Basal blues

I need to adjust my basals, but I’m not sure what to do.  I know I need to do basal tests, but I find them impossible to do.  I can barely go 3 hours without eating something, so there’s almost no way I can go the 10+  hours required for a basal test.  Typical schedule:

• 6:30 - breakfast
• 9:30 - snack
• 11:30 - lunch
• 2:30 - snack
• 6:00 - dinner
• 8:30 - snack

I don’t always eat all the snacks, but I will say that if I skip my afternoon snack, I get very very grouchy before dinner.  If I have to do a basal test (say for a lunch test), here’s the schedule:

•  6:30 - breakfast
• 9:30 - no correction, no morning snack
• 11:30 - no lunch
• 2:30 - no afternoon snack
• 6:00 - dinner

11 and 1/2 hours between eating…  Not.  Possible.

Anything, but not everything

On the weekends, GiR and I usually have a bunch of friends over to play games and hang out and such. Typically, we just make some pizza (which I have finally figured out how to bolus for, btw), but this week we’re going to let MB make dinner. We’re going with a sort of New Orleans theme (I plan on making beignets and pecan pralines), so he’s going to fix some red beans and rice. Here is the conversation that followed:

MB: oh, and if i make red beans and rice for tomorrow, will you be able to eat it?
Me (after much thinking): I’m trying not to sound preachy, but I can eat whatever the hell I want. Do not worry about these things.

It makes me very frustrated that people worry about what I can and can’t eat.  I’m not allergic to any foods, so I don’t see why I can’t eat whatever everyone else is eating.  Sure, when I’m at restaurants, I choose things that are lower-carb or easier to bolus for.  But, when it’s just friends at home, I don’t want to make a fuss.

My friends should not be the ones to worry about what I eat.  Yes, I clearly know that red beans and rice is a pretty high-carb meal.  However, it is up to ME to figure out how much to eat and how to bolus.  That’s MY job, not theirs.

In general, my food motto is: “I can eat anything I want, just not everything.”  Yes, I’m making some high-carb desserts, but it’s not like I’m going to gorge myself.  I will probably have HALF of a beignet and 1 BITE of the pecan pralines.  That’s it.  I don’t have to deprive myself of all this tasty food just because I have diabetes.  I just have to eat in moderation.  If only more people followed that advice…

Testing discussion RESULTS

Thank you all who stopped by my TuDiabetes discussion on how often you test each day.

It seems that my wish to test 13-14 times a day is not the norm.  Most of you are happy with testing only 6-8 times a day.  I guess it’s just my craving for more information.

I also love Emily’s response to my question about how often you WISH you could test:  NEVER!

Some day….

Testing discussion

At Bernard’s suggestion, I have created a topic on TuDiabetes to discuss how often you test your blood sugar.  Please hop on over there and get talking!

Too much?!?!?!

So, after the last test strip disaster, it was time to refill my test strips again.  I figured while the doctor was writing up a new prescription, I’d ask for more test strips.  I checked Lucy and she said that I was testing slightly more than 10 times a day (around 10.3).  10 times a day x 30 days was 300, or 3 boxes.  I figured I could ask for 11 times a day and get 4 boxes out of it.

Well, the pharmacy called the doctor then told me that the doctor wants to talk to me first.  Great…  After talking to my doctor directly, he insists that 11 times a day is waaay too often.  *sigh*  I knew this was coming.  I pleaded my case, citing 7 absolute minimum (before/after each meal, bedtime), plus 2 more for exercise, 1 for the middle of the night, and an extra per day for lows or snacks, or a bum strip or something like that.  He wouldn’t do it.

Apparently my insurance thinks that 7 is the MAXIMUM that anyone would ever test per day.  Are these people psycho?  Do they have any clue what it is like to have diabetes?  I like to have snacks between lunch and dinner because I don’t always know what time dinner will be.  There is no way that I could bolus without knowing what my blood sugar was.  I just don’t like not knowing.

My doctor tried to argue that some of those tests (exercise, snacks, etc) would coincide with, say, the after meal test, but that isn’t always the case.  And he said that some days I would end up testing less and save up a strip or two.  I know I can get away with only 3 boxes a month, but that cuts it pretty close and I was looking for some leeway.

He did end up writing me a script for 10 times a day.  So, even though it’s not 4 boxes, at least it lets the insurance company know that I’ve been testing more and more.  (It used to be 4/day, then 7, then 7-8 or more, and now it’s at 10).  Maybe someday the insurance company will get it through their thick skulls that these strips are necessary and we should get however many we need.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Okay, sorry.  Just had to laugh at that…

Keeping secrets

After reading various blog posts about people getting fired from their jobs because they have diabetes, I got to thinking about how I deal with telling people about my disease.

I’m an introvert in the first place, so I’m not likely to tell people much about myself anyway. As such, I don’t tell anyone that I have diabetes unless it comes up in conversation. Even if I am with coworkers for lunch or something, I simply test and bolus quietly under the table and no one’s the wiser. I had a baking class a few weeks ago that discussed different types of sugar (including Splenda, Equal, etc) and it just didn’t seem necessary to mention that I had diabetes. I mean, I said that I use Splenda a lot and that I like diet sodas, but I never felt the need to qualify that with “because I have diabetes.”

I think part of it is that I didn’t develop diabetes until I was 18. A lot of my character-building was established before I had diabetes, so now it’s like a little side note instead of the complete focus of my life.  In any case, it’s never been a problem, so I don’t feel I need to bring it up.  Diabetes does not affect my performance and I can do anything that normal people do.  So for now, it’s my little secret.

SWAG, SWAG, SWAG away!

It was a very busy weekend, full of Japanese food, chips, pizza, frozen desserts, a baked potato, and an experimental dinner. Ohhhh, there was soooo much SWAGing… And yet, I managed to have practically perfect blood sugars all weekend. Pre-meals around 100, post-meals around 130-170, no major lows below 70. Wow. I just wish it could be like this all the time. However, I will be grateful for the few days of control that I can have.

Alzheimer’s could be related to diabetes

GiR pointed me to this article, which claims that Alzheimer’s could be another type of diabetes.  They are calling it “Type 3.”  From the article:

In the brain, insulin and insulin receptors are vital to learning and memory. When insulin binds to a receptor at a synapse, it turns on a mechanism necessary for nerve cells to survive and memories to form. That Alzheimer’s disease may in part be caused by insulin resistance in the brain has scientists asking how that process gets initiated.

Of course, they also mention (way at the bottom) that Alzheimer’s would be more related to Type 2 diabetes, rather than Type 1:

“With proper research and development the drug arsenal for type 2 diabetes, in which individuals become insulin resistant, may be translated to Alzheimer’s treatment,” said Klein. “I think such drugs could supercede currently available Alzheimer’s drugs.”

I love hearing about this research; it’s baby steps closer to figuring this stuff out.

Pancreas in comics

Somehow, I came across an couple of images of a comic book that mentioned pancreases (pancreai?). After some searching, it appears to be from Cable & Deadpool.

Apparently, Deadpool stole Agent X’s pancreas. Why, I’m not exactly sure.

And here we can see that Agent X really wants his pancreas back.

I’m not sure what the rest of the story is, but it just seemed amusing to me that pancreas appeared in some comics.

Small changes

To any regular readers, you might notice a small change to the blog.  New template!  Hurray!  Hopefully this template will make it easier to go through the archives.  Feel free to browse around and catch up on old posts.

WordPress also recently released the use of tags in their blogs.  As you can see, I have added tags to all my posts.  If you click on a tag, you can browse all blog posts (by me or any other WordPress blog) that have that tag.  The categories work similarly.  However, if you want to only browse posts by me in a certain category, use the links in the right sidebar.

I have also updated my blogroll.  I read many blogs through my feed reader, but I forget to update them here.  Please check out all those other wonderful people in the Diabetes OC.  =)