Diabetes Blog Week - Change The World

Let’s kick off Diabetes Blog Week by talking about the diabetes causes and issues that really get us fired up. Are you passionate about 504 plans and school safety? Do diabetes misconceptions irk you? Do you fight for CGM coverage for Medicare patients, SDP funding, or test strip accuracy? Do you work hard at creating diabetes connections and bringing support? Whether or not you “formally” advocate for any cause, share the issues that are important to you. (Thanks go out to Kim of Texting my Pancreas for inspiring this topic.)

I definitely would not classify myself as a public advocate about Diabetes. I don’t write letters to my public officials about how diabetes needs more funding. I don’t attend diabetes conferences to mingle with other PWD or people who work in diabetes healthcare. I don’t volunteer with JDRF or the Canadian Diabetes Association. Quite frankly I just don’t have time.

I am extremely envious of those that do and that can make it a priority.

I thank those people everyday cause without them; the province of Alberta would not have approved fully funding insulin pumps so that people who don’t have great insurance coverage can have the best care possible. This makes them the second province that includes adults in their coverage.

Without them, the Spare a Rose, Save a Child Campaign could never have existed and children who desperately need insulin would not have access to it.

Without them, we wouldn’t be as close as we are to getting an artificial pancreas. When the CGM detects that you are having a low, it automatically shuts off insulin delivery. While not perfect, it’s a step closer. Karen over at Bitter-Sweet has a really great blog on it.

Without them, there wouldn’t be work going on to look at making glucose meters more accurate.

Without them, there would be no DOC. I would not be able to manage my care as well as I do without the DOC’s support and information. I wouldn’t be able to explain the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 to people. I wouldn’t feel so comfortable experimenting with settings on my insulin pump or trying to different things to make me healthier.

So thank-you again to all those who go out and advocate for Patients with Diabetes. You guys are amazing.

Diabetes Blog Week 2014

The Fifth Annual Diabetes Blog Week is finally here! Last year was the first time I actually participated in it and I had the best time. Karen over at BitterSweet Diabetes created this amazing event 5 years ago. Each week I will be posting about a set topic and linking back to Karen's site. It really serves three purposes for me:

1. I'm a horrible blogger. Real life gets in the way and next thing you know 10 months have past between blog posts. D Blog week helps me to restart myself and gets my creative juices going.
2. People who may not know very much about Diabetes may find some really great information out there.
3. And finally, I get introduced to all of the great D blog's out there and my reading list gets longer :-)

Diabetes Blog week is taking place from May 12th to May 18th this year. Please click on the link above to find out more.

Thanks
Erin

Site Experiment

I've been using my legs for my infusion sites since I was pregnant two years ago and they definitely need a break. I switched back to my stomach about a month ago but have come to realize that there's still a lot of scaring from so many years just using my stomach. This was made glaringly clear to me last week with all of the wonky BG's I was having. On Friday I decided to try out a new site; my lower back. So far it's been really great. My BG's are now back to normal.

The only thing that I really don't like about it is that I'm constantly feeling it to make sure it hasn't become unstuck. I'm so paranoid that I'm going to rub/tear/pull it off. I'm pretty sure that I felt this way the first time that I put my set on my thigh but it feels even more so because I can't see it whenever I want. I have to change it tonight when I get home and I'm really hoping that this area keeps giving me good results. I don't think I'm ready for my arms yet.....

Wonky BG's

In my last post I mentioned that I was having issue's with my BG's. I checked my BG at lunch and it was perfect so I didn't end up changing my set until the night of the 23rd. Unfortunately the next morning, things went wonky again and have stayed that way. What really confuses me though is this:


5:45 pm - 7.4 mmol/L, ate 60g, forgot to give insulin

7:30 pm - 6.5 mmol/L
8:17 pm - 8.4 mmol/L, , gave 12.4 units for supper

10:40 pm - 9.9 mmol/L, corrected 1 unit
7:00 am - 5.7 mmol/L, ate 75g, gave 21.1 units

9:00 am - 7.5 mmol/L


How can I eat 60 g of carbohydrates, forget to bolus for it and two hours later, have a better BG? I bolused correctly for lunch I had no insulin in my system other than what my pumps delivers for my basal rate. I have no explanation.

Apparently pasta is a magic food?

#DBlogCheck - and other news

I recently just found out about this great idea by Chris at a Consequence of Hypoglycemia. On July 22, 2013 (today) you should post a comment on every blog you read to let bloggers know that you were there. If you don’t have anything specific to say than just say “Check!”. I tend to lurk quite a lot on other blogs but love reading them so this gives reminds me that bloggers really appreciate knowing that others are reading their blogs.

Now onto my news….As usual it’s been extremely crazy around here.

• My mom has been planning on moving out here for quite some time and has now made the move. She drove out from Montreal a couple of weeks ago after selling her house and within two days of getting here had put in an offer on a great house 15 min from my place. She takes possession on August 1st and should be completely moved in by the 15th. I love having her so close!
• After 16 months, I think I’m finally getting this motherhood thing down. Which is great as I have been neglecting my crafting like crazy. I’ve finally picked out a quilt pattern for Connor and will be heading tonight to pick out some fabrics. I can’t wait to get started. I’ll be posting pics of the finished product so stay tuned.
• My BG’s for the last 24hours have been extremely weird. I changed my set yesterday morning at 9am and my BG was 8.5. It then rose to 13.8 at noon. 9.7 at 2:30. 5.9 at 5:30. 5.2 at 7:20. 11.6 at 10pm and at 11:30pm it was 9.3. When I woke up this morning it was 16.4 and now it’s 20.1. I’ve been taking some serious correction blouses but they don’t seem to be getting them down. I have a feeling I have a bad site but I’m so reluctant to change it was my BG’s around dinner were fabulous. I think I’ll wait until lunch and see if I can get it in the normal range. I hate wasting a new set.
• There are so many wonderful things happening in the city right now and I can’t wait to get out and participate. I’ll try to post a little more frequently for the rest of the summer so that I can share it all with you. Have a great day!

Road Trip

Good Morning Father, I have sinned. It’s been three weeks since my last confession..…or blog post. Or more accurately about 6 weeks since I’ve written anything of substance. Work has been extremely ridiculous since I got back from vacation so I haven’t had as much free time as I needed to sit down and finally write a post.

On May 25th, my husband and I took our son and drove down to Omaha for a family reunion. It takes about 25 hours to drive there so we ended up stopping our first night in Great Falls, Montana and our second night in Rapid City, South Dakota. We’ve taken the trip before and had planned to spend a couple of days in Rapid City doing touristy stuff but it was raining the whole way down so we decided to push on and get to Omaha as quickly as possible. We got there on May 27th.

Maps.google.com

If any of you are thinking of spending three days in a car with a 15 month old, don’t. It was not pleasant. We specifically chose hotels that had pools so that we could get as much energy used up as possible before we headed out the next day. It worked for the first day. Unfortunately when we got to Rapid City, Connor had somehow gotten the flu. Thankfully we had already decided to leave the next day as I really pity the poor cleaning crew that had to deal with our room. We used a lot of towels. Thankfully Connor seemed ok the next morning so we headed out as planned and got to Omaha late afternoon.

By the next morning, my husband and father-in-law had come down with the flu as well. Followed the next day by my sister-in-law and her daughter. The worst parts of it only seemed to last for about 24 hours and most of the people were feeling a lot better by Friday.

Most of the week we spent in Omaha was great. We made it to the Henry Doorly Zoo, the botanical gardens, the children’s museum, and to a photographer to get some great family photos.

Having learned from our trip on the way down, we decided to stop by 2 or 3 pm everyday so that Connor could get a lot of exercise in. This made the trip home four days. We finally rolled back into Edmonton on June 6th. While we love road trips, I think we will definitely be flying the next time we head down. 3-4 days in a car son was just a little too much for our son. I think we’ll keep road trips to less than a day away.

As for the Diabetes front, my BG’s were actually amazing. It was a little shocking actually considering we ate out almost the entire trip. I’m talking about McDonald’s, Culver’s (mmmmm…butter buns), pizza ranch, you name it, if it was bad for you we probably ate there. I became very familiar with my dual wave feature on my pump and apparently am now super pro. Yay Me! We also did a ton of walking though as you can probably tell from all the activities above. I’m betting that had some to do with it. It just goes to show that exercise really does stabilize your BG’s. Now I just need to figure out how to add in more activities to my everyday life.

Back from Vacation

After a long two week road trip, I'm finally back and mostly caught up on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest (although I don't think you can ever get completely caught up on Pinterest), Tumbler, and blog reading. Not to mention unpacking, laundry, putting stuff away, cleaning the dust out of my house, etc that goes along with returning home from vacation. I can now focus on writing about my trip. Unfortunately it will probably take a day or two as I still need to get caught up at work. ;-)

I'll leave you with this though.

Gene Leahy Mall