A1c update

I got my results in the mail yesterday.  6.3  Only slightly lower than my last result of 6.4.  I’m on the way down, slowly but surely.

PTSD can cause diabetes?

Just saw this article from Consumerist that says* the man’s posttraumatic stress disorder caused his diabetes.  Can this happen?  I would think that a person would already be pre-diabetic and possibly the PTSD aggravated the condition.  Personally, I think his/his lawyer’s claims are bogus.  What do you think?

* Technically, Consumerist is merely relaying the information from another source.  I’m not trying to imply that Consumerist is saying these things directly.

I think I’m calm enough now

I had a very harrowing weekend (well, just Saturday really) and I think I’m finally calm enough to blog about it.

GiR and I decided to head down to our alma mater to play some board games with some friends (and GiR’s brother) who still go there.  I knew I would have to do a reservoir change while we were out, so I made sure to bring my insulin, tubing, cartridge, etc.  No problem.  While on the 90 minute drive there, I needed to test my blood sugar for my after-breakfast check.  I open the test strip tube and there are 5 strips.  5.  That’s it.

I panic.

We were not planning to be back home until late that night, so 5 strips was not going to cover it.  Well, maybe.  If I decided to stretch it and not test after breakfast and not eat any snacks.  However, my brain decided this was unacceptable.  There was no way I could go that long living in blood sugar no-man’s land.  What if I had a low and needed to test 2 or 3 times?  I knew I would want to have snacks, necessitating the need for more strips.   What if a test strip didn’t work or error’d and I had to use another one? What if, what if, what if…

I knew there was a Walmart in town, so I figured it could get my prescription transferred and I could get more strips.  No problem, right?  Not really.  We get to the Walmart and give the nice lady the information, including the number of the pharmacy where I usually get my test strips refilled.  I told them that the prescription is for 300, but I only really need 100 to get me through the day (I think this was a problem, more detail later).  Also, I was a touch worried that it was too soon to get a refill, so I was hoping that wouldn’t be a problem.  They told me it would be 25 minutes.  Ugh.

10-15 minutes later, I check with them (check #1) if they’ve heard from the other pharmacy if it’s okay to get a refill so soon.  They say they haven’t even entered the prescription into the system yet.  Ugh.  More waiting.  10 minutes after that (elapsed time: 25 minutes), I check again (check #2) and they say, yes, I can get a refill, but it’ll be another 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, I realizing I’m having a low and use one of my precious 5 test strips (4 left).  15 minutes later (elapsed time 40 minutes) I check again (check #3) to see if it’s ready.  It is.  It rings up over $100.  What!?!?!?  They ask if I have my insurance card.  Well, of course I do!!!  Why didn’t you ask me that when I gave you the prescription in the first place?!?!?  *sigh*  It’ll be another 15 minutes.  Well, I’m still low and it’s time for lunch, so I say screw it and we leave to get Taco Bell.  I test again before lunch (only 3 test strips left) and eat my food and feel slightly better.  Back to Walmart.

I check for what I hope is the final time (check #4) and the insurance when through fine.  Typical $35 copay.  Total elapsed time:  1 hour 35 minutes.  I get back to my car and open up the bag.  There are only 2 boxes.  What?  I asked for 3.  I take a closer look at the boxes.  They are boxes of 50 instead of 100.  What!?!?!?!  I ended up with only 100 strips (kinda what I said I wanted, so maybe partly my fault) instead of the full 300.  I just payed $35 for 100 instead of $35 for 300.  Quite the difference.  ><  Also, this means I will need my next refill A LOT sooner than usual, so that might cause problems.

I didn’t feel like going back into the Walmart and I didn’t have their number, so I called my pharmacy at home to ask about it.  They said that once the prescription is transferred to Walmart, they’d have to call and get it transferred back (apparently transfers are permanent, not one-time things) which will be a hassle.  However, the pharmacist seemed really helpful and said they could contact my doctor and get a new prescription or an updated prescription and that we would figure it out.  He was definitely a lot more comforting than Walmart, although that should be expected.

I try to calm down and tell myself, at least I have test strips for today.  When I run out later, that’s when I can start worrying again.  Today: just feel better and have fun.   It mostly worked and I managed to have a good time for the rest of the day.

Here’s the kicker though, that still makes me slightly sick to my stomach:  I used my last test strip in the bottle after dinner.  Shortly after that, we went home.  I didn’t even need the extra test strips.  ;_;

Couple quick notes

It’s been nearly 3 months with Lucy, so I figured it was about time that I teach GiR the basics about her. Ya know, just in case something weird were to happen and he has to bolus or do a temp rate or anything like that. I showed him the home screens last night and this morning I had him give me my breakfast bolus. I wanted to show how easy the Cozmo is to use, so I told him to just “figure it out.” He navigated to the menu and entered everything almost as quickly as I would do it. There is hope for him yet.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is if/how to incorporate Lucy into my Halloween costume. I’m going as Rogue from X-Men (with GiR going as Gambit). In theory, she would probably just be in her case (since it’s black), but maybe I could add an X-Men logo or something? I’m also thinking of making her own costume like little vampire fang stickers or something. =D Am I just crazy for thinking of dressing up Lucy for Halloween? Surely I’m not the only one…

I love Lucy

Well, since I was able to get some more Humalog, I’ve stopped using the pens. I only used the pens for 3 meals (I cheated and used Lucy for breakfast yesterday) and I was just reminded of how much Lucy has changed my life.

I kept forgetting to test 2 hours after a meal, because normally Lucy reminds me to do that. I would have no clue how much insulin I had on board, so correction boluses were either random or just omitted. Since I could only bolus in whole units, my meal boluses were almost always too much or too little, resulting in massive swinging of blood sugars. I haven’t bounced around from 260 to 60 to 160 in a long time.

Regarding my post title: I’ve been saving that pun for a loooong time, and now seemed to be appropriate. =) As a side note, my Lucy is NOT named after the I Love Lucy show. It’s just a pretty name, that’s all.

*sigh*

So, I checked up online last night how my Humalog was coming along. I was hoping to see that it was shipped, meaning it would be at my house today. However, it still said “processing”. Ugh. I call up the nice people and they said that there was a problem with the prescription and they had to fax the doctor, asking for more info. As a result, it was not going to be shipped out this week, and would be shipped on Monday at the earliest (arriving at my house on Tuesday). Well, THAT ISN’T SOON ENOUGH. I thanked the nice lady, hung up, and had myself a good cry. Luckily, GiR and I have plenty of money in reserve so we were able to go to the pharmacy and buy a vial out of pocket to the tune of $99. ><

Why is it so frustrating to get meds? Especially life-saving meds? I mean, we were lucky that we could pay for it out of pocket, but what about those who can’t?

I decided to go ahead and put the “good times” category on this post because, really, I’m just happy I got my meds and I don’t have to stress about it anymore.

To endo or not to endo?

As you may or may not remember, my last endo visit was less-than-spectacular. My next appointment is coming up in about a month, and I’m not sure I want to go. I mentioned yesterday that I got my blood drawn for an A1c and some other tests. I had originally just needed the “other tests”, but my regular doctor decided to throw an A1c in there as well. So, here are the points I am considering:

1. My endo does not really know very much about the pump
2. She doesn’t provide any real useful information on lowering my A1c
3. I pretty much go to the endo just to get my A1c result anyway
4. I just got an A1c from my regular doctor
5. I loooove doing my own research, both from books and on the internet

As such, I can’t really see any point to seeing my endo. I’m doing things well enough and I don’t want to fuss with taking vacation from work and driving there, just to wait around to get useless information.

One potential use of an endo visit would be to check on my feet. However, I am thinking of going to a pedorthist to get fitted for some nice shoes, so that should take care of that aspect.

Also, I am not abandoning the idea of going to an endo entirely; just for right now. A friend from GiR’s church says that she has a really nice endo, so I may try that one in the future. It’s just that right now, I don’t see much of a point.

Can anyone think of a really good reason that I should go?

How-to: Comments

I’ve been getting a few questions in the comments lately, so I thought I’d clarify my process regarding comments.

1. Please feel free to comment. I love comments! A blog shouldn’t just be a one-way push of information. Discussion is what makes blogs great.
2. Currently, comments appear automatically. Originally the comment would have to be approved by me before it appeared, but I thought that was an unnecessary waste of time.
3. I will only delete obvious spam comments. All others, positive and negative, will stay. WordPress does a good job filtering most spam, so I don’t anticipate it to be a problem.
4. If you pose a question in your comment, I will respond with a comment of my own. I will not email you, unless I feel it’s really important. That means you should check back to your post often to see if I responded. By answering in a comment, I feel that everyone else gets the benefit of knowing my answer as well.
5. If you have a question that you don’t want to post publicly, feel free to email me at amalasblog [at] gmail [dot] com

Hope that clears things up. I look forward to hearing from all of you!

Pump vs. Pen

Well, it’s only been 2 meals and I already hate using the pen again. ><

Trying to tweak the amount of carbs I eat so that I can get my insulin to round up to a whole unit is frustrating. For example, my typical breakfast is 20g of carbs. Well, my insulin/carb ratio at breakfast is 1:8. So, if I want to take 3 units, I have to eat an extra 4g of carbs to round it out. I got so used to just eating whatever the heck I wanted and letting Lucy do her thing instead of having to “eat up” to whole units of insulin.

Another frustrating thing I had forgotten about was “tunneling”. I think this is where the insulin sort of travels back up the space the needle makes in your skin and then, well, comes out of your skin. I took my shot for dinner and when I removed the needle, I notice a bit of liquid on the top of my skin. Was that insulin that didn’t get absorbed? If so, how much? What a complete guessing game! I never have that problem with my infusion sites. Needless to say, I was slightly high after dinner, but I managed to do a small correction with Lucy.

No problems with tunneling with my breakfast shot, so I assumed everything went fine. Then, two hours later I was at 261! Ewwww… I programmed in a correction, flew through the wizard and hit deliver. Then I realized that since I didn’t bolus with Lucy, it didn’t compensate for IOB. Ugh. I had completely forgot about that. The wizard is such a crutch. And I happened to be at the doctor, waiting to get my blood drawn for an A1c and other things. So, to recap: an over-correction combined with getting blood drawn will most likely result in a hypo. Ugh. Also, the correction ended up being more units than I used for breakfast, so I’m not sure I’m saving myself any Humalog by using the pens. I almost might as well just use Lucy as normal and sweat it out.

Insurance hell

Part 1

I had to refill my reservoir today. Nothing too out of the ordinary. However, in doing so, I realized that I was at the end of my vial. Time for a refill. Okay, no problems so far. I call the pharmacy and they run it through while I was on the phone (thank you pharmacy guy!). Declined. What?!?!?! Turns out I’ve hit the maximum amount of refills at a pharmacy and I have to switch to the mail order plan. Ugh. I hate the mail order plan. It takes nearly 2 weeks to get the meds from when I order it and I rarely notice soon enough. For example, I notice that I need to refill my Humalog today. I have 100 or so units left in the pump (plus a hidden 10 units of basal). That’s only enough for about 3 days. 3 days < 2 weeks. Not fast enough. I called the insurance company to see if I can get a vial anyway in the meantime, and they said no and that I’d have to pay full price. No thanks. They do tell me, though, that I can get an expedited shipping and it could be here as late as Friday. It’s cutting it close, but I’ll take it. That’s assuming my endo can approve the 90-day prescription today. I will definitely be calling back later to make sure it went okay. However, there is a slightly good side to this. I do still have my Humalog pens from before I got Lucy. They should still be good, so I can do all my bolusing with the pens and just use Lucy for basal. That should stretch my supply enough that I can make it until Friday. It will be kind of weird going back to the pens for a couple days. Updates later.

Part 2

It’s getting close to the time that I have the option to change insurance plans with my employer. Previously, we had 2 different providers and one of them had 2 options, resulting in 3 different options for insurance plans. This year, though, there is only 1 provider: the one I already have. Part of me is glad that I don’t have to deal with all the research and calculations, but I just wish there were options. I wish I knew what I could do to get the best deal. I know there are HSA and FSA accounts, but I don’t know if they would help me at all.

One thing that sucks is that because GiR is on my health insurance too, it doubles the deductible. However, GiR does not have any medical expenses at all. He had one thing this year that was relatively cheap, and that’s it. It’s up to me to cover the $2200 deductible. That’s a lot of money to pay straight up at the beginning of the year. However, due to the massive amounts of prescriptions I need, that gets cleared up pretty quickly. I guess I’m just sick of having this stupid disease that requires me to spend over $5000 a year just to keep me alive. GiR, my friend MB, and others who don’t have a chronic illness can get away with a hundred dollars a year at most. Why is it so frakking expensive? Of course, given the choice of dying of starvation and paying that much money, I would much rather live…