Tools of the trade

After reading some comments on various blogs, specifically regarding this post, I decided to do some research on lancing devices and lancets. I don’t know much about the Accu-check, but hearing the rave reviews of the Softclix, I think I’m going to get it. I was also very surprised about the BD Ultrafine 33 lancets. I hadn’t really given a thought to lancet gauges, so when I found out that my Freestyle Flash lancets are 25 gauge, my jaw dropped! So huge! Why was I doing that to myself?!?!

Also, I have been wanting another Flash for my bedroom so I don’t have to lug my only pouch upstairs. One of these days, I just know I’m going to forget to put that pouch back into my purse and end up at work meter-less. A second meter will help greatly. As such, here is my shopping list:

• Freestyle Flash kit
• Accu-check kit (yes, it has a whole meter, but it’s cheaper than buying the lancing device by itself)
• BD Ultrafine 33 lancets

Now, for my next trick, I will try to convince GiR that the $55 for these supplies is a needed expense to improve the quality of my life. =)

UPDATE: Does anyone know if the BD lancets will work in the Softclix? I can’t find anything online about compatibility.

UPDATE 2: The BD lancets do NOT work in the Softclix. I finally found this lancet compatibility chart. I think I will just stick with the Freestyle lancing device and just use the BD lancets. Oh, and GiR wants me to tell you that the convincing was easy, so he must love me after all. =P

Lucy’s first vacation

Tomorrow I head off to Ohio for a family reunion on my husband’s mother’s side. This will be the first vacation or real travel of any sort with Lucy. I have no idea what to do. We’ll be gone for 4 days, so there will need to be a site change in there somewhere. And I didn’t quite time my reservoir change correctly, so I’ll have to do that while I’m there as well. I also do not have a Frio pack or anything like that (I remembered about those like, yesterday. Too late). I have no clue what to pack or anything. Here’s what I can think of:

• nearly-empty vial of Humalog
• additional, full vial of Humalog
• Lantus vial and Humalog pens for backup
• syringes and pen needles for aforementioned backup
• 2 extra batteries
• 3 infusion sites
• 2 sets of tubing
• tons of test strips
• IV Prep wipes
• plenty of Starburst for lows

I don’t have a spare meter (I’ve been meaning to get one), but I will of course bring the one I do have. I’m also not sure what I should about the insulin. I know it needs to be refrigerated, but I hate being a pain when I’m visiting people and saying “hey, can I store this in the fridge?” I don’t want other people touching my stuff or doing stuff to it. I also don’t want to impose. I don’t want someone to have to shove stuff out of the way so I can fit my giant bag of supplies in the fridge. I should have just bought a Frio bag, but I was too late. Any suggestions? Also, did I forget anything? Gah, I’m so nervous.

Two haiku

I have two haiku for you: one with a good ending, and one with a not-so-good ending.

my glucometer
tells me how I am doing.
ninety-seven. good.

my glucometer
tells me how I am doing.
two-twenty-five. what?!?!

Hopefully today will be like the first haiku. So far, so good.

Diet soda linked to diabetes?

I just read this article about a study that links diet soft drinks to diabetes and cardiac risk. They say “…people who consumed more than one soft drink of any kind a day were 44 percent more likely to develop metabolic syndrome than those who didn’t drink a soda a day.” It didn’t matter whether it was regular or diet. However, one thing to note is this: “‘But we cannot infer causality,’ Vasan said, meaning there is no proof that soda itself is the villain. ‘We have an association. Maybe it is a causal one or maybe it is a marker of something else.‘” Correlation does NOT equal causation. More studies are definitely needed, but if they decide that diet soda is bad for diabetics, then what am I left with? Water? Ugh.

Relatedly, I do call it soda. Guess where I’m from.

My hips don’t lie

It was site-change time last night, and I found the last feasible spot on my belly. Insert. No real problem. But then it started hurting. =( It didn’t go away, so I make the executive decision to pull it. Sure enough, a medium-ish dot of blood surfaced. I had hit some sort of artery or vein or whatever. Good thing I pulled it.

However, that left me with no real space left on my belly. I’m pretty small, so there’s not much real estate there. I checked for what other places I could use, and one of them said hips. Brilliant! Being a young female, I have plenty of squishable hip space. =D I was super nervous though because I’ve never used my hip for any injection of any sort. But, to my surprise, the hip was even easier than my belly!

The only downside is that it was a minor pain to sleep on that side, but I hardly noticed. Also, there isn’t really that much space on my hips. I might be able to get 2 sites out of each hip before I have to try something else.

I’m nervous about trying my thighs because while I do have semi-large thighs, they seem pretty muscular. 1) I wouldn’t want to hit muscle and 2) my pants tend to be tight in the thighs (since they’re kinda big), and I wouldn’t want the site to rub. Oh well. That’s a problem for another day.

Take THAT, diabetes!

I had my first endo appointment today. The wait was waaaay too long, which I should have anticipated. The lady at the front desk asked if I had my meter with me (which of course I did). I handed it over to her, and she plugged it into her computer and started downloading stuff! Without asking me! I felt like my meter was being raped or something. Dude, that’s personal information in there.

The endo herself was okay. At first she talked to me like I didn’t know what diabetes was and how it worked. And she said I tested too much! What!?!?! She told me before each meal and at bedtime and “if I had time” to do it after meals. Ugh. I am a firm believer that more information is better. She didn’t really know how to find stuff on my pump and how to interpret some of the data I had printed out in advance. I was hoping for some advice on how to tweak my basal rates and carb ratios, but didn’t get any. I think I’ll stick to figuring it out myself, with the help of Pumping Insulin

But, the best part of the visit was when I got my A1c results back. 6.4, baby! That’s nearly a whole point lower than my last one, which was 7.2. And this A1c only has a few weeks of being on the pump, so I’m sure it will be even lower next time. Woo! I am sooo pleased with this. =D

High as a kite

Well, there goes my 14 day average. =( I was doing great, then Saturday came around. We were having some friends over to play some games, so there were chips, cookies, and the dreaded pizza. My blood sugar was fine at 3:30 (when people started arriving), but then it went downhill (well, uphill, really) from there. I didn’t go below 180 until just now (note that it’s 10:00 the next day). Ugh. I serial bolused like crazy, but could not bring it down. I finally had a normal breakfast this morning, and my post-prandial is at 164, so I think I’m finally back to normal. Stupid food. Grrr.

Missing out

In my dx story, I noted that I was diagnosed at 18. I didn’t know it at the time, but that meant I missed out on some cool stuff. Including Clara Barton Camp or Camp Joslin. A whole camp for kids with diabetes! 18 was apparently too old. =( I didn’t even find out that those existed at all until recently. Why didn’t anyone tell me about that?

I also have not yet seen a real endocrinologist. I didn’t know those existed until recently either. When I was diagnosed, I was simply cared for by my PCP. When I got married and moved to my new place, I found a PCP that specializes in diabetes (Type 2 mostly, I found out later). Never was an endo mentioned to me. I have since remedied those ignorant ways and I have my first endo appointment on Monday. I hope that I will get a lot better care than with the general Type 2 PCP.

What other things do you wish people told you about when you were first dx’ed?

My dx story

I had originally planned to for the start of this story to be in July 2003, but really, the events that led up to my dx began in April.

During college, I was a peer health educator. Every April, we run a health fair, where you can get all sorts of things tested, including blood sugar. I went through all the tests, and I believe my blood sugar came out around 100, give or take. I don’t remember exactly, but it was definitely in the normal range. Clearly non-diabetic at this point.

Probably sometime in May, I got an infection in a tooth that has a cavity. My guess is that the dentist didn’t fill it right, or I just didn’t take care of it properly. As a result, I got some amoxicillin for an antibiotic. Needless to say, I got a yeast infection as a result. I frakking HATE yeast infections (personal vendetta at this point). Got some stuff for the yeast infection and eventually both it and the tooth infection were gone.

Not long after that, I got another yeast infection. Ugh. Then another. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time, but I’m pretty sure fighting off all those yeast infections is what did me in, as it were.

It was now July 2003. My college roommate and her boyfriend and I decided to head downtown for fireworks for the 4th of July. It being St. Louis, it was HOT. Hot and muggy. I had brought a waterbottle with me, but I went through that quickly. I had to walk to the porta-potties every half-hour. No big deal. It’s hot, I need to stay hydrated, then of course I need to pee. Right?

This cycle continued throughout the next week. I’d come home from work and down a 1/2 gallon of apple juice in less than 15 minutes. Then I’d wake up multiple times during the night to go the bathroom. No big deal. It’s hot, I need to stay hydrated, etc… By that Friday (the 11th), my mom figured something was up. It wasn’t really that hot, and going to the bathroom more than 3 times a night was a bit suspicious.

Every Friday we’d go visit my grandparent’s house for dinner. My grandfather (my mom’s dad) has Type 2 diabetes (which I didn’t know much about at the time), so he has a glucometer. We decide to test my blood sugar and it says “HI.” As in “too high to calculate.” As in “over 500.” As in “call a doctor NOW.” I can’t remember what we did Friday night. I probably did some research online.

Saturday morning, we call our doctor’s 24 hour help line. They page my PCP and he calls us back later that day. I think I was the one who talked to him and said “I think I have diabetes.” I remember feeling smart, like “ha! I figured it out!” or something. We make an appointment for Monday so we can figure things out. Over the weekend, I avoid carbs and my blood sugar goes “down” to 250 or so.

Monday rolls around and they draw blood and do a billion tests. Yup, I’ve got diabetes. He writes me a preliminary script for 12 units of Lantus at night at 3-7 units of Humalog (in a pen) with meals. On Tuesday, I met with a diabetes educator and dietician and they showed me all sorts of things. I got to try out using a syringe in my thigh (saline, of course), and it wasn’t that bad. And the rest, they say, is history…

There are a few things that I think are interesting:

1. I was non-diabetic in April and diagnosed in July. It’s pretty amazing to see how quickly it happens.
2. I had just turned 18, which is somewhat “old” to be having juvenile diabetes. Everyone seemed kinda surprised. I’m glad they’ve moved to calling it “Type 1.”
3. I did not have to go to the hospital. Other than the drinking/urinating thing (which was more annoying, really, than anything else), I felt fine. A little weak and tired, but that’s about it. I hear horror stories about people spending a week in the hospital and I’m like, “huh? that’s weird.”
4. During the 4 years on MDI (before I got Lucy), I never needed to change my Humalog rates. I had to adjust my Lantus right away (since the 12 units was just a guess), but we settled on 17 units pretty quickly. I only had to adjust it +/- a unit depending on how much exercise I was getting. As such, I was completely unaware of this “honeymoon” period people kept talking about. Maybe I had it and just didn’t notice. *shrug*

Sorry for the long post, but it’s kinda fun talking about how things came to be. It’s kinda like trading war stories. We’ve all got one.

On hypos and legs

I was watching Pontiac Moon with my husband (hereafter referred to as GiR) last night, and Lucy beeped to tell me to test my blood sugar since it was 2 hours after dinner. 53. What?!?! I had absolutely no symptoms, which is very rare for me. I usually feel shaky and weird and I can tell when I’m low, but not this time. I decide to take the Flash’s word for it, and eat a couple Mamba. 15 minutes later: 59. Still no symptoms. I kick it up and grab a couple more Mamba and a fruit bar. 15 minutes after that: 90. All good now. I guess I’m just a little nervous because it’s my first unrecognized hypo in a looong time, and the first while on the pump. Do pump users get more frequent unrecognized hypos than MDI users? I hope not because that would be scary. Hopefully this was just a one-time thing.

I also had a bad experience with a massive charley horse during the night. I woke up screaming in pain around 2:30 am. >< My calf muscles were writhing and knotting up and I couldn’t get it to stop. GiR got me a glass of water, which usually helps a lot. I decided to test my blood sugar while I was at it (74) and had another fruit bar. My leg managed to quiet itself down and I went back to sleep. I stretched it a little this morning, and it should be fine. GiR is worried about my legs though. I occasionally have mild restless leg syndrome, which is usually fixed with some jumping jacks. However, after the charley horse (which is also an occasional occurrence), GiR thinks there’s something wrong. I’ve been trying to get more potassium by adding bananas to my diet, which only seems to work sometimes. I know diabetics can have problems with their feet, but what about legs? Are RLS and charley horses more common among diabetics? Any tips for preventing them?