I Miss Sonic

One of my priorities after being diagnosed was to eat at all the places I used to eat, to re-establish a feeling of control over my life - to establish that I didn't have to be completely subject to the disease.

The one place I always used to enjoy eating that I haven't been back to since I've been on insulin is Sonic.  I love the strawberry slush there.  I looked right after I was diagnosed - 188g carbs for the 44oz version, which I always preferred.

One of these days, I'll have to go and have a small one, at least.  I just haven't gotten around to it, yet.

Beginnings of Normalcy

Today was remarkable for its lack of anything new or remarkable.

I woke up 172, and took a little extra insulin with my banana oat muffin.  (Yes, I've opened my mind to bananas.  It's amazing what happens when you're a little open-minded.)

Figured I was headed low in the morning, tested, and got an 87.  Three lifesavers later, I'm losing that woozy feeling.  Not four, cause that would take me up more than I need to go.

A week or two weeks ago, either of those events would have been...well, exciting, at least.  Now...not so much.

I'm starting to feel normal again, and it's a good feeling.  A very good feeling.  It reminds me a lot of learning to drive - at first, the whole experience was completely new and different, despite having ridden in cars for 18 years (I was a late bloomer for my first license, I know), all the lights, and signs, and road markings and a new and different appearance to me.  I worried a lot about stuff like when to signal turns, and how fast to try to take them.  And over time, I became less and less aware of those things and they became automatic.

I'm still very aware of my diabetes management efforts, but the results are getting more predictable, and edge of newness is wearing off.  That's part of the feeling of normalcy too, and I welcome it.  That's not at all the same thing as slacking off or not testing.

Software?

I'm a technologist by trade (specifically, a network engineer).  That means I keep the little green lights blinking. :)

I do technology for fun, too, and diabetes has afforded me the opportunity to learn more about databases and graphing.

I've written a quick CGI script that runs on my server at home and stores my carb, glucose, and insulin values in a database.

Once the data is in, the fun begins.  The beauty of a database is that you can have it automatically calculate averages and other formulas over a period of time.  I've got an A1C predictor, for example, that looks at a 90-day window of glucose averages and predicts an A1C result based on that.

Right now it's all very rough.  Build one to throw away, they say. :)  I'm using this as a kind of sandbox to try different things and see what I think works and doesn't work.  The database schema (the data structures and definitions, plus all the stuff that lives inside the database, like formulas) has been through a number of revisions already, and I'm sure it will go through more.

My next step will be to generate some HTML reports for date ranges and stuff like that (exports for spreadsheets, like Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc).  The step after that will be to start rendering graphs on demand.

So here is a question:  what statistics are useful in tracking and predicting how your diabetes needs to be treated?  One obvious thing I'm not modeling in the current schema is the ability to track multiple patients, for example.

Saying Hi to a Friend

One of my best earlier memories of diabetes (pre-diagnosis) came about four years ago when I was working on a project with an occasional collaborator from another team.

During this time, we all wore pagers.  I saw an odd-looking device on his belt that looked like a purple one.  I asked what sort of pager it was since I'd never seen one before.

Turned out it was an insulin pump, as he patiently and nicely explained.

Wow, did I feel like a jerk.

Today I sought him out and talked to him about my diagnosis.  It was a good conversation, and an interesting way to close a loop in a way.  I'd felt a desire to stop by and talk to him ever since I was diagnosed.

Odd how things like that work out.

4400+ steps on the pedometer today, and I have been very pleased with my glucose today.

Control...

Well....after *carefully* reading the nutrition label on my favorite snack food (as of late), peanuts have a few more carbs than I thought...and I've been eating them by the quarter cup.  Just enough to push me up, it seems.

Now realizing that, I'm getting ready to check my post-prandial on what may be my best control day yet, in terms of variance and overall levels.  Which is to say, I've been averaging 140, but that's because I split between 100 and 180.  Make no mistake - it beats heck out of 300+, but that's still not ideal from a control standpoint.

So...175 post-prandial.  Not too bad, within guidelines and < 50 points higher than my pre-prandial (which was 157).  Which should put me in the neighborhood of 140 for bedtime, which is about right.

And I need to read the nutrition labels on my snacks a little better. :)

Coming to Grips

I thought this post would be easier to write.  It was intended to be the second post, but others intruded, and this one...seemed to want to wait.

So my official diagnosis day was 10/2/2009.  That was around noon, when my morning blood work came back.

But I really view the beginning of my life with Diabetes as beginning on the Monday after that, 10/5.  That's when I had the followup with my doctor, and when it all really sunk in.  Also, when I got my glucometer and my first batch of insulin and insulin supplies.

But...I'm dawdling. :)  This is catharsis about my actual discovery.

In retrospect, I think some of my memories of the Friday morning and Monday morning are a bit confused, conflated.

So, on the Friday afternoon, I was told that I was, for certain, diabetic.  I had set up a followup with my physician for Monday morning, as they wanted to start treating me right away.  My test results confirmed that, with a 330 BG and an a1c of around 13.  (Need to find out exactly what it was for my records.)

The Monday appointment was one of the longest hours of my life.  In fact, I don't know exactly how long I was in the office.  Time seems to warp around significant events.

I remember hearing a lot about how to take insulin, and the use of the pen being demonstrated for me.  I got a basic formula for how much to take and how often, how much to take for correctives, the difference between Levemir and Novolog.  Stuff like that.

All I'd been hoping over the weekend (knowing that I was diabetic, but not knowing too much about what that meant) was that I wouldn't have to be on insulin.

So here was my insulin.

The big thing I remember:

Fear.  I remember being so very afraid, afraid of complications, afraid of insulin overdose, afraid of all the things I didn't know.  Which was a lot.  Still is, though I feel like I've learned an awful lot in the month that's gone by since then.

I almost broke down into tears at least three times during the appointment.  I was a mess.  I remember not being able to find my way out of the doctor's office diagnostic area, but I'm pretty sure that's a memory from Friday morning instead of Monday morning.  I've never had a great sense of direction, and it's especially bad when I'm under stress.  Ironic, since I'm a network engineer by profession.

It helped a lot that the nurse told me she was diabetic, and taking shots.  I had taken allergy shots as a kid, so giving myself injections wasn't the worst idea in the world.  Still, I wasn't looking forward to it.  I didn't know how invasive the new treatment regime would be, and I was a little afraid that people wouldn't understand, and would think less of me because of it.

I was still a mess when I left the office.  My next stop was to go to the pharmacy to pick up my first batch of prescriptions.  I waited over 2 hours, while several...discrepancies...were worked out between what my health insurance was willing to cover and what I'd been prescribed.  And the pharmacy was unusually busy.

I also remember picking up a 24-can case of Diet Mt. Dew.  I had never before in my life deliberately bought diet cola for myself, that I can remember.  But I knew that the sugar in regular would do me much more harm than good.  It was one of the first milestones in my acceptance of my condition.

I got a referral to talk to the local CDE on Tuesday afternoon - apparently someone had cancelled.  Lucky me. :)

I did my first glucose test Monday night - and took my first Levemir dose.  More on those later.  The glucose test was especially comical. :)

First Sick Day

Well, the flu's been running around here, and our house is no exception.

Two of our kids have had it so far and now my wife is having her turn.

I can feel some of the classic flu symptoms though I'm not running a temperature.  I seem to be exhibiting more insulin resistance than normal, but my last test (a couple minutes ago) had me at 103, so I'm happy about that.  (174 at wakeup and 184 after 2 hours, 30g carbs and 10 units of Novolog).

Maybe I'll get to break out the ketone test strips today. :)