Bad Diabetic

Blood Sugar: 87

So I found out last night that I am a bad diabetic. Honestly, I was just shocked by the revelation. 8 years ago, I considered myself a bad diabetic. I didn't actively try to control what I ate or my blood sugars and I pretty much lived with my blood sugar, I'm sure, astronomically high. But something happened 5 years ago...I don't know if it was just something inside of me that said, "you are killing yourself every day you don't TRY to control your blood sugar," or if it was my impending marriage or the fact that I was now a mamaw...but my attitude changed. I was proactive, and if anyone knows me, proactive is not really my style...mostly I just want to hang out and see what happens. I found a doctor, I counted carbs, I decided I wanted an insulin pump to help me get things back into an acceptable range. And I've rocked it. Sure I have high blood sugars now and then and low blood sugars too...but it's NOTHING like it was prior to being on the pump. So what caused someone to say that I was a "bad diabetic"? The reply caused me to gag a little...I'm a bad diabetic because I take insulin. Uh, no, I'm alive today because I take insulin and that has NOTHING to do with being bad versus being good. As a matter of fact, my accuser went onto tell me that it was good that I didn't have children because bad diabetics cannot have successful pregnancies. What rock has my informer been living under? Keri at www.sixuntilme.com just successfully produced a little angel and there are millions of more stories like hers...but I think the hardest thing to take was the fact that I'm NOT the bad diabetic I was and I'm pretty proud of the control I have now and prefer the way I feel most of the time now better than before. I don't know, it just really rubbed me the wrong way and I wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on this...I think diabetes sucks and I think that people are either good or bad, but diabetes cannot be either. I have good days and I have bad days, but so does every non-diabetic in the world. Diabetes is something I live with but it is not something that defines who I am, I define how I handle it and what I allow it to affect in my life. While diabetes is a distinct part of who I am and does play into my decision making process (ie do I have enough insulin in my pod to eat that chocolate covered cream puff) it is NEVER the sole factor in my decisions. Thoughts?

When Things Fall Apart

Blood Sugar: 182

Ok, so it didn't fall apart, we disassembled it. This is the interior of my pod. Who knew that you could fit all that stuff in the little thing I wear on my body that keeps me ticking? I think this is really an amazing piece of work. I guess this is my moment at 'art'! LOL I think the inner-workings of my pod is very symbolic of life with diabetes. It's a culmination of a million little things that make diabetes doable...livable. Every spring,screw, and piece of plastic has a purpose to fulfill in keeping me going...just like every blood test and every carb I count has a purpose to fulfill. Interesting, that something so complicated and intricate comess in a small plastic dome that I wear. Who knew?

Happy One Year Anniversary?

Blood Sugar: 170

Today marks the anniversary of me switching from traditional injections to the OmniPod. Do you say happy anniversary for something like this? I mean, it's a bit bittersweet when you look at it from my angle. I love being on the OmniPod. I love the vast changes it has made in my life--TO my life. My quality of life is better, I feel better, I am able to do more things than when I was on injections. But I am still and always will be a chronically ill person with the job of managing a disease that is not manageable. Being on the OmniPod has really let me live a more normal life than I ever thought possible. Of course, there is no denying that diabetes is still a lot of work and it does take constant effort to control blood sugars that change without rhyme or reason, but it's a little different now. There's no more leering people at restaurants as I inject myself, there's no more questions about it hurting, there's less limitations that I face, but it remains my ever-constant...companion. It's funny when you stop and really look at things--it seemed so easy on the surface to just say, "Yeah, no more shots for me," but then reality sets in and you know that you can be happy about this little thing, and many people won't understand why and you lack the words to explain it...Wouldn't life be easier if we could just accept the happy without looking at the sad? Well--happy anniversary to me, because I just want to be a little happy.

Disolve it all

Blood Sugar: 151

I have very sensitive skin. Not a big deal usually. I use lotion and try to keep up with how dry my skin can get from the weather or from the diabetes. So my pods have an adhesive circular pad on them that keep them where I put them. I rotate the sites that I use in an effort to assist in insulin absorption over time. So two spots that I rotate to are on either side of my stomach. Well, the first time I tried to remove a pod from there it left these horrendouse welts on my poor sensitive tummy. They were sore and they itched and it was miserable. The next time I decided to be more careful and I peeled it back and it was pulling my skin off. I was miserable. As usual, when I have a question I hit the net and started asking different discussion groups and other pumpers if they had this same problem and if so, what could I do? I was introduced to this laundry aid. It's not perfect, but it is SO much better than yanking the pod off my tummy. It has a nice citrus scent that isn't overly citrusy...it's not a chemical smell. It doesn't dry my skin out. I do still get a bit of a welt, but that's just my sensitivity to the adhesive---the welt is no longer as big as the pod! But the downside...the goo!!! That adhesive turns into the stickiest goo. My granddaughter saw me trying to clean it off my belly one night and said, "Mamaw, you got boogers?" It was extremely funny...but unfortunately very accurate. So that's my story. Sorry it took so long to get back in the blog groove. I have a couple blogs geared up, but I'm not quite finished writing. I hope you stay tuned...

Occlusion Alarms

Blood Sugar: 88

So I just use the word occlusion in my everyday speech and had NO idea that no one else knew what it meant. So for the non-pumpers that are reading, an occlusion occurs when there is an issue in the canula, which is the tiny tube that is inserted under your skin with your insulin pump. I just recently had an occlusion and when I looked the canula was filled with blood which means that the pod I was wearing was not delivering insulin properly. So it's something that happens to us pumpers and it's annoying, but it doesn't make me want to go back on injections for any extended period. I haven't given myself a shot since January...I don't even feel like I could now, if I had to. But anyway, the whole point of this post is that I do not feel that my particular pump, the OmniPod, is very sensitive to an occulsion. Don't get me wrong, I love the OmniPod, I am not bothered by the pods I wear at all, but I would have liked an earlier alarm...you know prior to my blood sugar being 413. It made for a long day though. Checking my blood sugar and bolusing and checking and bolusing...it was finally better late that afternoon, but it's a hassle. What if the alarm had gone off in the middle of the night instead of when I got to work? I would have been up and changing it and fixing the issue with a 2 hundred-something blood sugar and that would have been WAY better. Still...the control that I have now via the OmniPod is something that I never dreamed of on injections. I used to wake up every morning with my blood sugar in AT LEAST the 300's...I definitely prefer the occasional high to the daily high!

Let's Talk Needles

Blood Sugar: 385

So in my previous post, I mentioned that one of the things that I always keep on hand is a device to inject a syringe. Why, you may have asked yourself...there are many reasons. First and foremost, I am deathly terrified of needles. I hate to watch a needle go into my skin. I become quite squeamish to say the least. I've passed out on occasion and I've hurled once. So when I was young, my mom found an injector that you place a filled syringe into and then 'cock' it, place it over where you want to shoot it and push. Wa-la, you are injected without all the nasty business of watching it happen. That fear of needles caused my mother to find a solution for me and as an adult, when I decided that I wanted to switch to a pump, I had to figure out a way for me to avoid watching that needle every time I had to change my site. That fear led me to the OmniPod. I love it, I love it, I love it. It has changed my life for the better and has changed my quality of life completely. In the picture, I have a normal insulin syringe. The second syringe is the one used to fill the pod that I wear and finally the actual pod. It's quite ingenious really and has offered me a better option that using another type of 'injector'. No muss, no fuss...that's what I like.