Monday, March 26, 2007

This morning I woke up and said boy, I can hear summer on the wind. My blood sugar was 86. Yeah!
After breakfast the heat was stultifying. I thought the heat was a little strange for March. Three hours later, my blood sugar was 247. Bleah! That explains the heat, I guess.
The frontpage of the children with diabetes website talks about this study. Kind of interesting; says that kids who watch more TV tend to have higher glycosated hemoglobin levels. The HbA1cs tend to look higher than they are because the study uses a normal lab value that goes 4.1%-6.4%. My lab only considers normal to go up to 5.8%. So I guess with the lab used in the study, instead of having a 6.5%, I'd have a 7.0%.
Anyways, in the study, children who watched more TV had higher A1cs. This could be evidence that watching TV does bad things to your brain, or it could be that among parents and teens who are interested in diabetes and tight control and stuff like that, they are also more interested to be in the whole health nut category in which they think TV is bad for you, and therefore either watch less TV or are willing to report less TV than they actually watch.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Y'know what? I haven't tested below 40 since Valentine's day.
On Friday, testing my blood sugar, the blood kept coming out of my finger. I think I hit a venule. It was scary.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Foods

I've been a picky eater all my life. In the year preceding my diagnosis, I became even more picky. Everything tasted bitter to me.
Not even watermelon was sweet.
In the hosptial, drinking water, I waited and waited for the bitterness to fade, but it took longer than my hospital stay did.

After leaving the hospital, I began to eat foods that I had never been willing to eat before. Foods that had never tasted ok to me were tasting a whole lot better.

Today I ate my fourth avocado. The fourth avocado I've eaten in my entire life; I used to hate avocado.

I've also been eating eggplant. Before, I would eat it fried, in small amounts, only. I didn't much like eggplant. Now I love it.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Stress Relief

I asked my brother Danny (who is ten years old) to tell a story.
He said OK.
He said, Pick a box, a cage, a bar, um or diabetes. Which one do you want?
I say, diabetes.
He said, pick a number from one to ten.
Okay, I say, eight.
Danny begins; Eight men walk into diabetes.
The first one says, oh no I have diabetes.
The second one says, oh no, my friend has diabetes.
The third one says, oh no, two of my friends have diabetes.
The fourth one says, oh no, three of my friends have diabetes.
At this point my mother walks in and wants to know how these new people got diabetes.
Shhhhh, I tell her, it's a joke. Off of the three men walked into a bar ouch, joke.
So Danny continued:
The fifth one says, oh no, four of my friends have diabetes.
The sixth one says, oh no, five of my friends have diabetes.
The seventh one, oh the seventh one says, oh no, six of my friends have diabetes.
The eighth one says, oh no, we all have diabetes!
I say, what, that was the punch line?!

Myself, Danny, and our four year old brother Benjy were in hysterics through most of this story, despite its lack of humor. I think maybe for us diabetes has been such a serious word that putting it in an absurd setting was a real stress reliever. I also think that Danny and Benjy wanted to say OH NO about diabetes a bit without offending me. None of the three of us generally has a sophisticated sense of humor.

The bar joke, by the way, is a pun. It goes like this:
Three men walk into a bar.
Bang.



Today my brother Koby tested his blood sugar. 132.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Meters

Today I left my meter at home by accident. Thought about going back home to get it, and/or curtailing my usual activities, decided not to.

I was talking about this to another diabetic and she says she doesn't let other people use her meter because it messes up her averages and confuses the doctors.

I let everybody and anybody use my meter. Mine is an Accu-Chek aviva, and I can press a little button to star any results that aren't mine, although they still come up in the averages. However, since I check frequently and a normal blood sugar is not an outlier for me, I don't think that having somebody else's number on there every other week matters.

Her meter doesn't have a button for marking special numbers.

My 7 day average at the moment is 108, representing 34 of my numbers above 65 and 5 of my numbers below 65, and a nondiabetic classmate's 100.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Picture of ICA 512 consuming an Islet

ICA 512 cells don't really consume entire isles of Langerhas like this. For one thing, they're too small.

Half Anniversary of Diagnosis Today

Nuts.
Deciding to go to bed at quarter to three, I checked my blood sugar expecting it to be over 100- it was 45. Treated, went to bed and overslept (woke up with a 119 at 1040). It's a fast day today, so having the Lantus peak later may be helpful in allowing me to fast. I had planned on taking a lowered Lantus since I won't be eating, but because of the late hour, took my normal doasage. I'll need to be careful to avoid hypos tomorrow morning.