a lovely email telling me that my latest claim for pump supplies had been processed and I should see the money in my account within the next 24-48 hours. As you can imagine, I was very excited as this claim covered three months of supplies totally about $700 that desperately needs to go on my credit card to avoid more interest charges. I'm a little bit of a procrastinator. Thankfully my insulin, glucose strips, lancets, etc are all automatically covered and the pharmacy sends the claim directly to my insurance so I'm never out of money up front. For some reason though, my insurance insists that I mail in my claim for my infusion sets and reservoirs and then get reimbursed.

Anyway getting back to today's claim, as soon as I saw the email, I went onto the website to confirm and saw this:

What do you mean it's not covered? It's been covered for for years but now you've decided it's not covered AGAIN? This has actually happened to me a few times. The first time was last year. In January of 2012, we went through some internal changes at my Company and as a result, our benefits ended up being "restarted" (which allowed me to get a brand new insulin pump). It also meant that there was some confusion about my pump supplies. I ended up getting my benefits department involved to clarify the matter. The second time, I thought I would try submitting it online to see if I could get reimbursed quicker. Didn't work. Apparently the supplies have to be submitted through the mail so they see the original copies. This time I submitted everything through the mail and assumed that everything was fine. I was of course wrong and as soon as I saw the above, proceeded to call.

In the end everything is fine and off course they're covered but why do we constantly have to deal with this shit?

Travelling

I have been travelling so much for work lately that every spare free moment I have has been spent hanging out with my family so haven’t had time to post. It has reminded me though that those of us with Diabetes have some unique challenges when it comes to travelling.

About a week before I go on a trip, I make sure I have all of my diabetic supplies that I’m going to need while I’m away and for about a week after. If I don’t then my first stop is to my pharmacy to get refills. My pharmacy is really great and is quick at getting all of my complicated pump supplies in. In addition to the pump supplies and the everyday stuff that I carry around, I also make sure to pack my extra pump (thanks to my awesome insurance the restarted in January 2012) just in case the one I’m using were to die on me.

A couple of years ago I was on a business trip to Saskatoon and I had to change out my infusion set and reservoir. Unfortunately I received a lovely error message about my motor not working. I promptly ripped out the new infusion set and tried again. My pump then decided to go completely blank. Of course I didn’t bring any extra needles or insulin pens with me and it was 11pm so no pharmacies were open. Stupid me, I thought I’ll be fine, so I went to bed and promptly woke up with a 26.5 mmol/L. I decided to go directly to a medicentre and to see if I could get some needles. Thankfully I was flying home that afternoon and Medtronic was able to have a pump to me by the next morning. Needless to say I will never travel without some sort of back-up again.

My CDE has always told me that you shouldn’t change the time on your pump until you get to your final location. I have no idea why though which I find really strange as normally I question everything. The problem with this method is I have a horrible memory and often forget to change the time back. This also doesn’t work when you’re driving across the country as you probably are going to go through multiple time changes.

She’s also told me that some diabetics need to give themselves a little bolus or a reduced basal rate in flight as they are either more or less resistant to insulin while in the air. Something to do with the altitude. Thankfully I’ve never noticed a difference in my sensitivity so have not had to change my calculations.

The hardest part of travelling for me is eating out. When travelling for work, I’m usually at the mercy of an admin assistant that books the restaurants or has the lunch brought in. They don’t usually book the most healthy choices but rather what’s closest to the function we’re attending. The only time this isn’t the case is when I’m travelling to do a site visit. Unfortunately my choices aren’t much better. I’m usually grabbing lunch on the fly so tend to choose the first fast food restaurant I can find. Thankfully those choices (while unhealthy) at least have all of the nutritional info online for easy planning. In regular restaurants though there are so many hidden carbs and I always seem to over or under estimate which leads me to dealing with it late at night at my hotel.

Planning ahead is so key to making a trip easier on your diabetes.

Thankfully my work travelling is finished for the next little bit and now I can focus on my vacation planning. My husband, son, and I are heading for a two week road trip to the US. My husband’s family is having a mini-reunion in Omaha (where most of them live). He’s the middle child of 5 and all but 1 are married with 1 kid. We’ll be there for about a week and it should be great.

Diabetes Stuff

As a prelude to my travelling post tomorrow, I thought I would post what I carry around with me everyday to manage my diabetes. This includes my glucometer, ketone tester, snack for lows, bag full of lifesavers, batteries for my pump, hand sanitizer and a couple packages of peanut butter and honey again for lows.

Missing is batteries for glucometer and ketone meter and extra pump supplies. These need to be replenished.

Salad Update

I found the hidden carbs in my salad yesterday. They ended up coming from the balsamic vinegar in the dressing, the almonds, and I underestimated the apple. The salad alone ended up coming to 38g of carbs. For today, I've cut out the bread and reduced the apple to half so I should be at the 28g mark. I'll post my 2 hours after lunch BG to keep me honest :-)

Lunch Update

So I had my wonderful salad for lunch today and apparently didn't carb count enough for it as my BG was 12.9 mmol/L. I'm going to have examine it tonight to find out what happened. I normally don't weigh my food and instead use the SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guessing) method. Apparently that's going to have to change at least for the first few times I make my salad.