Day 40

1:20 p.m.

BG still good. Or it was when I woke this morning. I'm not sure about my numbers after lunch since I am just now eating lunch. Got distracted doing coupon searches this morning. All I really want are some decent coupons on Folgers coffee. Is that really too much to ask of the internet? I didn't think it was, but all I found was a lowly little 25cent off coupon. I am going to watch Sunday and see if CVS is offering the 2/$5 on Folgers in our area and if they are I'll use my wittie bitty 25 cent coupons then.

 I'm not sure I can add another 10 minute session to my workout next week. The fourth one takes all I have just to get through - still. It may take a while to add more time but I am still proud to be able to at least do the first 30 minutes without major grief. And I am also proud to be able to push myself through the fourth 10 minutes considering a few short weeks ago I was pushing to finish the first 10 minute session.


6:30
Doing the Happy Feet Dance!!!

I e-mail my BG readings to my doctor every 2 weeks and today was the day to send them. I have been impressed that he always responds to them - on a Friday afternoon, but he does. And today's reply was . . .

"The numbers look very good…I want you to stop the night time Lantus entirely."

Yay oh Yay!!!! I just hope that the next two weeks stay good and that I can stay off the needle! I am going to be soooo Diabetic Good! I may not be Sugar Sweet, but I will be Diabetic Good! YAY YAY YAY!!!

Day 29

12:00

BG is still looking good. Slightly higher readings than last week, but still in the acceptable ranges - and this with only half the insulin I was taking last week. Hope this keeps up! :)

Added my fourth 10-minute Free Step on the Wii this morning. My legs protested a little, but not enough for me to listen to them. They (whoever "they" are) always say No Pain - No gain. Well, maybe the leg complaints meant I made a small amount of gain today. 

I think my next wellness investment will be a pulse monitor so I can see what my heart rate is doing and determine if I am even getting into a cadio rate. My doctor said walking was fine, but he wants me to get to where I am doing an aerobic type workout. If he could smell me right now he would have to agree I had my heart rate up there - LOL! And, I even had to turn on the ceiling fan today because I was getting so hot & sweaty!

I am also taking advantage of the change in BG reading times to track the effect of some of my foods to see which ones affect my sugar more and which affect it less. That project is affecting my menu planning since I want to test after certain foods. So like today I tested after my cereal - good reading - my cereal will be a  keeper. We are going to have grilled Reuben sandwiches one day this week, but since I tested after breakfast I couldn't have grilled Reuben for lunch today. Maybe tomorrow. :D I do love a good grilled Reuben!

Day 27

8:00 

BG still good. I'm am hopeful it stays as good in the next few days as it did for the last few days. 

I saw my doctor yesterday and he was very pleased with the improvement in my numbers so far. He reduced my daily Lantus to 10 units & took me off any supplemental Humalog for the time being. He also has changed up the way I am to test my BG for a while. Rather than 4 set checks a day he wants a fasting check first thing in the morning & then one other check during the day - 1.5 - 2 hours after a meal - any meal and switch up which meal each day. I will email him in two weeks with these BG checks and we will see if that schedule needs to be modified any. WooHoo! that is two less finger sticks per day! My poor fingers are dancing with delight! :D

I also asked yesterday what my A1c was when he diagnosed me three weeks ago - it was 12.46. For most people with diabetes, the American Diabetes Association recommends an A1C of less than 7%. Another group of experts, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, recommends an even lower A1C of 6.5% or less. Either way, mine was definitely high! My doctor said it wasn't the highest he had ever seen, but it ranked way up there. But I expect it to be much improved when I go back in May since I have made so many modifications to my diet and my BG check numbers have been good lately. More about A1c can be read here. It's really kind of amazing that there is a 2-3 month footprint in our blood that can be read by a test.

I thought my doctor would also be very pleased with my getting exercise four days a week, but he said walking was fine, but what he wants me to look at doing is a more high energy aerobic exercise. I told him that has to come later because I sweat up a storm and  get winded just doing the walking exercises! Seriously, we are talking about someone who has not done anything close to aerobic exercise in over 15 years! Eek!

Day 17

11:00

BG has been low for the last 2 checks. It has been a bit up and down these last few days, but I'm wondering if the low readings this morning are caused by my "bad" injection last night. And by bad, I mean I apparently hit a small blood vein in my stomach and maybe some of the Lantus got into the blood faster than it would/should. I know I hit a small blood vein because not only did the injection hurt more than normal but I bled at the injection site a good bit. And, of course, I could be completely off about the Lantus getting in the blood because of that and it may just be a normal sign that my BG is still not stabilized. Ah well, I will add that to my note paper to ask my doctor next week.

Time for food.

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!

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. :)

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).