You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2007.
I am so tired of feeling low. Ever since my endo changed my ratio and basal a week or two ago, I have been going low at least once every day or so. I mean, yea, I could simply tweak my ratios and such, but it’s not that different from what it was before. It should not be causing this much of an impact on me. I should be able to just go about my business and not be bothered by the D.
I dropped again last night. I woke up around 4:45AM and tested at 53. Normally 53 is a manageable number, but having just woken up compounded it a bit. I couldn’t think straight, and then simply couldn’t find my glucose tablets, which were, once again, in my backpack. In the same place they always are. I stumbled down three flights of stairs to the main lobby of my dormitory, past public safety, and to a glowing vending machine. I punched in the number for a Twix, and stepped two steps to my left to punch in the numbers for a Root Beer. Normally, I would know that this was complete and total overkill, but I could not think.
After buying my sugar, the public safety officer asked if I was alright, because I was stumbling around. I gave him the “I’m a type 1 diabetic, and am having a hypoglycemic event right now. I’ll be fine once I get this sugar into me.” He sort of just looked at me, then looked down at his book, then up again and said “Good. I’m tired of dealing with drunk people tonight. Stay with me until you’re feeling better. I don’t want you passing out on your way upstairs.” Aw, he’s a nice public safety officer. Well, I pounded that soda down, gave it a few minutes, and told him I felt fine and he let me go upstairs.
Get upstairs and check in at 80something. All is well. Back to sleep. I slept through my first class… oy. I need to stop missing that class. It’s my least favorite class, but still. It’s the one I’m doing the worst in. Made it to the second class, testing en route. 179. Ouch. Not bad, but it had been 5 hours since I ate the stuff. Wonder how high that shot me (**harmless plug for CGMS**).
The day has gone pretty well so far… Have been feeling low all day, but when I check, my numbers are fine. I even re-calibrated my meter!!! Still good numbers. Dunno what that’s all about… maybe I’ve just been hungry and tired. Who knows.
The work is all winding down to a close… the programming project finally clicked, and I should be able to turn it in sometime that’s at least close to the deadline. :-)
Until next time,
Tom.
PS I know there is something I forgot to write in this post… That probably means that I will be posting again tomorrow. Or simply editing this one later tonight. Cheers. :-)
I went to bed somewhat early for me last night. It was around 2:30AM when I finally forced myself to stop trying to finish a paper due tomorrow. I checked my sugar, finding it to be a smooth 83mg/dL. All is good in the land of betes, all that is left to do is put in my earbuds and drift off to sleep to the voice of Damien Rice or the sounds of Emery, whichever my iPod decided to pump into my ears.
I quickly fell asleep, and drifted into an odd little dream that bordered on nightmare. I wake up in a cold sweat, shaking… something isn’t right… where’s my meter… shit. Where is my meter. Desk. On my desk. *fumble to get a test strip out, fumble to stab myself… fumble to get the blood anywhere close to the end of the strip…wait* The normal long five seconds occur.
5… wonder what this one’s going to be.
4… seriously, what happened to my sugar? it was fine!
3… I wonder how many glucotabs I have in the room.
2… Probably should have picked up some more at the store the other day.
1… Welp, here we go….
37mg/dL. Oh joy. Well I’ve been lower than this… Good thing I woke up though. Now where did I put my tabs… backpack. Gotcha. I down the tube. All seven of them. I feel like I’m about to puke. *chew chew chew* The taste of grape replaces the chalk.
Text my mother, who is awake due to other reasons, and have a nice little conversation while my sugar raises. I retest after about 20 minutes… comes up as 42mg/dL. What the hell?
I continue my conversation with momma, and test ten minutes later to find I’ve popped up to 93mg/dL. I’m a fan of that. I did notice, however, that I was still shaking once I hit 90+, and continued to shake for about another ten minutes. I was very curious as to why this was happening if my sugar was a-okay. Quite curious.
In other news, the semester is wrapping up, lots of things have been due this week. I’ve finished 5 papers so far, and have 4 left which can be turned in until next Thursday. The most important thing, however, is my programming project (due by midnight Friday, although she told us that she wouldn’t be awake to collect them at midnight, so as long as it is turned in by around 10am Saturday it would be fine). Finals start on May 5, and I am done around 1:30 on May 9!!! I go home for a few days, and return to Villanova to participate in Senior Week with the band, and go home for the summer on the 20th! Then it’s working at the coffee shop basically every day until August. Good times.
I’m so excited for the summer. Plan on getting on a DexCom, upgrading to the Animas 2020, getting my apartment ready on some of the weekends, and just living it up! Excitement times a billion!
Until next time,
Tom.
This has been a very good weekend, in my honest opinion. Sure, my sugars have been a little bit off, I slept through my only class on Friday…. but the weather has been beautiful, it’s Novafest, and I’ve been having a blast!
So as I said, I started the weekend early (unintentionally, I swear!) by sleeping through my lab on Friday, which happened to be my only class. I awoke to drunk people outside my window around noon, and realized that Novafest had officially started. The day of classes was wrapping up (for some) and the drinking had already begun. Oh boy. I showered, changed my site (for the third day in a row… I think something is up with my sites lately… grrrrr!!!) and made the long trek from South campus to Main campus to grab some grub and hang out with friends. IN THE SUNSHINE!!!!! It was almost 65 degrees, and for the weather as of late, that is amaaaazing. Felt like it was in the 80s! I even got a little sunburned!
After lounging in the sun, and feeling my brain turn to mush, I trekked back to South to get ready for dinner. A small group of us, 4 Freshmen and 2 Juniors, headed into the city of brotherly love to hit up an amazing sushi restaurant called “RAW Sushi and Sake Lounge“. It was intense. I’ve had good sushi before, but this place was the bomb. No sake for us, but it was still more fun than I’ve had eating in a while. And to put the cherry on top, they had “Finding Nemo” playing on a TV because there was a family with small children there. We weren’t sure if it was supposed to make us want to eat more, or eat less. :-p
After dinner, we went next door to get gelato. I believe it is just intense ice cream made with all cream instead of milk, so… well…. let’s just say it’s intense. I may be wrong on this, but it was definitely yummy in my tummy. The only bad thing about that night was the fact that I had no clue how many carbs were in anything I ate! I looked at the sushi, saw how much rice was used, guesstimated, sorta added a unit for safe measure, closed my eyes, and picked a number. It all worked out in the end with a perfect 102mg/dL two hours later. Yay!
Saturday was a lot like Friday, minus the “hitting the town” bit. Lounging occurred, sunshine was present in all places, and my brain surely felt like mush! Watched the first three episodes of a new show called “Drive” with a friend of mine, and we are both hooked! I can really see this series going places, and one of the main actors (Nathan Fillion) was the lead in another series a few years back called “Firefly”, and then in a movie based on that series called “Serenity”.
It just occurred to me that I have been following the shows head writer is Tim Minear. Tim joined up with the mastermind of “Firefly” (and subsequently “Serenity”) Joss Whedon. This duo worked on shows such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” together, each writing with their own style, and each complimenting the other perfectly. So maybe that’s why I like the show so much. Hmmm… Interesting, no?
Well anyways, as time ticks on, it is getting further into my Sunday, which means I have a whole heck of a lot of work to do later today, after I get a quick nap. I have at least 14 pages to write on various topics, from how music effects me to how Kafka’s The Trial can be compared to the world during World War I to how I felt after Paul Rusesabagina, the main character from “Hotel Rwanda”, came to speak at Villanova some months back. Oy. Farewell, my dear Sanity. I shall find you again on Monday.
Until next time,
Tom.
PS: I may be writing some things that involve another side of me in the near future. This side has to deal with depression and self-injury. I’m going to be password-protecting these posts due to their graphic nature, and simply because I do not think everyone out there who could stumble onto this blog via various search engines (most likely looking for solely diabetes-related things) would be ready to read some of the stuff I plan on discussing. If you would like the password, please shoot an e-mail in my direction.
I realize that the “About Tom” page is all about me; an introduction of sorts. This post, however, is an introduction to the guy that keeps me running through the day, and sleeping through the night.
Xavier has been living with me since July 5, 2006. He has moved around a lot; sometimes he can be found in a pocket, other times he is clipped to my belt. He’s a silver Animas IR1250, and he has been through his share of fights and drunken escapades. He’s pretty much the most amazing little plastic friend I’ve got, and the only piece of plastic that I’ve taken the effort to give a name. Sometime in the near future, Xavier is getting a friend, or maybe a girlfriend. I’ve never held a DexCom, so it could be a guy or a gal. We shall see. The future has the potential to hold many wonderful things, and I plan on forcing it to fulfill its potential.
Sorry about the short little stub of a post, I promise a more intellectually stimulating one either later today or sometime tomorrow.
Until next time,
Tom.
Okay, so maybe it was more like 2:45am. But “Midnight Dreamer” sounds so much better than “2:45 in the morning Dreamer”. Just roll with it.
Anyways. The scene: It is April 17, 2007, and Tom is asleep in his dorm room, cell phone alarm going off to check a 2am sugar. Alarm has been going off for about 45 minutes. Roomy comes in waking Tom up. Let the scene commence.
I realize that I need to check my sugar, and check it: 529mg/dL. I think about that number. Sort of say to myself “Well hey. That’s cool. That’s a really big number.” I do a second test, 5…4…3…never see the 2. Or the 1. Or the result.
I wake up around 8am the next day,vaguely remember the 529, and sort of flip out. My meter is under me, and something is stabbing me in the chest… yup, that’d be the test strip still sticking out of the meter. Hmmm…. wonder what that second result was… Oh snap. It was 98mg/dL. Sounds pretty good to me. Wonder why it was so high the first reading. Curiosities galore.
My nights have been interesting lately. First this, then last night’s pizza fiasco… and before I went to sleep last night, between the worried thoughts, I had this random thought that if I just stopped wearing the pump, and stopped checking my sugar, it would all just go away. Like it was all in my head and if I stopped worrying about it, it would stop bothering me. Sort of like a middle school bully; if you stop being scared of them and stand up to them, they’ll stop bugging you.
I know this is completely untrue in reality, but like Amy over at Diabetes Mine wrote in her post today, the whole thing still shocks me sometimes. Being diagnosed three months before my seventeenth birthday, I can actually remember what life was like before the D. I remember the days where I could drink Hawaiian Punch and not have to worry about the fact that I just consumed a bazillion sugar carbs that will shoot through my bloodstream like torpedoes fast approaching their target. I remember not having to think about whether or not I took my Lantus back while I was on MDIs, or when the last time I changed my site was nowadays. I remember it all, back in the days of candy canes and gumdrops. I have adapted to this new lifestyle of higher math skills and memory strenuous activities, but every once in a while it is nice to reminisce and take a nice trip down memory lane.
Well anyways, after my slight high this morning I ripped my site and took my morning shower, the first site-free shower I’ve had in a while. It was such a nice shower. haha Also, thanks to Kevin over at parenthetic (diabetic) gave me his patented logbook spreadsheet earlier this week, and I am truly amazed. I never truly thought of how helpful logging could be until I started keeping track of my intake of carbs and insulin and the results. His logbook has really helped me out this past week, showing me the overall trends and things that need to be adjusted. He truly is a logging God.
Speaking of God, religion has always been one thing that I have not been so interested in. I mean, the idea of it, and all the different variations of different religions has always interested me, and I have quite a number of books on various religions, but I have never been able to fully accept the idea of religion. My biggest reservation is putting my faith in something that is not tangible or scientifically proven. But if you think about it, diabetes and the different treatments are sort of like that. You put faith in your body and the insulin you give to it, and you have faith that your cells are going to know what to do and how to react to certain things.
If I can live my life putting my faith into a little plastic box on my belt, why can’t I put my faith into a higher being of some sort? Part of me thinks that the entire coping process I went through when I was diagnosed would have been a lot easier if I had had a stronger religious background. But hey, who knows? There’s no way to find out now, because what is done is done. We shall never truly know.
Well it is time to go talk to my landlord for next year. Wish me luck. :-)
Until next time,
Tom.
Dawn Phenomenon. Those two words alone bring thoughts of hate into my mind. Go to bed fearing a low due to an overbolus for some pizza, wake up high. I am positive that I overbolused because I was still slowly dropping when I went to bed, not into dangerous waters, but still dipping towards 75 slowly. I upped my basal for 3AM-7AM to 1.0u, and it still kicks me in the pants sometimes. How does that work out?!?
Just needed to get this rant out before I went to class, I’m sure I’ll have a more substantial post later.
Until then,
Tom.
I’m sitting here in the student center thinking about some things. I just finished eating lunch, and bolused for it. I was always told to bolus and then eat. I did this for about a solid month of my diabetic life, until I started to bolus after I ate. Is the only reason we are told to bolus before eating to keep the spike to a minimum? Or is there some other reason that I’m not seeing?
The reason I stopped bolusing before meals was because I was frequently not finishing my meals, and would then have extra insulin on board. I would always find myself dropping after I ate due to this extra. I just read on another blog, I think it was Wil’s, about his order of testing, bolusing, and then eating… and started thinking about it again. What is the point? I’m no doctor, but there is an obvious risk of going low if you don’t eat everything (something suddenly is not appealing, or looked better than it tastes, or some such). How do you get around all of this???
Until next time,
Tom.
What would you do, if all of a sudden your pump died? Or all of your syringes broke? Suddenly your insulin all goes bad. Everything you depend on to keep you alive simply disappeared off the face of the planet. What would happen? How would we survive?
If we look back at history, we would all surely be dead. The first mentioning of diabetes was by a physician named Hesy-Ra on a piece of 3rd Dynasty Egyptian papyrus. The people of Hesy-Ra’s time had no real hope of survival. In the early 1900’s, even, the treatments for diabetes included “the ‘oat-cure’ (in which the majority of diet was made up of oatmeal), the milk diet, the rice cure, ‘potato therapy’ and even the use of opium!”[taken from the Canadian Diabetes Association website] Until the 1980’s, there was no biosynthetic human insulin, nor were there insulin pens. In the past two and a half decades, treatment for our disease has changed by leaps and bounds.
But, what if it all suddenly disappeared. Gone from the face of the planet. Would any of us, even if we still had the knowledge of carb-counting and healthy eating, survive for very long? Type 2’s could survive for a fairly long time, but how many Type 1’s would make it through the end of the year? Or the end of the summer? Or even to the beginning of the summer? Who would even know the answer to this question?
Well I, for one, am quite glad we never have to find out. This was just something I started to think about while I was watching Cars tonight. Quite a good movie, that one is. A good one to just relax with friends and have a good laugh, smile too much, and make fools of yourselves for watching movies for toddlers while most of you are over the age of 21.
In other news, my endo called my house the other day and left a message, which was quickly relayed to me. He received my March sugars, which I sent in on Tuesday, and he had some tweaks for me. He dropped my ratio from 1c:10i to 1c:9i. Such a minor tweak. He also upped my basal between 3am and 7am from .875u/h to 1.0u/h. That is what scared me the most. I usually wake up with pretty good numbers, but hey. He’s the endocrinologist and the Ph.D and the MD and all the awards on his walls. Since this change, I’ve been pretty hard on myself… high-balling my carbs counts, wanting to keep my numbers low… basically forgetting that I’m throwing more insulin at my body than usual, and my meter reflects this, with a 46mg/dL, a 37mg/dL, and a 53mg/dL all in the same day. Fyoo. Quite the day. More on this to come once I make myself realize that I have got to stop throwing extra insulin into the mix and play it all by the books. Maybe his crazy plan might actually work.
Also on Monday, I’m going to call my diabetic educator, a very nice woman named Ruth, and talk to her about getting a DexCom either before school lets out in a month or sometime over the summer. I’ve been really envious of all of you out there with super powers, and I’d like to get a taste of those powers for myself. I’m not sure if my clinic has a DexCom to loan out to patients of not, but it is something I would really like to look into. Another call I’m making on Monday (Yeesh! I hate the phone! Too many calls in one day!) is one to Animas. I’m on the IR1250, and Animas recently announced a new pump, the Animas 2020. I’m not quite positive on that name, as the rep I was e-mailing called it the 20/20, and the website has it as the 2020. Such a tiny difference, but the 2020 makes me think of a date in the future, and the 20/20 makes me think of vision. To very different ideas and images in my mind, but quite a nifty name regardless. They have an upgrade program, and the new pump looks to be pretty good. Not a Paradigm or anything, but when paired up with a DexCom, it should be about the same gig. I hope.
Anywho, it’s pretty late, and I’ve got lots of stuff to do tomorrow. So I’m outta here.
Until next time,
Tom.
