Diabetes Blog Week - Foods on Friday

Taking a cue from Adam Brown's recent post, write a post documenting what you eat in a day!  Feel free to add links to recommended recipes/shops/whatever.  Make it an ideal day or a come-as-you-are day – no judgments either way.  (Thank you, Katy of  Bigfoot Child Have Diabetes for this topic.)

Thankfully I’ve been in the process of trying to lose weight which for me means writing everything I eat down so this wasn't too hard.

6:30am – 2 packets of Peaches & Cream Instant Oatmeal, a large cup of coffee with sweetener and half & half.

9am – an apple

11:30am – 3 cups of mixed greens with some chopped up cucumber, red peppers, and celery. I also throw in some feta, cooked chicken and dried cranberries for flavour and top it off with low fat Greek dressing. I usually add a yogurt on the side as I need to up my dairy count.

2:30pm – mixed veggies and hummus. Usually some carrots, celery, peppers, and/or cucumber

6pm – Last night I had balsamic pork tenderloin with some rice and brussel sprouts.

Not very exciting. This is pretty much what I eat every day although with variations.

For example, breakfast can consist of 2 scrambled eggs, 1 cup of berries (whatever is in the fridge), and a piece of whole grain toast and butter or maybe pancakes if I’m feeling the need for carbs. Lunch sometimes has chicken caesar salad, or a meat, lettuce and cheese sandwich on whole grain bread with some cut up veggies on the side. Dinner usually consists of some sort of meat choice, a starch and some veggies.

That’s it. Pretty standard. Well except for the wine that makes it in on the weekends J

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.

Diabetes Blog Week - Diabetes Art Day

This year Diabetes Art moves up from the Wildcard choices as we all channel our creativity with art in the broadest sense. Do some “traditional” art like drawing, painting, collage or any other craft you enjoy. Or look to the literary arts and perhaps write a d-poem or share and discuss a favorite quote. Groove to some musical arts by sharing a song that inspires you diabetes-wise, reworking some song lyrics with a d-twist, or even writing your own song. Don’t forget dramatic arts too, perhaps you can create a diabetes reality show or play. These are just a starting point today – there are no right or wrong ways to get creative!

So I didn't have any time to make anything new this week for Diabetes Art day but I'm rather proud of the project below.

From Left to Right - Oregano, Chives, Basil

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm trying to get healthier so as soon as spring hit, I thought I would try growing my own herbs. I thought it might inspire me to cook from scratch more. As I've never really grown anything (I killed a cactus in college) so I am extremely proud of these and consider growing an art form

Diabetes Blog Week – Accomplishments Big and Small

We don’t always realize it, but each one of us had come a long way since diabetes first came into our life. It doesn’t matter if it’s been 5 weeks, 5 years or 50 years, you’ve done something outstanding diabetes-wise. So today let’s share the greatest accomplishment you've made in terms of dealing with your (or your loved one’s) diabetes. No accomplishment is too big or too small - think about self-acceptance, something you’ve mastered (pump / exercise / diet / etc.), making a tough care decision (finding a new endo or support group / choosing to use or not use a technology / etc.).

Contrary to my petition, I’m actually most proud of my breakfast BG’s. The development is relatively new though. For the last 9 years, I have had issues with high after breakfast BG’s. They have routinely been in the high teens and low twenties. I have played around with basal rates and carb ratios and nothing seemed to work. I started eating the same thing every morning so that I could attain some level of consistent data to analyse. Nothing had seemed to work.

About a month ago I decided to try giving up caffeine. I had recently gotten back into reading blogs which of course led me to start writing my own again and quite a few of the blogs mentioned that they had to bolus for caffeine. As I’m trying to get my BG’s back in shape for pregnancy, I thought I should try it. It worked for about a week. The high teens came back. It then occurred to me to try giving myself insulin 15 minutes prior to eating. I know most of you are going “What? Isn’t that what everyone does already?” But no, I don’t. I usually wait until I’m finished eating and then give myself insulin. For the most part it worked so I never considered changing my ways. I was always scared that I would not eat enough for the insulin I gave myself and end up having a low. With breakfast it’s different though, I eat the same thing every morning (well except for the occasional treat like Mother’s day Brunch), two pieces of multigrain toast with light peanut butter, a small container of low fat yogurt, and a fruit. So I decided to try inserting the insulin beforehand and it worked.

For the last two weeks, I have had perfect BG’s after breakfast. They have been consistently within 2 mmol/L of my pre-breakfast results. Getting this great control has been my most amazing accomplishment. Yay Me!

(And yes, I am back to drinking coffee ;-) )

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.

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.

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.