Tuesday, July 21, 2009

All By Myself

It’s official: I’m in a commuter marriage.

The husband got a great job with great benefits, great career experience, great company, great people. One small glitch: it’s one hundred and twenty miles south of where our house is.

The daily commute would be about 2-1/2 hours each way and virtually impossible to do. So we packed him up a week and a half ago and moved him to a small studio apartment near his new job. He drives home on Friday night, we spend the weekend together, and he drives back Sunday night or Monday morning and spends the week in his apartment. And I spend the week in our house. Alone.

While I do have two dogs for company and security (they like to bark), I realized this is the first time since my diabetes dx that I’ve lived alone. I’m not obsessively worried about it, but I do find myself taking a different set of precautions than I normally would.

My general rule of thumb is not to go to bed unless I’m over a 100. I’ve bumped that number up to 110, and I pay more attention to what I’ve eaten, how long ago, how my sugars might be affected. The other night I ate Chinese food and miscalculated how much insulin I’d need to cover it. I tested right before bed and I was high. Normally, I would have given myself a correction of a couple units, but I paused, thought twice and didn’t. What if I dive-bombed in the middle of the night? My dogs are good company, but they’re not very adept at getting the straw into a juice box.

I don’t have a history of waking up low in the middle of the night—it’s only happened a couple times in my six-year diabetes history. But there’s always a chance it will happen, and I’m going to do my damnedest to make sure it’s a fluke, and not some stupid, “Oh, I’ll be okay,” lapse-of-judgment moment on my part.

I know I’m not the only one who spends time alone with diabetes, so if anyone out there has any good advice, tips, tricks, suggestions that I might not have thought of, please let me know.

As always, more to come…

Friday, July 17, 2009

What When Why Where How

Blogging by not blogging…

On the health front: Do I blog about the headache I woke up with and can’t get rid of? The skin tag I removed last night with nail clippers? The prescription refills I need to call in? The diabetic supplies I need to order?

On the home front: Do I blog about my pantry moths? My cloth moths? My silverfish? My need for an exterminator? How I wish I’d never torn apart my downstairs bathroom, which has been torn apart for two years?

On the dog front: Do I blog about how a stray gray cat taunted my dogs yesterday morning by sunning himself in our backyard despite their barking from every door and window in my house? About how I need to order Molly’s meds for her Addison’s? How they both desperately need to be furminated, and my whole house along with them?

On the work front: I’m not even going there.

On the Twitter front: Do I blog about what a time-suck, mind-suck, fun-filled activity this is? How I’m hoping the fascination goes away just like the Facebook fascination did?

On the let’s-pause-a-minute front: The sun is out in Chicago, steadily rising above the lake. Looking out my window, the water is sparkling like moveable glitter and there’s the lightest feather-wisp of a cloud stretched across the sky, a pale blue.

Wait. What was I talking about?

As always, more to come…

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The Full Tweet

It was the peer pressure. 14K diabetics saying “c’mon, it won’t hurt.” The test didn’t. The Tweet did, just a little.

Led by TuDiabetes, it was suggested that diabetics round the world unite in a single blood test at 4pm EST (that’s 3pm my time) and post their results. In addition to posting on TuDiabetes, you could also post on Twitter.

I believe I’ve mentioned before I’m a Twitter stalker. I follow what a lot of different people write, but I’ve never written anything myself.

But at 4pm EST (that’s 3pm my time), I caved. I wrote my blood sugar was 132. Then I wrote a second Twitter.

I’m in now. Full Tweet. I’m Chicagolora if you’re looking, although I’m not making any promises as to quality or quantity.

As always, more to come (here, and on Twitter, oh, and FB, too)…

*P.S. Very, very cool to see everyone’s Tweets on #14kpwd. I feel like I’m part of a gang! A very cool gang (kool gang?).

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Shot In The Dark

Guess what I now own? My very own glucagon shot. It’s real nifty—came in a sturdy red plastic case with instructions printed on the inside of the lid. Almost like a new power tool from Home Depot.

After six years of being on insulin, my new endocrinologist is the first one who’s ever asked me if I knew what a glucagon shot is and if I had one at the ready. Of course not. That would have meant someone was paying attention, and frankly, I can’t really blame the diabetes educator who gave me my four-hour crash course in how to be a diabetic while I was still under the throes of DKA in the hospital for forgetting to mention it. Or maybe she did and it just went out the window, like so many of the things she was trying to teach me.

Anyway. The new endo arranged an appointment with her RN for me and the husband to go in and learn all about the glucagon shot. Husband got to practice shooting a squishy ball, since he’d be the one shooting me up should I need a glucagon shot. He’s never given me an insulin shot, but he’s given my dog her monthly shot for Addison’s for over a year, so he’s not syringe shy.

Afterward, we went out for breakfast and I had mushrooms with melted cheese and scrambled eggs and toast with just a scraping of grape jelly (not a big jelly fan; only do grape once in a while, and only sparingly; otherwise: gross). Not actually an important part of my glucagon-shot-owning story, but it was a really good breakfast and slightly more memorable than the story the RN told us about her diabetic cat.

So. Me. Owner. Glucagon shot. The prescription says I have 999 refills (not a typo, 999) that are good through July of next year. I’m hoping I never have to use the damn shot, let alone refill it 999 more times.

As always, more to come…

Friday, July 3, 2009

Psssttt...

To the right. Look to the right. See that date over there? 7/3/03? That means today is my D Anniversary. Six years.

I hear the city of Chicago is so excited for me, they're going to blow off some fireworks tonight.

As always, more to come...