You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2007.
We ordered Chinese for dinner at the coffeehouse on Thursday. It was ready, I picked it up, I tested and bolused, we began to feast. A rush of people came through our doors, I went back to work. Never got a chance to get that food in my system. I ring in at 37 with 3.5 units of Novolog left in my system. Still thinking somewhat straight, I quickly thought of something with about 30 carbs in it. Red Bull. Chug. Go go go. Blech.
In my mind, it should all be going up. I start to contemplate the meaning of life. While thinking about that question, I begin to notice that all the lights are getting brighter. All the colors. Wow. The colors. I never noticed how bright the colors on our syrup bottles are. I test again, 32. Hmmm…. Not cool. The Red Bull should kick in soon and start counteracting. Gotta just finish the dishes so we can get out of here. Good. The dishes are done, let’s test before I drive (Remember kids! Always test before you drive! It’s D-Law!) 58. Well, better than 32… I’ll eat a rice crispy treat as I drive. 58 is on the border of my territory. I can handle it. And I’m coming up as I think anyways. It’ll be good.
I got home safe and sound, and tested again, feeling lower than before. 43. What…the…hell? I chug an 8oz glass of orange juice, pop a few starbursts, and plop down on the couch in front of the tube to catch up with Mom and Sis. Test ten minutes later… 56… um… SERIOUSLY. I waited a bit longer, and before I knew it I was up at 72, then 79, then 96 and holding. Yay for not overshooting, but damn did it take a lot of food to bounce back.
In my life I have drank alcohol, I have smoked pot, I have abused prescription drugs. I’ve done my fair share of mind-altering substances… but never in my life have colors looked that vibrant. Even now, a good 26 hours later, I am amazed at how awesome those colors looked to me, and how clouded my brain was. I’ve got no clue how much lower I could have stayed conscious, but that was cutting it closer than I ever wanna cut it.
That’s the last time I’m ever bolusing early for dinner while at work. Now that may sound a bit more common-sense to you guys, but it was a fastcarb-laden meal and I really didn’t feel like my meter having those numbers in it if I waited to bolus. Well hey, Karma kicked me in the rump and cursed my meter with numbers from the other end of the spectrum. Figures.
I’m beat and have work in 9 hours.
Till next time,
_Tom.
EDIT: Didn’t want to flood the headlines with another post, so I just added to the end of this one. I’m thinking about buying www.unbalancediabetic.com from godaddy.com, but since I just paid $15 to wordpress to upgrade so I can edit my own css, it would be stupid to leave wordpress until that runs out, in one year. I was thinking, should I just buy the domain and “park” it and let godaddy slap ads up and try to make some cash? I’m looking to the people who may have done this (not sure who that may be). What do y’all think? :-)
My new pump came yesterday. While it was nice to have that short pump vacation… rather nerve-wracking and sleepless… but it was still nice to be able to not worry about tubing getting caught on anything, or about ripping my site out accidentally. It was nice, but I am very glad to be back on a pump. So much more re-assuring, that whole actually having a basal setup is nice.
I am pleased to introduce my new little buddy Zander to the world. He’s an Animas 2020 pump, and cost me $299 to upgrade. I’m still not really sure what warrants that much money to upgrade, especially since that is the cheapest upgrade cost. Hmmm… Anyways, here he is:
Hopefully this little guy will last me longer than Xavier did… I’m running out of names!
Well I’m gonna go to the coffeeshop I work at for an open mic night. Hopefully there will be some good musicians there.
Until next time,
_Tom.
Xavier, my almost-one-year-old Animas IR1250 has kicked the can. The fact that it was not even a year old sort of bothers me, however Animas sent a replacement due to my home tomorrow sometime… Instead of a simple replacement, however, I requested to upgrade to the new Animas 2020 pump. It’s as cheap as it will ever be, and why not just get it now instead of waiting? The cost to upgrade ($299) can be taken from my inheritance, I guess, and then I can earn that back and not have really lost anything other than some time.
Being back on injections, however, is quite odd. Doing all the math in my head is all fine, but when it came to actually injecting, it felt so foreign. It hasn’t been that long… Has it? It’s only been about 11 months… Seems long, in the long-run it’s quite short. Weird. Time’s a weird thing if you sit down and think about it. Ya know?
Well I’m hoping I get through the night without any real basal running. I’m gonna wing it and do a check every two-ish hours and correct if necessary. Should be a somewhat smooth ride, given the circumstances. I’ll check in and show off my new pump sometime tomorrow. Gotta think of a name, once I discover whether the 2020 feels like a guy or a gal. Hmmmm…
Until then,
_Tom.
As my mother walked out of the house a few minutes ago to run some errands, she said something very curious to me:
“I can’t even recognize you as my own son anymore.”
…what? What does that even mean? Does that mean that I’m being disowned? That I’ve done something to not be considered ‘her son’ anymore? Or did she simply mean that, over the course of the past year, I have changed enough physically to cloud the concrete relation recognition.
Sidenote: Scott, there is a massive spider crawling up my wall right now. Holy crap.
Back to topic: She says this, and I can say nothing. I can only stand there dumbfounded, having no clue how to respond, where to look… so I stretch like a cat. Damn that felt good. But seriously, that is such an awkward thing to say. But I guess I understand where she is coming from. I left two very good friends here in high school, and when I came back to the good old Camp Hill for the summer… All I could say was “…damn you look different.” Growing up. Sometimes I am not a fan. Other times, I just want to hit fast forward and get it over with. But hey, these are the moments for which we are living. These are the friends we will never forget. These are the memories that will forever be ingrained in our hearts and souls.
I’m gonna go make some more of those memories, at work that is. :-p
_Tom.
Say no to spiders, say yes to the patented “smash-n-grab” technique. Scott, though I’m sure it was scary at the time, your post made me laugh out loud, for a while. Never a dull moment.
I am not happy about my last post. I’m a grownup now; I can vote, I can drive, I can smoke (blech… nasty habit), I can buy pictures of naked women… I can (not) join the military. I should be able to keep my temper and emotions in check and not thrust them in the face of you who take the time out of your day to read my words. But hey, it happened, I can’t change that fact. What’s done is done.
As for the here and now, I am up due to a 46mg/dL that hit me like a truck while I was reading and getting ready to go to sleep. I’m now waiting to check what I am after eating like I hadn’t seen food in ages. That is another thing that irks me about this disease. I should be able to control myself when I’m low. I shouldn’t eat the entire pantry in an effort to get myself back to a normal glucose range. I should be able to make that connection: eating everything in sight will make me skyrocket, far past my target. I will end up like Columbus. I may find a wonderful new world, but I will still be quite far from where I wanted to be. Whatever. I get robbed of that insight when my sugar drops below 50. If I can’t control it, I guess I’ll just accept the fact that I become ravenous when I’m low. :-p
Another reason I am still up, aside from making sure I won’t die if I go back to sleep (;-p), is that I get my A1c drawn tomorrow. I am scared. Ishless. Since diagnosis, it has both gone down, and gone back up. I started around 12.1, then dropped to 7.4 . In November of 2006 it was down to 6.4, which is great in my eyes. But, a test done in late February revealed that my A1c had jumped back up to 7.8. I am praying that it has either nestled in and stayed around that 8.0, or even gone down a bit (or a lot)… but I am so scared that it went up even further. I haven’t been taking very good care of myself in the months since February… Oy. Who would have thought that two numbers and a decimal point would freak me out so much. And to make things even funnier… I’m scared of the day on which I don’t even get to find out what the number is! Odd.
Well my sugar’s back up to “normal”, so I’m gonna get some sleep and go see the vampire in the morn. Hope everyone has a good day. :-)
_Tom.
*Edit: So all that worrying was for nothing. My endo appointment isn’t for another three weeks. I just wanted to get the blood drawn early so I didn’t have to work around my work schedule and such, but my Mom thinks it is stupid to get it done early. I guess I’ll have another nervous night in two weeks. :-\
<Begin Rant…>
I am so tired of this disease. I shouldn’t even have the right to be tired of it yet. My D-Day was a few days ago… May 4th… I don’t even know what I was doing. Probably ignoring the D. In the past six days I have gone through 7 or 8 sites. They just… blow. Insulin just starts spewing out the hole, and I am really tired of it. Of the past six showers I’ve taken, at five of them were site-free. It’s nice to have that again, but not when it means I’m about to stab myself again. Sometimes I just think….
“Maybe it’s not all worth it. What did I do? Maybe this isn’t really happening.”
» Maybe I can just… stop.
I know that I can’t stop… that I have to keep pushing myself to care; pushing myself to keep my body running as smoothly as I can… but seriously. In this world of wireless everything, and miniaturization…. why can’t we have a more effective way to fix ourselves? I’m not knocking on the researchers and doctors and the brains around the world working on this problem…but why isn’t there a functioning, publicly available closed-circuit system yet? Why can’t we do something about this? We shouldn’t have to just “accept our fates”. We should be able to kick someone’s ass and yell in their face to get in gear and come up with something that works. If we have cars that can park themselves…. why can’t we have bodies that function correctly.
It’s quite clear that I am pissed off at diabetes. I am sick and tired of this fucking disease. I know, I know. It could be worse. It could be a terminal disease. It could be a bitch to keep in check. It could be one of the many incapacitating diseases out there. It could be worse. Yes. It could be. But there are millions of perfectly healthy people out there… why not us. What did we ever do? What did anyone ever do to deserve to be one of the diseased?
Where is Willy Wonka with a miracle pill? He could always do everything else… Those Oompa Loompa’s were pretty badass. Surely they could fix us. I’m going to stop bitching now and go count some carbs. Try to loose some of the weight I gained. Stop being such a piss-ant.
<End Rant…>
Later y’all.
Tom.
Well I am finally settled in again at home, back in good ol’ Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Even though there is not much to do here, home is where the heart is… and as a college student, I can recognize that home is also where the good food, the showers without sandals, and the old friends are. :-p
This is going to be an extremely short post, as I’ve been running around doing lots of things since I got home on Wednesday, and my blogging time has, sadly, greatly diminished. I discovered this great new tea from Coca-Cola called “Enviga”. It’s a carbonated green tea, comes in small 12 fl. oz. cans, and is around a dollar for each can. Expensive, but it’s got no carbs, is delicious, and only has five calories.
I have also noticed that it either amps up my insulin, or does something else, because I drank a can of it with a slice of pizza yesterday, and then forgot to bolus for the pizza. Normally that would kill my numbers, but there wasn’t even a hint of a spike. I was around 65 before, and two hours afterwards I was actually lower, hovering around 60. That, in my honest opinion, is AWESOME. To be able to eat pizza without insulin?!? All just because I drank a can of tea?!? WOW.
So anyways, just wanted to share my newly discovered gem with the world. It’s yummy. Comes in three flavors that I know of: Berry (Yum), Peach (Little less yum, but yum nonetheless), and Original/Green Tea (I forget what it’s actually called, but yuck….). I’m not actually a green tea fan at all, so that’s why the original flavor is nasty in my opinion. I’ve also noticed that the caffeine content is pretty high, so that’s a double plus. Being able to keep up with the fast pace of working and balancing so much stuff, caffeine is a happy thing. :-)
Well I’m off to go lounge in the sun for an hour or so, then to “Jamfest” at the high school. Nothing like seeing some local no-name bands mess around in front of a crowd. It was fun back when I did it, so why not show some support now that I’m out of the scene? :-p
Catch y’all later,
_Tom.
As my days as a Freshman here at Villanova University draw to an end, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I’m 18 years old, one of the younger members of my class, but am mentally closer to the top. I’ve gone through some tough stuff, but I have still come out on top of it all (mostly). But, regardless of all of that, we are all growing and aging every day (no matter how much some of us hate the idea of growing old).
A good friend of mine from high school sent me an instant message tonight, asking if I wanted to know a secret. Well who wouldn’t want to get in on a secret??? Turns out that it’s not a secret at all, but she is now engaged to her boyfriend of almost 3 years. The guy is an amazing one: treats her like a princess, maintains his loyalty to her, and is always there to say just the right things when she needs to hear them. I am very happy for them both, and can’t wait to hear when and where the wedding is, and then find out if I get an invite (:-p).
After I read that she was engaged, I started to think. In the next ten years (I will be 28 in 10 years. :-D) , how many of us will be married and have kids on the way, if not in this world already? How many weddings will I have attended? Will I be married? Who will the lucky lady be, and will she really be all that lucky? Where will I be working? Will I have actually gotten through grad school? Will I be able to handle the real world as well as I’m not handling college life? What will happen regarding all of my high school friends after that second degree of separation? Will any of them hit it big and end up in the papers for something extraordinary so I can read it and tell my wife “Hey, I went to high school with this guy, he was a real piece of work!”
Growing up is scary stuff. I admit it, in the past year I have grown up more (physically and mentally) than I ever had before in one solid year. I view the world in such a different light than before, and I can relate to a whole new group of people (Hey all you Diabetics, that’s you!). Change has always scared me, but I have finally learned to look it straight in the eyes and say “Bring it on.”. Come to think of it, I’ve learned to say that to a lot of things, much to my own chagrin (for example, taking two math courses at once this semester. Woops!)
Growing up, moving out… another year of schooling has faded into another summer just as day fades into night. Seamlessly. Time floats on, things change, people grow. C’est la vie!
_TcB.
Today, May 3, 2007, was my last day of official classes as a Freshman at Villanova University. Final exams start on Saturday, and I am done with my exams on Wednesday, May 9. Sweet thing, however, is that I only have official exams on those two days. Two actual “sit-down” tests, 1 take-home test, and one essay test. By 3PM on Wednesday, I shall have left South Campus for the summer, never to live on this campus again. I should be able to sign the lease for my apartment by the time finals are over, and if not, I’ll have to do it via fax, or something along those lines. Then we get to move in on June 1, or whenever we want to after that, cause it is ours!!!
But hey, that worry is well-placed in the future. The here-and-now is the last little spurt of work necessary to get through the finals week, and then I’m home free for the summer. I have never been this excited for summer before in my life. I guess it is just because I have never had to actually work to keep myself afloat grades-wise. The idea of being able to sit outside and not have a care in the world… It has never seemed so appealing to me. I sat outside today after my last class and played cards with a friend. It was the most relaxing hour of my life, and I somehow got a nice little tan!(?!?)
I think I have procrastinated enough, I should probably get back to my work/studying/being a college student. Until next time,
Tom.
