Let’s end our week on a high note and blog about our “Diabetes Hero”. It can be anyone you’d like to recognize or admire, someone you know personally or not, someone with diabetes or maybe a Type 3. It might be a fabulous endo or CDE. It could be a d-celebrity or role-model. It could be another DOC member. It’s up to you – who is your Diabetes Hero?
This Scrubs scene plays in my mind anytime someone says the word hero. Today’s prompt being no exception. Based on this scene a hero is someone who has every reason not to do something but does it anyway. With that in mind, my diabetes heroes are all the people who push the button for me.
Anyone who knows me, or has followed this blog for a while, knows I hate changing my own infusion sets. I had a bad experience. My husband and I agreed that he would always help me insert every infusion set.
Of course he’s not always around when I need to change my set. So my diabetes heroes are all the people who have done that cringe worthy task for me.
occasionally myself when no one else is around and I’m feeling particularly brave
And a shout out to all my friends who have told me to call them if I needed help inserting a new infusion set. That is nothing short of heroic even though I’ve never cashed in on the favor.
“What is one thing you would tell someone that doesn’t have diabetes about living with diabetes?” (Friday’s topic)
Back for the third year, let’s show everyone what life with diabetes looks like! With a nod to the Diabetes 365 project, let’s grab our cameras again and share some more d-related pictures. Post as many or as few as you’d like. Feel free to blog your thoughts on or explanations of your pictures, or leave out the written words and let the pictures speak for themselves. (Saturday’s topic)
I decided to combine Friday’s prompt with today’s prompt. My thing is music montages so here is another one. It’s about 25 years of my life as a diabetic set to Friends and Family by Trik Turner.
It was fun taking this trip down memory lane to find old pictures and mementos from my life. I had forgotten how cool I am! Ha, I’m kidding!
Inspired by DFeast Fridays share a favorite recipe with us. It can be healthy, or it can be a yummy indulgence. Extra points if you can include carb counts and other nutrition info!! If it’s not an original recipe, be sure to properly credit your source.
I had a whole other post all written up for this wildcard topic but then life happened and I have to share. This is the story of how we ended up at McDonald’s for dinner on a random Thursday night (last night).
Gwen has been really weepy lately. She is either growing, legitimately sick and tired, or PMSing big time. Of course when people ask how old she is she tells them she’s almost five! She will turn five in February and has been responding like this since the day she turned four. The girl is four going on twenty-one. At any rate she has been crying all week. The tiniest things set her off.
I was minding my own business when I heard weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. We’re talking convulsive sobs as if a best friend opened the front door and was immediately hit by a train. Just paint on the tracks. Gwen is beside herself with grief and I can hardly understand her. After about three tries I think I got that she had dropped a toy in the toilet.
A couple years ago Parker accidentally dropped Woody in the toilet and I tried the delicate cycle on my washing machine for the first time. Without being too lecture-y I told Gwen that this is why we shouldn’t have toys in the bathroom. She mourned that she wasn’t playing with toys in the bathroom. It was the bracelet that I made for her and it fell off after she peed. We walked into the bathroom and sure enough there were all the little plastic links I put together for her to make a bracelet. Being surrounded by yellow water I wasn’t about to rescue them. Unfortunately I didn’t flush the toilet at that point. I was hoping to do it later when she wasn’t there to watch.
Stormy tears ensued. Heath and I tried everything to calm her down. We hugged and kissed and spoke soothing empty words like, “You have lots of other shape links. We can make another bracelet.” Nothing worked. Trying to change the subject Heath asked what we should have for dinner. Gwen immediately said McDonald’s with the playground.
Heath and I exchanged looks.
Heath: If we go there will you get over this? Gwen: No ho ho ho ho! Heath: Then let’s not go out. Let’s think of something to have at home. Gwen: No! I want McDonald’s! Heath: If I agree you have to stop crying.
Click. The switch was flipped and Gwen was suddenly all better.
Heath: No more tears, ok?
Gwen wiped her face and smiled. As we were all putting shoes on and getting ready Gwen started crying again saying she didn’t want her toys flushed down the toilet. Parker announced he was going to the bathroom and Gwen melted into a heap of fresh sobs. Parker came in with a handful of colorful shape links.
Parker: Gwen dropped these . . . Me: Please tell me you didn’t fish those out of the toilet! Parker: They were in the toilet. Heath: Go throw those in the garbage and wash your hands twice. With soap and water. Parker: But they’re Gwen’s toys.
I was trying to not dry heave.
Heath: Well Gwen, Parker didn’t flush them down the toilet like you thought he would!
The scene doesn’t translate that well in text. You kind of had to be there. It was quite the eventful 10 or so minutes around our house. And we ended up at McDonald’s! The kids were thrilled.
While this isn’t a recipe I think the carb count for a quarter pounder with cheese, fries, and a Diet Coke is 88. Why do I know this? I used to crave McDonald’s after Gwen was born. So embarrassing! I have since gotten over that insanity.
One time when I was indulging in my secret love affair with mediocre fast food I was reading the boxes. I believe I read the carb count for what I was eating and the total was 88. That’s how I bolus every time the kids talk us into McDonald’s. The fat total is probably 45 or something which makes bolusing tricky. I just do a dual wave over two hours. It works.
Pre dinner blood sugar: 80 Two hour post reading: 138 Correction: 0.6 Active insulin: 8.6
Not bad for artery clogging, not even that tasty, fast food.
Tell us what your Fantasy Diabetes Device would be? Think of your dream blood glucose checker, delivery system for insulin or other meds, magic carb counter, etc etc etc. The sky is the limit – what would you love to see?
My dream is for world peace and a pair of jeans. This goal will come about through enhanced insulin. Enhanced insulin does the same thing as regular insulin, only with a twist. It has a magic youth/attractive elixir. Every time a diabetic shoots up (ha ha) or infuses insulin via pump, their wrinkles gradually disappear.
Weight slowly dissolves leaving hot bodies in the wake. These hot bodies will rival any celebrity or model. Men will have glistening rock hard muscles rippling through their clothes. You’ll look at a diabetic man and honestly wonder if he’s Photoshopped! Women will be lean, slender, and have thick lustrous locks.
Male pattern baldness? What male pattern baldness? Squirrely gray hair will smooth out. The hair shaft will fill up with color like diet soda being sucked up a straw. Skin blemishes will dissolve as if the diabetic was airbrushed. If you have fair skin and want a tan, you can choose that enhanced insulin vial. Throw out your lotion because that won’t be necessary ever again. Dry skin will officially end with enhanced insulin.
Young diabetic children or teens will maintain their youthfulness by using the enhanced insulin. They will never know the “joys” of aging! Adult diabetics will have time reversed back to when they were in their prime.
Enhanced insulin will allow diabetics to exercise just for fun, if they choose. Otherwise exercise will no longer be a necessary component of good diabetes management. Deodorant will no longer be necessary. Diabetics will smell fantastic all the time. Think of the last time you passed a perfect stranger and did a double take they smelled so good. That’s what enhanced insulin does. Step out of the shower and BAM you’ll smell awesome all day long. Even after mowing the lawn. Even after spending the entire day in the sun. Sweat under pressure? No worries. Enhanced insulin will keep you smelling like a rose.
Not only does it polish looks into dazzling brilliance, it also magnifies intelligence. It doesn’t necessarily make anyone smarter. It takes existing intelligence and frees it. No more forgetful moments. Carb counting will be as child’s play. Diabetics become math savants with enhanced insulin. The graphs and data doctors pore over will click in a diabetic’s mind. It will all make perfect sense and the perfect solutions will be as obvious as recalling one’s own name.
Enhanced insulin will make diabetics the talk of the town. Non diabetics will wish they had the disease just for the effects of the enhanced insulin.
There is no known cure for diabetes. Come on, let’s keep our dreams realistic! Yet enhanced insulin will feel like a cure since everything will fall into place. The variables that affect diabetes will be gone. Yesterday’s news.
We’ll sit our beautiful selves down and share some pretty incredible stories with our loved ones about what life used to be like before enhanced insulin. Then we’ll hold a bottle of our favorite soda while music spontaneously starts pumping. Cartoon bubbles will festively float in the air. Our own gorgeousness will inspire parties all the time. Non diabetics will seek us out. World peace will be realized and everyone will have a new pair of jeans.
Yesterday we gave ourselves and our loved ones a big pat on the back for one thing we are great at. Today let’s look at the flip-side. We probably all have one thing we could try to do better. Why not make today the day we start working on it. No judgments, no scolding, just sharing one small thing we can improve so the DOC can cheer us on!
Remember when you were a kid and you went to amusement parks and rode the roller coaster? Remember how your stomach tied itself into knots as you click click clicked your way to the top? Then there was the thrilling rush as you free fell down that first hill, zooming into a maze of twists and turns, ups and downs, maybe even an upside down part or two. Remember how you may have been scared out of your mind but you also couldn’t wipe the smile off your face? G forces have a lot to do with that. Knowing you were alive and having the time of your life was most of it though. Do you remember that?
Real roller coasters are one thing. The roller coasters of life are another. Blood sugar roller coasters are no fun at all. I’ve tried it. While an amusement park roller coaster may make you feel queasy, a blood sugar roller coaster leaves me with a dull headache. It leaves me feeling exhausted, frustrated, and ready to give up. I hate blood sugar roller coasters! And that perma-grin? It’s more like a perma-scowl punctuated with short lived elation.
Even Steven is where I want to be. No more swinging from high to low back up to high. No more of the emotional mood swings that inevitably come with. If I could choose one thing to improve about my diabetes management it would be to get off the blood sugar roller coaster.
Diabetes is what it is and some days are better than others. However, I know I could be more diligent in several areas that would help me get off this crazy train. Does that still count as one thing to improve? I don’t beat myself up over things. Much. And I’m always striving to do better. It’s the roller coaster that needs to go. I can save that thrill ride for a real roller coaster.
Living with diabetes (or caring for someone who lives with it) sure does take a lot of work, and it’s easy to be hard on ourselves if we aren’t “perfect”. But today it’s time to give ourselves some much deserved credit. Tell us about just one diabetes thing you (or your loved one) does spectacularly! Fasting blood sugar checks, oral meds sorted and ready, something always on hand to treat a low, or anything that you do for diabetes. Nothing is too big or too small to celebrate doing well!
Just one thing huh? This might be tricky, I have trouble paring down on anything! I guess I would have to say I’m great at checking my blood sugar.
This is something I wasn’t always good at. Not that it was hard, I just didn’t want to know. I would test maybe a few times a week. For real. I never liked the number so I wasn’t in a huge hurry to do that again!
When I was first diagnosed I was the model diabetic. I did everything I was supposed to and my control was admirable. The teenage years were not so good. Any time I read a post about a diabetic berating him/her self for the teenage years I just want to shake them. I think most of us were stupid then! It’s a rough time to be diabetic and “different.”
About the time my doctor was seriously thinking of letting me get a pump, I started taking better care of myself. Partly because he read me the riot act of unspeakable things he would do if I didn’t and partly because I wanted to be better. I’m mostly joking about my doctor. But he did give me the lecture to end all of his famous lectures on me committing to taking care of myself! Man, how I miss that doctor! Once we started working together instead of me fighting him every step of the way, I loved him. He is by far my favorite doctor I have ever worked with. Then we moved. *sigh*
I did want to be better. Living in a constant state of high blood sugar made me feel really cruddy. First step, test blood sugar more. I went from testing less than a handful of times a week to about six times a day. It opened my eyes! My overall control improved tremendously. Shocking. I joke but it’s true! The more a diabetic tests their blood sugar, the more they know what’s happening. Adjustments can be made quickly and easily. It just makes good sense to test often.
Then I met my husband and I had a whole new reason to resurrect the model diabetic I used to be. I have learned that love does amazing physiological things. I had never before lived for someone other than myself. My love for myself and my own well being increased. Heath just rocks! He has always loved me for who I am. He has never tried to make me over in any way. His patient love has knocked off a lot of chips and I like who I am becoming. Both as a diabetic and as a person.
The longer I live with diabetes the harder I have to work at it. I hate to admit that having babies is where it all started to unravel but I think that’s what happened. My life is busier in different ways. And maintaining three healthy pregnancies took a major toll on my body. I feel like a work in progress. That’s ok. I have so much to live for.
Testing my blood sugar is a fundamental component of good diabetes management. I now test my blood sugar at the very least seven times a day, and the most fifteen times a day. The correlation between testing more often and good control is not really there anymore. But I would never stop testing. Things would be so much worse if I stopped. I have to know where I’m at. Since there are no windows in my body testing is the only way I can see what’s going on. Continuous glucose monitors help but I tell you, I test more often when I’m wearing a sensor than when I’m not.
Just yesterday I saw an ad for a One Touch meter (and I’m too lazy to look it up and link to it!) that works a lot like the CGM. It tells you about high and low trends. Sweet. I want that! I figure the more I test, the more data gets put into the machine, and the more accurate it would be in telling me about my trends.
It all boils down to testing for me. I’m good at a lot of things, diabetically speaking and in general. Being humble is not one of them! One thing I am great at is testing my blood sugar often.
It seems the most popular thing about Diabetes Blog Week is that it helps us find blogs we weren’t reading yet and connect with some new blog friends. With that in mind, let’s kick off Diabetes Blog Week by making some new connections. Think about the d-blogs you read that you think we may not know about and introduce us to one that you love!! Let’s all find a new friend today! (Special thanks to Gina, everybody’s Diabetes BFF, for helping me title this post!)
Most of the diabetes blogs I read I found through Diabetes Blog Week. However, here are a few you may not know about.
Shannon of http://mommygoingcrazy.blogspot.com/
Shannon is an amazing photographer and mother of three adorable kids, close in age to my own little cherubs. Her two youngest were diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes a year apart. Her Mommy Going Crazy blog had already been up and running for several years prior to that craziness! I have had the wonderful privilege of meeting Shannon and her two little ones in person. They are the sweetest people and the cutest family. She has taken a few breaks from blogging but has recently come back into the blogging scene.
Cara aka Divabetic913 of http://diabuddies.wordpress.com/
She found me. Actually it was because of Leah from the next link. I love the name Divabetic. That’s creative and sassy. She is a grad student and brand new Type 1. As part of her thesis she is conducting a survey about insulin pumps and CGM sensors and how this affects self esteem. I filled out her survey.
Leah of http://lovehatediabetes.wordpress.com/
She found me. I had published some post about diabetes and she commented. Being the type of person I am, I had to check out her blog. She’s a college student and has had Type 1 diabetes for maybe 5 years. Through comments back and forth and me pointing her to some of my old posts that answered her questions, we became bloggy friends.
Check these girls out! Wow, that sounds really bad. Maybe you could just visit their blogs instead!
Please visit Karen at http://www.bittersweetdiabetes.com/ if you would like to participate in Diabetes Blog Week. You can participate even if you don’t have a blog! (Dawn) True story.
“Don’t have a blog at all? You can still participate in Diabetes Blog Week. Joslin Diabetes Center has put out a call for DBlog Week submissions to be published on their blog! See this post for all of the information you need on submitting your DBlog Week contribution.”
What we’ve learned – Sunday 5/15: Last year, Wendy of Candy Hearts made a suggestion for this year. She commented “I think Day 7 should be a post about stuff we’ve learned from other blogs or the experience of coming together online…” Today, let’s do just that!! What have you learned from other blogs – either this week or since finding the D-OC? What has your experience of blogging the DBlog Week topics with other participants been like? What has finding the D-OC done for you? If you’d like, you can even look ahead and tell us what you think the future holds!
It’s been a busy week and while I tried to write all my posts early so I wasn’t living in front of my computer, I still spent a lot of time on the computer. Diabetes has been on my mind more so than usual this week. My goal with Diabetes Blog Week this year was to write for my regular readers. Last year I wrote all my posts on a new blog I have since abandoned. Since I didn’t really know my readers yet I wrote for diabetics. It was nice for me to use Diabetes Language and just know everyone got what I was saying. I soon realized that non diabetic readers were still confused. I was bummed that I had missed my opportunity to really take advantage of DBW.
This is why my posts were hello long. I wanted to explain what life with diabetes is really like. Diabetes is so misunderstood and I realized this week how frustrating that is to those of us who deal with diabetes on a daily basis. I hope I enlightened my non diabetic audience more. If nothing else, the story is there for my kids to read later. That’s always the goal with this blog.
I love the DOC and I love that I found this group of amazing people. The DOC truly has changed my life. They inspire me to be better and they teach me things I would never know unless I kept up with them. It’s always nice to go to a blog on the days I’m feeling down about diabetes and read other stories of people who get it. We all have our ups and downs, our good days and bad days. We are all working hard to live as healthy as we can to prolong our lives to be with those we love.
Ok, enough with the mushy love stuff. Wipe tears away discreetly. What I really learned this week is hilarious, I think.
I learned to put my insulin in the fridge.
How did I not know that before? Well, I remember my doctor telling me that I could keep my insulin at room temperature. So I have. For years. Any time I worried about it I would skim the paperwork that comes in the insulin package. It says on that paper that you can store insulin at room temperature and it lists the range of temps to keep it at. This is not even in fine print!
When you think about it, why wouldn’t insulin be fine at room temperature? My insulin pump isn’t refrigerated. It holds a couple days worth of insulin at a time. I don’t have a walk in refrigerator in my house where I can periodically cool down the insulin attached to my body and then scope out the ingredients for my secret passion for cooking (ha ha I burn boiled water!). So you can see where I got the idea to have boxes of insulin scattered all over the house.
Enter Diabetes Blog Week’s writing topic Saturday Snapshots. It took Photoshopping a picture of my insulin in the cupboard to see the writing on the box. “Refrigerate. Do not freeze.” Oh.
So I tried it. I was getting concerned about the volume of extra insulin I had on hand that was sitting in my bedroom where it can get up to 80 degrees on a hot day with the air conditioning on. It’s a two story house. Who knows, maybe it will make a difference. So I am happy to report that my insulin is now in my fridge. It’s not in the butter compartment though. It’s in the vegetable crisper. I have that much extra insulin! If Diabetes Bloopers are another writing topic next year I will have to come up with a different duh moment. Although that shouldn’t be too hard. It was sure fun reading all the D- Bloopers out there this year and knowing we all make mistakes. The trick is learning to laugh at yourself.
Saturday snapshots – Saturday 5/14: Today is the only day I’ve brought back a fun topic from last year. Inspired by the Diabetes 365 project, let’s snap a few more d-related pictures and share them again. Post as many or as few as you’d like. Be creative! Feel free to blog your thoughts on or explanations of your pictures. Or leave out the written words and let the pictures speak for themselves.
There’s just too much stuff in my life that relates to diabetes so I either had to make a music video or put all the stuff in one place to snap the picture. I went with the video.
I put captions over the pictures so you know what I was photographing since I just walked around the house with a camera snapping away. Anyone reading this who has diabetes or knows someone with diabetes will pretty much understand the video. For my regular readers, most of you don’t have diabetes or know someone with it other than me! So I will explain what’s happening.
Let’s start with the G spot. That may have been too piquant a description but I thought it was funny. Really I should call it the T spot since I don’t typically call my meter a glucometer, I call it a tester because that’s what it does. I keep it on the counter when I’m home. It sits in front of the toaster or on the opposite counter corner. I know where it is, everyone else in my family knows where it is, and if I can’t find it then it’s a problem! I do love being able to tell one of my kids to grab it for me though. I’d hate to lose the perma dent in my couch to get up to grab it myself!
I test my blood sugar several times a day. My prescription is written for 10 tests a day. I test before meals, two hours after meals, before bed, and any other time I feel the need. It’s a lot of boxes for one month but that’s life. Oh, and I save the used test strips in the little pouch in my meter case. I don’t know why. I think it’s because I’m lazy when I do have easy access to a garbage can but it’s a great place to keep it when I don’t. What I photographed was about 10 days worth of used strips. Gross! I usually don’t wait that long before dumping the pouch in the trash. I have read that other diabetics put their used test strips in a sharps container. I don’t understand that. Nobody ever told me I shouldn’t put them in the trash. I throw tissues in the trash that cleaned up a bloody nose or a gushing finger or bloody pump site. I don’t see what the difference is.
Let’s move on to the pump supplies. I wear a Paradigm 522 from Mini Med. It holds 1.8 ml of insulin. This is exciting to me since I used to use the bigger pump that held 3.0 ml of insulin. The smaller model means I’m using less insulin which means I am in better control overall. Can I ever get off of insulin? No. My pancreas is broken, so to speak. It doesn’t produce any insulin which is an essential hormone for digesting food.
That reminds me, Heath wanted me to use the song Pancreas by Weird Al Yankovich. We were listening to the song together and I finally looked at him and said, “But my pancreas doesn’t work.” He got this classic look on his face as if the lyrics had never dawned on him before. In his defense, he hadn’t heard the song in years. He just remembered that there is a song called Pancreas and how great would that be for a music montage? I told him that Weird Al loves his pancreas and never leaves home without it because this is what happens when it doesn’t work, and I gestured to the pictures. So I went with my first choice, Roll With the Punches by Lenka. Because that’s what I do. I have Type 1 diabetes, hypothyroidism, anxiety, and a host of other non medicated issues! It’s my life. I can pretty much do what everyone else does, just in a different way (Opening credits of Little People Big World on TLC).
Back to the pump. So how the pump works is I put in the amount of insulin I would use over a 2-3 day period of time in the reservoir. The insulin is delivered to my abdomen (because I haven’t really tried any other spot except my hip and it was literally a pain in the butt!) via a tiny plastic tube that is attached to my body. This is called the infusion set and it’s inserted by pushing a button on a plastic device that shoots a small needle into my skin so the tiny, flexible, plastic cannula is inside me. Then the needle is pulled out and discarded in . . .
The sharps container! Did you see all my sharps containers? I properly dispose of the used needle and the weird cap thing that has a needle in it so I can get the insulin from the vial into the reservoir. But here’s the problem. The Quick Set infusion sets I use produce a lot of bulky sharps. The needle is folded into itself after use and what’s left is this rather large plastic thing. The infusion sets I used to use left a thin blow gun dart looking thing. It took up much less real estate in my sharps containers. That real sharps container I photographed didn’t get full for several years on the other infusion sets. It filled up after a couple months on the new improved and much more comfortable infusion sets. Also nobody nearby seems to take sharps containers. I read of someone dropping off full All bottles at their pharmacy. I should try the pharmacy since my endo’s office won’t take it. So until I decide to get around to disposing of my sharps I will continue to fill random food containers.
My insulin prescription is written for 100 units a day. I usually use less than 50 units in a day but it depends on the day and what I’m eating. Weekends are always high insulin consumption days for me. I have so much extra insulin. When I saw my doctor the other day I told him I have a lot and I wondered if he should redo the prescription. He said that it’s easier to do the 100 units and it’s better to have too much than too little insulin. So I get 3 vials a month and have several months worth just sitting around. This video proved to me that I am on my way with emergency preparedness for my meds and supplies.
The CGM is a sensor that sits in the fatty tissue of the body such as the abdomen, hips, butt, thighs, or back of the arms (my preference) and senses blood sugar. It updates this information on the pump every 5 minutes. It’s pretty cool but I’m still not impressed. The sensor can stay in place for up to a week or more. It’s not infusing anything so it can stay in one spot longer. I thought of linking to past posts about the CGM but it was a learning process and the information was wrong in a few of those posts until I learned over several months of trials and then finally getting my own so there’s too many posts to link to.
What else? I called one book the Guilt Bible because I thought I was doing fine with my management skills until I read that. It depressed me as I read about diabetes related complications. It freaked me out when I read about babies and I seriously wondered if I would have had children had I known that info beforehand. It overwhelmed me at times with all that I need to think about in a day, which is a stupid reaction since I already do those things. I felt like the book had an intense Debbie Downer way of looking at things. I understand the risks of low blood sugar while caring for an infant but I didn’t need a book to make me feel like the worst was inevitable. I was not a fan of the book. Plus, it was given to me by someone who has the same intense The Sky is Falling sort of outlook on life and life with diabetes. No thank you. I’m psycho enough without that kind of encouragement!
Which brings me to my last point. My pills. I take Zoloft because I finally decided to do something to dial down my crazy. For new readers, I’ve written a lot about that since it’s a recent prescription. I also take Synthroid for my hypothyroidism and Zestril because my doctor told me to! How’s that for blind obedience? No, it’s a complicated drug that takes care of a lot of things. It lowers my blood pressure, which isn’t an issue for me but it also protects my organs from the effects of diabetes. I don’t remember the deal with this one. I was put on it as a teenager and was yelled at big time when I stopped refilling my prescription. Then I was allowed to go off of it for the child bearing years and I was put back on a couple years ago since the child bearing years are over for me.
Between the horrific birth defects Zoloft and Zestril cause to unborn babies I cannot get pregnant. The tubal ligation is supposed to be a pretty effective means of sterilization but lately I’ve heard a lot of stories of people getting pregnant after the procedure! That’s not comforting at all. Here’s hoping my tubes were tied in a really tight knot!
So that’s my life as a diabetic in a nutshell. Yeah right! I don’t want to beg for comments but I know that my blog does not always attract diabetic readers so if you have questions, please ask. I’ve done my best with the writing prompts this year to really explain diabetes and my perspective on living with it.
Blogger’s major meltdown yesterday makes me wonder, did the DOC overload the system with our angry 10 things we hate about diabetes posts! I worked hard on that post so I reposted it and now I am happy to present a much happier post about the amazing things that have come out of diabetes for me.
Awesome things – Friday 5/13: In February the #dsma blog carnival challenged us to write about the most awesome thing we’d done DESPITE diabetes. Today let’s put a twist on that topic and focus on the good things diabetes has brought us. What awesome thing have you (or your child) done BECAUSE of diabetes? After all, like my blog header says, life with diabetes isn’t all bad!
Where to begin . . . I have written posts in the past about some pretty awesome things regarding diabetes management. The discovery of insulin, animal insulin vs. cloned human insulin, blood glucose monitoring instead of peeing on a stick multiple times a day, pump therapy, continuous glucose monitoring (you know, for some people!), stem cell research and not all stem cells come from embryos or umbilical cord blood. A couple years ago Heath told me that scientists are working on something interesting for diabetics. He said they have created these tiny computers that can be injected into a diabetic maybe once a year or so. The computers will regulate the body’s blood sugars the way the pancreas did before it stopped working. So the computers will act as insulin when needed and other computers are designed to be glucose when needed. That is amazing to me.
Amazing things diabetes has brought us? The list is long.
What I want to talk about today is something I have mentioned many times before – my children. My children are my greatest accomplishment. So many people told me I couldn’t have my own children simply because I am diabetic. Oh yeah? Watch me! It was not easy. It was a lot of work to keep my blood sugars between 90 and 120 for 9 months. That’s tight control under normal circumstances but you take into account hormones, increasing weight, and the fact that the body is growing another person and it’s super hard.
I will never forget my best A1C when I was pregnant with Parker. It was 5.0%. I am so not kidding. I told anyone who would listen! My neighbor/friend across the street was a nurse and I had to tell her the good news. She was pregnant too and I remember her saying, “I don’t think my A1C is even a 5 right now!” (she was not diabetic) A 5 is spectacular control. I was not surprised one bit when Parker was born 10 days early after a scheduled induction weighing 6 lbs. 8 oz. I earned that small baby! I will go to my grave believing that it was my fault that Gwen was as big as she was despite all the doctors telling me she was just a big baby. She was 10 days early after a scheduled C-section weighing 9 lbs. 4 oz. My biggest baby by a long shot.
Pregnancy is an amazing feat for any woman but I feel like so many people didn’t get what I had to go through as a diabetic. I think that’s why I always want to go into so much detail about my pregnancies. My way of saying, “It was hard, see?”
The guilt over blood sugar control is intense. I remember going in for extra tests and precautions with my second pregnancy. I was always told everything looked normal but having the morbid curiosity I do I would ask what could go wrong. I thought I knew everything that could go wrong. Until my endo’s nurse gave me the book When You’re a Parent with Diabetes at the beginning of my third pregnancy. I already felt guilty that I was pregnant without being prepared and I was fighting to get my blood sugars down. I did not need to read the chapter about the most jaw dropping horrible things that can happen to an unborn baby of a diabetic mother. At the time we only had one car so when I picked Heath up from the BART station I was quiet and depressed. When he asked what was wrong I melted into a sobbing mess. I cried as if I was mourning the death of someone, while driving home no less. I was convinced something was wrong with my baby and it was all my fault. It didn’t help when a few months later we were told there were red flags raising suspicion that she may have chromosomal abnormalities and/or a heart defect. Ouch.
She was fine though. None of the red flags materialized into anything other than a perfectly healthy baby. All my babies were fine. Miraculously. I was able to successfully nurse the first two while my baby girl had acid reflux to the point she squirmed and fussed on a bottle. I had to switch to formula or kill myself. I went with the formula solution.
I still can’t get those naysayers out of my head who told me I couldn’t have my own children. I am so eternally grateful for the amazing advances in medicine that I could have three successful pregnancies resulting in three healthy babies despite all odds stacked against us. I am so incredibly grateful for the practice of cesarean section births, which apparently is the only way I can deliver. A diabetes myth is that diabetics have to have c-sections. Not true. I did because my body doesn’t progress during labor like it should. Nothing to do with diabetes.
I feel like a walking medical miracle because for so many reasons I would not be here today without the advances in medicine and science and by extension my babies would not be here.
What has diabetes done for me? Everything that matters.
