Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Resonance Of A Dream

I went to bed last night with a splitting headache. I checked my blood sugar before I lay me down to sleep and it was a little on the high side, which I attributed to the splitting headache. I quickly wondered if the headache went away while I slept, would I drop? I quickly answered no, I was high enough that it shouldn’t make a startling difference.

I drifted off to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Vivid snapshots swirled through my mind like classical music notes in a cartoon; I was scared, I was worried, I was full of sorrow, I was elated, I was in another world far, far away. I woke up all at once, sitting straight up before I was even out from under the dream. I was thinking, “this is it,” as I knew the reality of my mind had crashed over into another realm and I was forever lost. After minutes of seconds, I came to, fully bathed in sweat.

I reached behind me and turned on the lamp, damning courtesy all to hell (the husband would have to sleep through it or get woken up; he had no choice). I pulled out my meter and my lancet. He awoke and asked if I was okay. I looked at him, hoping the sweat running down my face would give him the answer. The meter beeped: 133. Perfectly fine. “133” I said out loud and turned off the light, heading back under the covers.

Sometimes, a dream is just a dream, and it rocks you to the very core. Sometimes a dream is not diabetes.

As always, more to come…

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Toe Jam

The distance from my bedroom door to my bathroom door is approximately eight feet.

This eight feet appears innocent. It is not.


I woke up in the middle of Saturday night and walked that eight feet to the bathroom, half asleep. And about four feet into my journey, I ran into this:


That’s a ladder. A very sturdy, fiberglass and metal ladder. It’s great for reaching high things and I feel very secure getting into my attic with it. However, I do not recommend slamming your foot into it in the middle of the night.


Ouch. That hurt. That really hurt. That really, *really* hurt.
I went back to bed, pain in my foot, thinking I’d have a nasty bruise from an unpleasant toe-stubbing.


The next morning, I stepped out of bed with my right foot, then my left. Soon as the second foot hit the floor, I fell back in bed. Extreme pain. Swelling. Ugly colors beginning to appear.


I sat with ice on it, 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off, and watched Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon. I always forget how pretty Nanette Fabray is and I want about 75% of her wardrobe from this movie. I think I’d look very nice in fluffy skirts.

When the dust settled somewhere late in the day, it became obvious that while the whole foot is bruised and sore, it’s my fourth toe from the big one that’s suffered the most damage.
See? Not so pretty. (P.S. My foot is not fat and I do not have chubby toes. Thats all swelling. And while my camera didnt quite catch it, theres a lovely lilac shade covering most of the top portion of my foot...)


On Monday morning, I debated back and forth on whether to call the doctor. I’ve stubbed my toe before, a lot, and I didn’t want to feel stupid going to the doctor for him to say, duh (he wouldn’t really do that; he’s really very nice).

I waited until after my dentist appointment at noon (to replace temporary fillings with permanent ones) and just from hopping around from half a day, I knew I’d have to call. I did and went to see him at 6:15 on Monday night. He took a quick look and sent me for X-rays, letting me know he’d call with the results the next morning.

On Tuesday morning, wearing my very non-Nanette house slippers as office shoe ware, I listened to his message informing me I had fractured my toe. While he asserted it would most likely just take time to heal, he wanted me to see a foot specialist to be sure.


I
called to make the appointment with the foot guy, and the schedule lady gave me an appointment one week away. I questioned this, and I am very proud of myself for sticking up and telling her I needed to see him sooner. She transferred me to his physician’s assistant and I left a rattling voice mail. She called me back 10 minutes later to tell me I could see him the next day at 8am.

Wednesday morning and I arrived at the foot guy still wearing my non-Nanette house slippers (which, by the way, are not so good for walking in Chicago alleys). I spent 10 minutes filling out forms. I spent 10 minutes waiting for him. He spent about five minutes with me. He told me my fracture ran vertically from just below the joint down the length of my toe. He said it would hurt for about two weeks. He said it would take about eight weeks to heal completely, and would be swollen for most of that time. He gave me a fabulous sandal to wear so I could stop wearing my non-Nanette slippers.


I’d like to say something witty and wise here to wrap this all up, but really, all I can say is: this sucks.


As always, more to come…

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

I'm Blooming!

I walked out the back door yesterday morning to see my lillies had started blooming. Photos? Here you go—a little slice of my backyard...

The lillies. The orange ones always seems to bloom first, and they also seem to be the most frisky. They reproduce like bunnies in heat.

One of the two hanging baskets I have floating down from my pergola. The pagoda windchime I bought in Tokyo. It makes me smile.


One of my favorite flowers that I planet every year—alyssum. I paired it in this pot on my deck with a carnation plant.

Frilly pink flowers that come back every year but I can't rember the name of, and cosmos, which I love weaving through the lillies. Oh, and my rusty copper solar light. I like the rustic look (and I'm not buying any new ones, so the rustic look will have to do).


Promises to come. The lillies that are still in hiding and have not bloomed yet. I'm hoping one of them is one of the tiger lillies that randomly decide to or not to come out each year.

As always, more to come (but not necessarily in floral form)...

Monday, June 15, 2009

1, 1 Calorie For Lora

Wah, ha, ha, ha! (Sesame Street? The Count? Maybe it’s just me…)

Anyway, I found a place online where I can track what I’m eating. I enter my food item, see if it’s already in their database, and add it to my daily journal under breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack. If it’s not in the database, I key in the basic nutritional stuff myself, then add it.

The journal keeps track of calories, fat, protein, this, that—and oh, yeah, carbs. I’ll admit I started the food journal as a way to check my calorie intake (this is me, perpetually trying to lost the 10 lbs. gained when the thyroid went). I thought maybe if I could see what I was eating, I’d know where my weaknesses lie and when. I quickly realized, however, I was going to be paying more attention to the carb portion of the journal.

While on the Lantus, I carb-counted in units of 15. Since I wasn’t using any fast-acting insulin, a general rounding up or down of the numbers was sufficient. Now that I’m bolusing for each 15 grams, though, those extra carbs here and there add up a little more. They mean something.

So I’m filling out my food journal before I’m actually eating. Then I’m taking the carb total and dividing by 15 to get a more precise measurement of how much Novolog to take. It’s working well, I must say.

I’ve even keyed in my own food item titled “bolus” and I write down how many units I’ve taken to cover the meal. If I’ve gone higher than I thought I would after eating, I make a note to pump up the insulin power when I eat that item again.

I’ve never done a food journal online and figured I’d last two days tops, but I’m in my second week and I seem to be sticking with it so far. It’s pretty easy to bookmark it and call it up fairly quickly at work and home.

It’s also interesting to see that I thought I wasn’t getting enough protein, but I’m actually eating enough and even more than enough each day. Also, there’s a place where you can put in your “activities,” any sort of exercise, and it will calculate how many calories you’ve burned. It’s a bit of a motivator when that space is empty to move from my chair to the stationary bike while watching television, if only for a half hour.

And hey, if I lose some weight in the process, all the better for me.

As always, more to come…

Friday, June 12, 2009

It’s Friday

My desk at work is filled with at least two “hot” items, a multitude of “warm” projects and a whole lot of “due in a week” stuff.

My house at home needs to be cleaned. My laundry needs to be done.

My garden needs weeding. And de-helicoptering. There’s a maple tree two doors down and the “helicopter” seeds have sprung up mini trees all over everywhere. Those damn things really take root.

My dogs need to be Furminated.

My checkbook needs to be balanced. My bills need to be paid.

My diabetes supplies need to be replenished; an online order should be placed very soon. Very soon.

My correspondence has been lacking. I owe a half dozen people letters or e-mails. (I still like nice fountain pens on pretty stationery.)

But you know what? It’s Friday. It’s the first day we’ve had without rain in Chicago for a thousand and six days. It’s supposed to be above 70 at some point during the day.

And I’m going to spend all the time I want gazing out my office window at the blue sky and sorta green-ish lake, and maybe take a walk at lunch.

At least I know there won’t be any stress-related high numbers this afternoon. Those will come on Monday when I have to play catch up.

As always, more to come…

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Revealing

In the past when I’ve written about my numbers—daily or A1c—I’ve gotten myriad comments. Some have been positive and encouraging. Others, not so much. I keep a really tight reign on my diabetes; that’s what I was taught to do, and having an A-type personality along with other control issues, it’s what’s programmed into me naturally. I work really, really hard at it and make a lot of sacrifices. I’m by no means perfect—I have my down days and scenarios, and that’s usually what I write about on here.

But I do have a lot of good days, and a lot of good numbers. At one point, though, I decided not to share them on here, because the comments that were written often left me feeling guilty or like I was being made fun of on the playground, or being read a bad deck of cards by a fortune-teller. My diabetes status has been called into question, I’ve been told that I’m on a six-year honeymoon, I’ve been warned to just wait—things were going to get a lot worse, I’ve been told I’m very lucky, as if everything with my body has been chance alone with no impact from me. Whether the commenters meant them as positive or negative, I took them to heart, felt like I was doomed, felt like everything I was doing in my diabetes care didn’t matter and like I was being a little bit ostracized for doing a good job and talking about it.

I went to the endocrinologist on Friday, as a follow-up for starting on the Novolog in late April. The doctor took my HbA1c and I got my test results on Monday. My number was good, really good, and I worked really hard to get it, and I’m really proud of it. But I debated on whether or not to post it here.

Then I remembered what my original intent of this blog was. I wanted a blog that showed that while there was a lot of work involved, and there would be hard days, it was not impossible to do okay with diabetes. And I write this blog for me, as well, as an outlet to freely write about diabetes, and feeling like I’m not able to write about my good days and my good numbers makes me feel like I’m censoring myself.

So. My HbA1c was 5.3. Yay for me!

As always, more to come…

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Meter Reader

I went to my endo yesterday as a follow-up to me starting on the Novolog. Not only did she give me some good advice on splitting my bolus when I told her I was afraid of bagels, not only did she agree with me that BCBS is stupid, stupid, stupid and glady re-wrote my prescription to meet their requirements, not only did she do a thorough exam of my feet, not only did she take another A1C "just to check," not only did she ask really good questions about my numbers, but she wasn't annoyed that I hadn't written down any of said numbers. She just took my meter and thumbed through it herself. I didn't even have to tell her which buttons to push to access the info. My endo actually knows how to use a meter and isn't afraid to read it.

I like her a lot.

As always, more to come...

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

& Stuff

Related to diabetes in absolutely no way, but random information to update the universe (because you know you love me, xoxo) on life in my delicate little volatile and amusing-to-me world. (This is the & Stuff portion of my blog title.)...

*I’m on Twitter, but I’m only using it to stalk 58 celebrities. I don’t actually Tweet myself and I’m not sure I ever will. If you’re following anyone you love, let me know. Some of my faves: Ethan Suplee, Rainn Wilson, Mindy Kaling, Shaq, Chelsea Handler, Michael Ausiello, Dave Navarro, Kevin Pollak, Nathan Fillion, Kevin Smith and Paul Feig. Oh, and Shaun White, because I have an inappropriate (he’s too young, I’m too married) obsessive crush on him.

*I planted. I live in a house in the city and I have a small backyard. My front yard looks like hell because I completely ignore the three-foot wide space, but my backyard is my tiny paradise. I have a deck, a pergola, a pond. I also have a massive flower/rock bed and a bunch of pots all over the deck. Memorial Day weekend was spent planting, and this makes me very happy. (It’s a bumper-crop of lilies I’m expecting this summer. Bumper.)

*I love my dentist. Yeah, yeah, yeah—he’s nice, he’s good. But get this. During Part One of Phase 2 of my Mouth Renovation (long story), I sat in the chair to discover they’ve added super-cushy padding. And when I leaned back, I see that they’ve installed televisions on the ceiling. So I can watch TV while I’m in the chair getting the drill. He’s worth every penny.

*Speaking of television… I watch a lot. I’m not ashamed to admit this. I like to be amused, entertained, brought to tears, coaxed into laughter. I love Lost. This year, I Tivo’d every episode and waited until this past weekend to watch them all at the same time. Awesome. (Disclaimer: Yes, I read books, too.)

*I am currently in deep like with avocadoes. When ordering anything from anywhere, I used to always choose the dish with mushrooms. Now I choose the one with avocado. (See “amusing-to-me” line above.)

I could go on, but really, I think that glimpse is probably good enough to satisfy many a fine folk for now. I do like the “& Stuff” heading. Must remember to use again when feeling non-creative or punny.

As always, more to come…

It's All In The Wording...

...Or BCBS sucks.

I’m currently on COBRA insurance. It took three months to activate, then became retro-active.

During this three month period, I started Novolog. My endo wrote me an rx for Novolog pens, indicating I was to take “about 20 units a day.” My CVS pharmacy did the math and figured out that a box of Novolog pens (five per pack) was equal to 75 days at 20 units a day and wrote that down in my “official” prescription information. I paid cash ($200+) for the insulin.

When my COBRA activated, I submitted all my prescriptions for reimbursement, like I’m supposed to. However, turns out my insurance company doesn’t like to pay for anything that’s over a 30-day supply. The $200 is non-reimbursable (it’s a word now). BCBS explained that they will cover the Novolog in the future, if the prescription is written differently so it only comes out to a 30-day supply.

I have an endo appointment on Friday and, in addition to discussing the many important facets of my new insulin regimen, how my sugars are reacting, what I’m doing right to keep myself alive and healthy, what I’m doing wrong that will possibly endanger me for the future, I will have to take time to explain to her that BCBS does not like the way she writes prescriptions and ask her to give me a new one that specifically says, “one box of pens for one month usage.”

See alternative title above for summary of situation.

As always, more to come…

MIA

I've been off-grid for the past month. No particular reason. Just re-grouping in real life.

And because I can have a tendency to ramble (no, seriously), and I have a few things I'd like to write about, I'm going to do them in separate posts, instead of one long, huge, War-And-Peace type entry.

As always, more to come...