Monday, January 31, 2011

Day 15

4:00
BG is looking good. I just checked it and it was up to 129, but the 8:00 and 11:00 checks were both below 100. And I did eat two pieces of sugar free candy, which, while being sugar free is not carb free, so those carbs may be what pushed it up a bit. I'm not really worried about the 129 since I plan to have a salad for supper and being below 200 means no supplemental insulin, so I'm okay with 129.

And, wow, I am really late to the blog-o-sphere today. I am so easily distracted it [Squirrel!!] it is kinda scar at times. But, in my own defense, and I do have to try to defend myself, I had decided to move my exercise to mornings and today was the first day for morning exercises. But it isn't just the move of the exercise time that has thrown my day off. 

First, I had a hard time falling asleep last night, so of course that made it harder to get up this morning, so after my alarm went off I crawled back in bed for another half hour. Once up and breakfast out of the way I killed an hour checking email, facebook etc., then on to exercise. And today I doubled my walk time from last week, but then again, I skipped some of the games, so that should have been a wash. but after getting my shower it seemed  like it was already lunch time and as soon as lunch was over I got ready & we went to the grocery store in search of sugar free junk food for my cravings. Found several that I bought, just wish I could find more snack foods that are carb free. I will keep looking for those - I have time enough since this will all have to be a change for a lifetime.

One thing I did buy to try is Silk brand Almond Milk. Interesting is one way to describe it. It seems that almonds are very diabetic friendly, so I thought I would see what the almond milk was like since even low-fat chocolate milk is pretty high in carbs. The almond milk is very very good on the nutritional label, and even if I used regular chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk I would be better than the pre-packaged chocolate milk options I have looked at so far. So, I of course had to taste this almond milk once I got home and what can I say about it? Well, okay, think about how almonds taste. Now think about taking those almonds and boiling them in water until they are soft, then puree them and strain them through several layers of cheesecloth and throw away the pulp. What you have would be the almond milk that tastes like boiled almonds, mushed and strained. It's not a bad taste really, but it certainly does not taste like milk. And I'm not yet sure how it will taste made into chocolate milk, but you can bet I will find out soon enough. 

I already made some sugar free chocolate pudding with the almond milk. It didn't whisk up as well as I expected, but I don't know if that was because I used the almond milk or because I just can't whisk with the same vigor I once did. But it turned out okay. I let it set up in the fridge for a bit and then took the electric beaters to it and it smoothed out nicely. I added some sugar free cool whip to it and it is now in the fridge waiting for me to enjoy. 

With the nutritional numbers of this almond milk being so good I will probably use this as a milk replacement going forward.
Oh, and another "new" item I bought to try today is parsnip. Someone on one of the Diabetes discussion boards said it was real good - that it was crunchy & sweet. I sure hope she was right. More on that new item after I actually try it! :)

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Day 14

10:30
BG is still looking good. All I need now is a remedy to the fatigue and the vision which seems to have it's own schedule for when it wants to be blurry or clear. I have read several articles on the issue of being tired with Diabetes, and I am doing a lot of what is recommended, but I guess I just have not been doing these things long enough. Hopefully with time, with time.

Sunday morning and ribs are in the smokers. It has been a while since we had a smoker. After the last one burned through Terry decided not to replace it because he said the carport was too cluttered. So, we didn't cook ribs at all for a while, then when we did start cooking ribs again I figured out an acceptable alternative to the slow smoker method. But they were never really the same and never really as good. Finally, after several years Terry decided we needed a smoker again so we could have good ribs again.

Now the issue is relearning our time schedule for smoking low & slow. We kinda got a late start this morning so I had to start them out on the gas grill and move them to the smoker once the charcoal was burned off like it needed to be. 

One up side to a low-carb diet is a carnivore has a lot to eat. And since I was always a meat & potatoes kinda gal, that is half good for me! Looking forward to my ribs for lunch! :)

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Day 13

10:30
Blood Glucose is good. In fact it is good enough that when I emailed my weekly log to my doctor yesterday afternoon he actually replied and said I could reduce the nighttime injection from 30 units to 20 units. It's a shame I didn't check email until after I had already done the (;)0 injection last night. But, yay me, 10 units less tonight! :)

And who would have thought a doctor would be checking his email late on a Friday afternoon? I was impressed with that!

So, this morning I thought it would be good to get my 5 y.o. granddaughter to do a bit on the Wii Fit. Wow, what a wimpy kid she is! First issue was she was very impatient during the set-up where the little Wii Board guy (or maybe gal) calculated her BMI (which was really great! 15 point something) and weighed her. And once we actually got in the program she was ready to quit after 1 round of soccer and 1 free run, which came with a whole other issue and that being that she has a hard time running in place. I had to back her up half a dozen times because she had crossed the span of 4 feet and was nose-to-nose with he TV. We moved on to the Penguin game and she was okay with that, but still, she was ready to quit after just 3 tries with the Penguins. Maybe if I can get her to try a few more times she will build up some strength, willingness, whatever it is that takes away the wimpy!

Friday, January 28, 2011

Day 12

10:30
Still hanging in here. Still not happy about the food prospects. I think what I need to do is learn what herbs go well with what meats and try a few experiments. Fortunately we have BLT's on the menu for lunch today. It will shoot my carb goal, but I probably will end up with chicken, green beans and salad for supper anyway. Seems that is the majority of my meals these days anyway.

I read an article this morning on one of my diabetes websites about exercise and apparently it is better for you if you can work it into your morning schedule. Since my mornings are usually free anyway I will switch to a morning schedule starting Monday.  I am still working up to the "gung-ho" "feel the burn" type workout. having been through the start-up phase of an exercise more than a few times in my life I know  that if I do too much too soon I will feel the pain enough to cause me to start skipping workouts. So yeah, I shall be the tortoise this time - slow and steady!

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Day 11

10:00
BG is still good but my close vision (as in reading my monitor) is somewhat blurred again. Not sure why that happened but I am hoping there is a link between exercise or not. My doctor told me he wanted me to add 45 minutes a day for four days a week so I decided those four days would be Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday therefor I did not Wii my little Mii yesterday. Today is Thursday so I will exercise around 1:30 this afternoon and see if the vision improves. If the exercise helps to burn up excess glucose than maybe that will help with the blurred vision. And there could be a connection between two of yesterday's BG readings since my 11:00 was back up to 150 and my 4:00 was up to 178. However, my 9:00 was back down to 101. And this morning at 8:00 it was back down to 96. Of course I would have thought excess glucose would affect my BG readings more than that amount of increase before it would have any affect on my vision, but then again, what do I really know? I'm still learning this Disease.

7:00
Numbers are still good,but if I don't find some more things to add to my (short) list of foods that I will eat that also fit into the "high protein - low carb" family I will become a lot harder to live with! I am already so tired of chicken cooked int he oven. I have tried it baked with Panko and just marinated and baked, but it is all still just chicken. 


On the brighter side, my Wii fit told me I was down 1.3 pounds from when it weighed me on Monday. Not that losing weight is a focus, but I'll accept it as a side effect.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Day 10

1:00
Wow, I sure was slow in getting on here today. I spent too much time playing around on Amazon this morning.  I also spent a good bit of time on the Nutri-System site. They now offer a Diabetic Plan. Initially I just wanted to see what they offered and charged out of curiosity because I know that with any of those pre-arranged diet plans there will be more foods in the plan that I won't eat than foods that I will. But I found an A' la Carte option where I could actually pick & choose and not subscribe to a plan so I looked at all the options and actually found a few things to order and try. Mostly snack foods, which I have had a hard time finding much of (but then again, Terry & I realized this morning that of both trips we made to Wal-Mart for groceries, we never thought to look for a "Diabetic" section. I don't know if they have one or not, but I'm betting Publix does. So yeah, I ordered 3 different lunches and about 6 snack items. If they are any good I will re-order.

BG is still looking good. It was 124 and below all day yesterday, but today's 11:00 reading was back up to 150. I'm not sure what caused that but I have my suspicions and I'm going to be eyeing my Weight watchers Smart One's frozen breakfast with a bit of suspicion next time I have that for breakfast. I would have thought it would be better and register better than the Jimmy dean options I bought, but today was the first WW Smart One and right now the circumstantial evidence is against it. And to top it off it did NOT taste good at all. Jimmy Dean breakfasts taste a whole lot better! So if WW Smart One affects my BG reading every time then it will get the boot!   

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Day 9

8:00
Another good BG check, but my 9:00 last night was 124 so while I still have a streak of 11 in a row below 200, my streak for 120 or below is reset to . . . 1. But I'm still very happy with below 200's for the injection factor :D

Wasn't happy with my breakfast today though. In an attempt to reduce fats (as well as carbs) I decided to try alternating my pre-made breakfast bowls with some cereal. I spent a lot of time in the store yesterday reading dozens of cereal nutrition labels and since Lucky Charms doesn't seem to be a good option, even though it is my lifetime favorite cereal, I settled on Special K Blueberry. It was okay. Not really filling and not really satisfying. And I had to eat 2 servings because the stupid stuff calls 3/4 cup a serving. 3/4 of a cup?? Seriously? I mean, pour that 3/4 of a cup in a bowl and that's what my 5 y.o. granddaughter would eat, and probably ask for something else to eat!  And, while I like fresh blueberries, these blueberries weren't even blueberries! They were little dark speckles all over the flakes, kinda like the flakes had some dread disease. You could hardly taste blueberry! Well, I think I may try Honey Nut Cheerio's next round since it also suppose to be good for the cholesterol.

As for yesterday's Wii exercises, so far no muscles calling me names, so I obviously did not push myself too far, I just hope I pushed far enough. This afternoon I will add more time to my free walk session . . . and try harder to feed my penguins in the balance game. I will save my game sessions till the last so I can reward myself for walking up and down on and off the Wii board. Oh, and I failed to mention yesterday that when I set up the program the Wii board weighed me and calculated my BMI! And as if that wasn't bad enough it actually had the audacity to alter my little mii character and make her fat! Fortunately the little mii character was a slim trim cute little mii again by the time we got to the exercise routines.

6:00
BG is still good :)
Found a couple of recipes I'm going to try - hope they turn out good. One is for a snack - all it will be is cheese cooked in the oven into little crunchy wafers. I need to find a hard Parmesan cheese - think I will check the Publix deli. I really need some crunchy and salty or crunchy and spicy snacks. Sweet is not so much an issue, I find I prefer salty.


And my little Wii penguins got a few more fishes today. And I still only did the 10 minute walk, but I did increase  the pace slightly so I did 920 steps in stead of 800. If I had just increased the walk time I would have had to go from 10 minutes to 20 minutes and I know I'm not up to a 20 minute non-stop. I guess if I were at a mall and looking at people and windows at  the same time I could do the 20 minutes okay, but not just walking in my den.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Day 8

9:30
Well, this afternoon will mark one week since my diagnosis and I feel that I am doing pretty good so far. This morning my BG was 104, which is a very good number. In fact, my last seven readings have all been below 200, so I have not had to inject any supplemental insulin and the last four of those seven were actually 121 or below.
At this point I'm feeling that the diet is my greatest obstacle. I still need to find a good collection of recipes that
do NOT contain any of the following:
1) seafood (no seafood - nothing - not even tuna fish or fish sticks)
2) onion (including scallions and other such noxious critters)
3) peppers (bell, banana - doesn't matter. However I am okay with ground peppers for spice)
4) mushrooms
5) celery
6) stewed tomato (pizza sauce is okay in moderation, but not in excess such as with spaghetti or lasagna)
7) beans or peas (I can tolerate green beans and if I add a lot of spice & seasoning I can tolerate baked beans made from pork-n-beans)
7) greens (as in spinach, turnip greens, collard greens, mustard greens. Cabbage is okay either raw or cooked)
8) wild game (no rabbits, deer, quail etc - Basically I only eat white meat chicken, beef, boneless pork options and turkey breast)
9) yogurt, cottage cheese or sour cream (it would be okay mixed in something cooked, but not as it comes straight from the carton)
10) squash
11) asparagus
12) something that someone will suggest that I did not think to add to my list yet
Yep, long list - and hard to work with for someone who has been pretty much meat and potatoes with some bread and gravy thrown in for a side and as dessert :D And I have always preferred the meats fried.But I still hold out hope!

1:00
Well, I know for certain that there is still a lot to learn about this disease. So what did I learn today? Well, I learned that if go to the grocery store just before lunchtime and miss my regular time for my BG check & my lunch that my sugar will drop - a lot. Went to Wal-mart to buy a Wii Fit and a few groceries and spent so much time reading nutritional labels and such at the store that I was an hour late. My 11:00 check taken at 12:00 was a 78. Of course that was before lunch, which, by the way, I was not really hungry for a lunch but made myself eat some salad with cheese and some "salad fixin's" type stuff that had cranberries & nuts in it. Half an hour after my salad I was back up to 98. 


I know I am suppose to adhere to the clock for BG checks and meals, but I really didn't think an hour would make that much of a difference in the sugar level. I am just going to have to be better about the clock. 


So, I bought the Wii Fit Plus. I haven't had a chance to get it set up yet, but I plan to do that this afternoon so I can start working myself up to the 45 minute workout my doctor wants me to do. Right now I doubt I can handle a good 5 minute workout - heck, I can get winded just doing housework. And before anyone says i should have saved the cost of the Wii program and just do more housework, umm . . . . no, I probably dislike housework more than exercise. I do what housework I have to do when I have to do it, but I certainly don't intend to do more and call it exercise! 

3:45
Okay, well, I got my Wii Fit Plus connected. It is 67 degrees in my house and it made me work up a sweat. Of course I am overweight & sedentary so really most any exertion could cause me to work up a sweat, but this did it without me realizing it or hating the devil out of it. I did several rounds of basic step and one round of free step (that was 800 steps in 10 minutes) and then played the balance game of the penguin catching fish - although my penguin was doing more swimming that catching of fish. All in all I'm liking it simply because I did these things without hating it and wishing it was over. I stopped because I was sweating & I  also know that if I overdo it on day 1 that day 2 will be harder to face. Baby steps, baby steps.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Day 7

9:00
Good numbers for my last 3 BG checks. I like the 3-in-a-row, but would love some 4-in-a-row's. And I am ever sooooo happy that my vision is actually a good bit clearer than it was this past Monday. I can again read the clock in my den and I no longer have to sit with my face 18 inches from my (big, like 22" big) monitor. I can't say how safe I would be driving yet. i will have to go out with Terry and see if I can read street signs again or not. In time, in time.

Kinda got a slight let-down with my breakfast this morning. I decided I need to start counting the fats as well as the carbs and discovered my "fallback" frozen breakfasts will seriously undermine my attempts. I have got to find a better solution that is quick and easy as well as tasty. I will finish the week and a half worth of what we already bought, but then I will pass on the Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls. I have one that is a Jimmy Dean "D-Lights" Breakfast Bowls and it has better numbers, but it is turkey sausage and I haven't much cared for the turkey sausage I already tried. But, if that's what it takes, then I will go with it. I am also going to look at some type of cereal, but it will have to be a tasty cereal - I will not eat things that taste like cardboard, so for me Product 19 is out (that's the one my dear hubby is pushing me to go with. Nope, tried it before and don't care for it.) I think I want to try Total cereal, one of the ones with little chips of dried fruit in it.

6:00
So happy! I have had 5 BG reading in a row below 200. And while they are not necessarily within the prime range of 90-120, they are below 200 which means I do not have to give myself the supplementary Insulin injections (of course the 9:00pm is always the exception since I have to inject the Lantus at 9:00 regardless of the BG number). So for right now I am just happy to be below 200! Once below 200 is the norm I will change my Happy Meter to register the numbers that fall in the acceptable range.

Overall I think I am doing okay with this. I had one day of shock & one day of emotional distress, but all in all it's okay. I expect there to be other days that fall into the emotional distress category as I deal with adjusting my diet to fit the Diabetes. Diet is gonna be my biggest obstacle to overcome because I am a very picky eater.

Today I also found a website that I think is going to be pretty helpful - http://www.everydayhealth.com/

This site has a calorie tracker that is pretty neat. I set my calorie, carb & fat ranges and then just plug in the foods I eat and it calculates the balances for me. It has a lot of foods  already pre-built so all I had to do for most foods was search it my name, such as Arnold's Italian Bread, and it found it for me. And for items that I can't find in the food search I have the option of loading the food and it's nutritional information and going forward I can select it from the list on the "Foods I Added" tab.  And for foods that I consume either more or less than a serving I can edit the entry and the site does the math for me. Like for lunch today I had a leftover steak - roughly 8 oz., the food search gave me a 6 oz so I just edited to show I consumed 1.33 servings.There is also a Glucose Tracker and several other tools, so I think I will be using this site a lot.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Day 6

12:00 PM

Well, I'm a little slow getting on the blog-o-sphere this morning. It's Saturday, what can I say, weekends are suppose to be slow, right?

I had another 3 readings in a row under 200 but again it was busted by my 11:00 reading. I'm sure the 11:00's are affected by my breakfasts, and I'm okay with that since the carb content was not in excess, at all. I realize that everything I eat will affect my sugar. And I am trying to adopt the philosophy that you eat a good breakfast, a decent lunch and a small dinner. Or as I once read, eat breakfast, share lunch with a friend and give dinner to your enemy (or something like that).
Had a nice long telephone conversation with my mom this morning. She is pre-diabetic and has been for years, but it was interesting to find out that not only did my grandmother & one of my uncles have Diabetes, but so did my great-grandmother & one of my other uncles. That is three generations preceding me and so far my younger sister & I have become the fourth generation that we know of. And with my daughter & granddaughter both being hypoglycemic I see the potential for the next 2 generations being diabetic also because to me Hypoglycemia is the sister to Diabetes. The body is not processing glucose correctly in both instances, so they seem to be pretty closely related.

Well, lunch today was another learning thing. We decided to have Pimento Cheese sandwiches. I bought an Italian bread with only 15g of carbs per slice, so knowing I had 30g already I needed to be sure of my Pimento Cheese. Well, the package says 2g per serving and a serving is 2 TBSP. I get my measuring spoon out and I'm thinking that 2 TBSP is not going to make much of a sandwich so this is going to determine how much Pimento Cheese stays in my repertoire of options. Amazingly it covered 2/3 of this bread with a sufficient amount for a sandwich. Now had this been a regular slice of bread it would have been perfect, but this Italian bread is slightly wider than a regular loaf so I actually used 3 TBSP, but still, at 2g/TBSP that only added 1 more gram. And no mayo since I prefer mustard with my Pimento Cheese, so no added carbs there.

7:30
Good number at my 4:00 check. Had a good chat with my little sister this afternoon. She is a wonderful resource for me since she has  had Diabetes for a few years. She sent me to allrecipes.com where I can search for recipes by ingredients I want in a recipe as well as exclude ingredients I do not want. Already found a few that I saved and will be trying. I really need to find some stuff more than the basics I know now. Had Broccoli Slaw for supper. It was an A' la carte kinda night here. Terry ate vegetable soup, Brett had Hormel Tamales topped with Hormel Chili so I had what was already in the fridge. I'm thinking I really need to cook up some chicken next week so that i have some protein food in the fridge ready to go. Yep, finding foods that fit the diabetic diet is what will be the hardest going forward.


Friday, January 21, 2011

Day 5

9:30
Woke up to a good start. This is the second day I woke before my 8:00 alarm and I am so happy for that since over the past couple of months my waking time had slowly been slipping away from where I prefer it to be. I mean, seriously, I didn't retire to sleep my days away! But what was I to do? I was always so tired all I knew to do was sleep. But waking between 7 and 8 is only part of what made this a good morning. I checked my BG at 8:00 and had my 3rd reading in a row that was under 200! That is good because as long as it is under 200 I do NOT have to give myself an injection of Humalog. Of course the middle reading was my bedtime reading last night & I did have to give myself the Lantus injection regardless of the BG number . . . but it's all good. :D

And, just a note - I decided to start publishing my daily post as I type it up rather than wait until the end of the day tho push it to publish. I will still publish 1 post per day, but I will update that one post as I add more stuff through the day.

1:30
My 11:00 number was back up and broke my roll of under 200's, but it was not bad (well, not bad if you compare it to the 612 I was Monday afternoon - lol). Had a very good lunch but found I could not finish my plate so I think that is a good thing. Knowing I would not eat all I had I pushed myself to finish the salad and lean meat and save half of my corn for another meal. And it was a small corn on the cob - one of those half ear's of sweet corn. So that made me feel good. 

Well, spent my morning reading tons of more information on several Diabetes sites so I think it's time to treat myself to some recliner time. And since I seem to have slept wrong and have a small crick in my neck I'm going to take a muscle relaxer and apply my heating pad to the neck. I will try to read and hope I don't fall asleep once I get all snuggle-y (yeah, one of my made up words) comfortable.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Day 4

9:00
Good Morning! I woke up closer to the time I use to wake up. That doesn't seem like much, but I realize it as a small improvement. When I first retired I relished the idea of not having to get up every morning at 5:30 to be at work by 8. But I didn't want to sleep my retirement away so I decided my new wake up time would be somewhere between 7 and 8. And it was, but of late that time had crept to 9:00 - 9:30. And I have had several days of late that I would get up around 9, have my morning hot chocolate and a snack cake and then fall back asleep in the recliner. Some days I would wake again around lunch and some days I would sleep until mid-afternoon. And I have always hated sleeping my day away. It makes me feel like I have cheated myself out of one of the limited days God gives us on this earth. 

I hope my new breakfast menu is going to be good and acceptable on this journey. Today I had my coffee (made in my new coffee maker) and a breakfast bowl - a frozen quick food by Jimmy Dean - sausage, egg, cheese and potato (but I pushed part of the potatoes aside - yay me?). 

10:30
It's funny (not in a ha ha sense) how things creep slowly up on you in life and you don't realize it until it has fully grabbed hold of you. That is what has happened to me in the past few months - little things crept up on me and got a good hold of me. Sleeping later, going back to sleep after my morning bite, sleeping the entire day away and not doing as much crafting as I did a few months back. With sleeping later and later I would just tell myself that is one of the benefits of being retired. With sleeping all day I wrote that off to my bodies natural inclination to sleep when I fight things like colds, UTI, sinus infection, etc. I never tried to justify my loss of interest in my crafting. I think, for one reason, that it was partly due to having committed to helping make 40 invites and admission tickets for my granddaughters 16th birthday and when I wasn't too tired to do any crafting I was working on that project. But honestly, looking back I realize that project should have taken only about 1/3 of the time it actually took me. 

I guess Diabetes has been creeping up on me for years and just recently decided it had enough ground to launch a full on attack. Considering I have never had good eating habits it had a very big open door for that attack! I am the  first to admit I am a "Picky Eater" (synonymous for Pain in the A**). My friend Brenda once told a waitress that if she would not serve something to a 5 year old then don't serve it to me. I have had weeks where (for lack of an option I was willing to eat) I have had chicken fingers for lunch 5 days in a row. And I have been known to pass up dessert in favor of more bread & gravy. Gravy is a true weakness. I don't think there is anything edible that cannot be improved on with some good homemade gravy. "homemade". Not that nasty powder stuff. The real McCoy, grease, flour, water, salt & pepper. Sometimes with some beef or chicken broth for added flavor or with tomato sauce for Tomato Gravy (sooo good over rice!). Yeah, like I said, I left the front door so wide open for this disease that it should have been more of a shock that it didn't get in sooner than the fact that it finally did come on in.

Okay, I will finish today's post after my doctors visit this afternoon.

4:30
Back from the doctor visit. He says so far so good and he confirmed my numbers should be all over the board right now but that they will stabilize with time and continued attention to the meds and diet. He also wants me to start adding some workout to my schedule. I don't know how I'm going to work that in unless I spend 45 minutes four days a week just going up & down the stairs to my basement. And with my house being as small as it is there is truly no room to add a treadmill or anything else that will help facilitate the exercise requirement. Gonna have to think on this one for a bit (maybe while going up & down the stairs to my basement for 45 minutes.

My doctor is a GP, so he really couldn't answer some of my questions about how many carbs per day/meal etc., but he did give me a number to call a Registered Dietitian if I feel I am not getting a good enough understanding of the dietary issue. However, his nurse printed me out a couple dozen pages of information that I looked over (and will read more thoroughly later) that seemed to have a little better explanation of some of it. 

He has not reduced any of the injections. He said that would be a while. But he did increase the units of one medicine. 
So, currently my schedule is to test my sugar at 8:00A, 11:00A, 4:00P & 9:00P. For the 8, 11 & 4 sugar sticks I have a sliding scale that based on the number of my sugar I will inject a certain number of units of Humalog. Humalog is a fast acting Insulin that my body will absorb and put to use right away. 

For the 9PM sugar stick I inject Lantus regardless of what my BS is. Lantus

Theoretically I could be injecting at all four sugar checks, and so far there have only been 2 where the sugar was at a level that I did NOT need to inject. And, YAY! Today's 4:00 BS was one that I did NOT have to inject (so glad since I still feel the spot where I injected my 11 med.

In addition to the insulin injections I am taking Metformin twice a day. Right now it really has no effect since it is a medicine that has to build up in my system. But eventually it will be doing something to help my body "reduce the amount of sugar made by the liver, limit the amount of sugar absorbed into the body from my diet, and make insulin receptors more sensitive (helping the body respond better to its own insulin" (copied that, don't ya know!).

6:00
Gonna add one more time to today's post. This one is one I started to tell my daughter when she stopped by here a few minutes ago, but since she needed to get home I told her I would blog it.

It's kinda sad how much damage we can do to ourselves . . . unintentionally. While this Diabetes has been building up to the point of my diagnosis over time I only became really concerned with something being really wrong when I seemed to have lost half my vision in a matter of days. Well, that and the fact that we went to see my financial manager & something his assistant said kinda scared me. She & I have both had disc surgery twice. We have discussed and compared symptoms and side effects just about every time we have seen each other. On our way to the financial manager's office I mentioned to my husband that I was becoming concerned about my vision because even that day it seemed to have gotten blurrier than it was the day before. Well, we get there and Samantha & I start comparing symptoms again & before I even mention my vision she says she has started having issues with her vision and with the other symptoms (which we both have) her doctors has scheduled her for an MRI to look at the possibility of MS. I looked at my husband and opened my eyes wide in that OMG look. So yeah, after we left there I knew I would be seeing my doctor sooner than later. (quick side note - her MRI ruled out MS)

Well, before the vision became an issue the excessive thirst was bothersome, but not really distressing. I have never been a very thirsty type person so it was a minor annoyance, but nothing I couldn't live it. Of course, with more liquid going in, more liquid had to come out so of course I was going to the bathroom more - another annoyance, but again, nothing I couldn't live with, especially since I'm now retired and at home most of the time - where my own bathroom is. Oh, I guess I haven't mentioned that I have a phobia about public restroom. And I considered the restrooms at the office I worked in as "public", so before I retired there were very few (and I do mean VERY FEW) times I would even use those bathrooms. But I digress, anyway - I was drinking more and so much so that sometimes I could hear myself slosh. Kinda odd to hear sloshing inside yourself. And, I'm not a froo-froo uppity person, but I will only drink bottles spring water. Of course you had to see that coming since I mentioned in my first post how much I hate our water supply. Anyway, I went through an entire case of 16 oz. bottles in a week. And for someone who hates water & is not normally a thirsty person, that's a lot! And here's where the unintentional damage started. Because I was drinking so much I decided I needed some hard candies to suck on to make my mouth create more saliva (thinking some of it may be dry mouth more than thirst that was driving me to drink so much). Yep, not knowing it was diabetes I sat for a week eating Jolly Ranchers to fight off the dry mouth/thirst issue. Not so good for a Diabetic - but in my own defense I plead ignorance.

Tomorrow is a new day - another opportunity to reduce my sugars and carbs and another step towards getting this disease under control. :)

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

My New Frienemy?

I started a new journey in this trip called Life - A Walk with Diabetes. And yes, I shall call this my Frienemy. The friend in it is probably the only thing in the world that would have made me look seriously at improving my eating habits. The enemy in it is adding additional heath concerns and health risks to my already full medical agenda.


Day 1
I was diagnosed day before yesterday. I'm not sure how most people find out they have diabetes, but I have to assume that, like me, they have things going wrong one by one until they finally realize they probably need to see their doctor. And it's not as if I hadn't seen my doctor in a while. I had. I have been seeing him twice a year (actually more, but certainly twice a year) since I was diagnosed with hypertension a couple of years ago. And I saw my doctor back in October. At that time there were no significant symptoms and everything appeared to be fine. My blood pressure was being sufficiently controlled by my meds and my Triglycerides, which became an issue a little over a year ago, were down.


Well, it's pretty obvious I'm not a very healthy person, but I never considered myself to be sickly. I do have a problem with my weight, but I have had a problem with my weight since hormones started bombarding my body as an adolescent. And I'm sure my weight plays into my overall health, but I feel slighted by the fact that I know and have known many people who are more overweight than I am and yet they don't fight hypertension, triglycerides or diabetes. How did I get so lucky (sense the sarcasm?)?


So, what did I really expect the doctor to say when I went into his office Monday? I don't know. Really? Yeah, really. I knew there was something wrong, and I had had Diabetes suggested by a couple of people, but I think I had a mental block that made me think he was going to say my vision issues were an unfortunate side effect of my meds. Or even just the results of Lasik surgery reversal, as my daughter suggested. And I guess I expected him to tell me I'm no thirstier than the average person should be and that I was drinking an insufficient amount before that. Funny how, without a conscious effort, you can put on a pair of rose colored glasses and think everything looks so nice.


And knowing that Diabetes had been suggested; and knowing that Diabetes runs in my family, I still sat in my doctors office almost in a state of shock feeling a bit of depression setting in. I was also confused because I had so many questions, but I really didn't know what those questions were. So I sat, looking dumbfounded, while the doctor & his nurse came in and out of the room with more information & more pieces of equipment that was soon enough to be referred to as my "kit".


And, my oh my what a kit I acquired in such a short time (well, if you call a 3 hour doctors visit a short time. When I got home with my supplies & prescriptions and laid it all out on my kitchen counter I just stared at it wondering how I was going to keep up with it all and even more-so, how was I going to remember it all. But, as the shock wore off I realized I needed to organize it and condense it into a smaller expanse. Fortunately I do crafts and had bought some "Snap 'n Stack" Craft Organizer plastic-ware that I thought might work out so down to the craft room I scurried & dumped all the contents of one case. It turned out to be a great solution. I filled the small divided compartments with lancets, needles, test strip vials and alcohol wipes; I filled the bottom compartment with my prescription boxes (collapsed of course) and my notes given to me by my doctor; and I filled the top compartment with the meter kit, my log book and an ink pen.  I felt a little better since being condensed did not look as daunting as spread all across my kitchen counter looked.


Day 2
Well, day 2 started okay. I woke up and checked my sugar and it was considerably lower than it had been at the doctors office the day before - 316 as opposed to 612. I felt better - I thought. Made myself my usual cup of hot chocolate and a slice of toast (I buttered it more lightly that I usually do in consideration of the need to reduce the fattening things I consume). I sat down to watch some morning television and fell asleep within minutes and did not wake up again until [just in] time for my next sugar check. (And I think this is when my first emotional reaction was triggered) My sugar had shot back up to almost 500. I was more than upset - I was pretty much devastated by this. I could never have imagined that  one cup of hot chocolate and one slice of toast would do that!


One thing I knew right then was that I would have to give up hot chocolate, but that was a whole 'nother issue. You see, I had an issue with my old coffee maker or the grounds I bought. One or the other had introduced some foreign matter into my coffee and I refused to use either again. That was several months ago and at that time I switched to hot chocolate. When I said something to my husband (who has been such a wonderful support through this) he said there was nothing wrong with the coffee maker other than it sitting unused for so long and that I needed to just clean it up and run some vinegar through it. Being in a dejected state of mind with no will to argue or fight anything I got the dishcloth and proceeded to wash the accumulated dust off the top of the coffee maker. But this was a short venture since there was an accumulation of hard water deposits and whatever else hard water (and a crummy water company) contains that leeches into every nook & cranny it can in this house (I could mention that I hate our water supply, but that may already be obvious). Anyway, before I digress into a tirade on the water company, back to the coffeemaker issue. When I attempted to wash those water deposits from the water reservoir I lost it - my emotional being just started crying & after turning a couple of circles I started to sit in the floor to cry it out. I guess that caught my sweet hubby off guard because he caught me under the arms before I could get to the floor, hugged me close and said "we'll go buy a new coffe maker". (Have I mentioned how wonderful he has been through this?) 

So, after a lunch of lettuce with a scant bit of cheese and a few slices of pepperoni we headed to the local Wal-Mart and bought a new coffee maker, some new grounds and searched through aisle after aisle checking the carbs in the foods. I have resolved myself to giving up on fruit juices because I had been drinking those like water (gonna go with water, which I have never much been able to abide until the symptom of diabetes caused me to have an unquenchable thirst). I passed on so many foods that I have always stocked on my pantry in exchange for some new additions. I will do my best to snack on Hot-N-Spicy Pork Skins over potato chips and I will have to make salad a regular addition as opposed to an occasional addition. 

My afternoon sugar was odd (or at least it was odd to this un-knowledgeable diabetic), it was below 100. Wondering if I had made a mistake in the testing I repeated it and registered 102. Figuring there is no sense in repeating the test over & over I recorded it in my logbook for my doctor to explain. But, I figured I had done well for lunch and treated myself to some ham & pineapple pizza for supper. Thankfully the bedtime reading did not make me regret my supper choice - I was barely over 250 at bedtime. 

Day 3
Today I started my morning with coffee and applesauce. It didn't seem very satisfying, but I called it breakfast. Oh, don't get me wrong - I was happy to have a cup of coffee in the morning after so many months without my morning coffee, but I was still hungry and that didn't go away. Finally about mid-morning I ate a slice of sandwich ham to try to make my stomach a little happier. That held me okay until lunch. 

I still have so many questions, the difference is that now I can put words to some of them. I have added a post-it note to my logbook so I can record questions for my doctor. And I am hopeful that I am emotionally a little better with all this than I was yesterday, but we won't know that for certain unless I have another meltdown. So right now my biggest regret is the (as I understand it) "temporary" loss of vision. It has hindered my ability to be a my PC in comfort, my ability to drive and my ability to read. The first two due to blurred vision and loss of distance vision. The reading due to my eyes getting tired very quickly. And so I sit and stare at blurry people on TV. I know it will get better, I just wish it could be miraculously fast (call me impatient along with the other things this blog has thus far revealed about me - lol).