Ellie's Elephants

You are on a deserted island what would you take with you?  

1) A nook with as many books as possible

2) Water

3) JIF creamy butter and a case of Zesta crackers

4) a knife

oh right, I have diabetes...   my list just got a lot longer.

Let's assume I'm stranded on said island for 1 month.  I'd need:

4) two bottles of humalog insulin (kept cold)

    a) cooler

    b) ice machine

5) 10 pump site changes

    a) 10 reservoirs

    b) 10 sites

    c) inserter dealio

6) a AAA battery

7) two vials of test strips

8) my meter

9) my lancing device (if I were a good type 1, I'd say lancets, but I'm not - I never change the poker)

20) glucose tabs - 3 bottles I think.  

  

I think I could live with that simple list above.  (I know most people could stop after my first 3 items.... the likelihood of me having the entire list with me at anytime while traveling is slim.  Without insulin, I'd survive three days - tops.)

Do you enjoy exercising? Why or why not?

I wish I were one of those people who LOVE to exercise.  I like how I feel after (I hate how I feel during) and the health effects are nice.  But, I'm not.  I hate it.  I don't think I'd like it if I didn't have diabetes but I  know diabetes doesn't help...  do you have any idea how much more work it takes to exercise with type 1?   

Some background you need to understand this post:

1)  Exercise makes blood glucose level go down

2) Food (carbohydrates, specifically) makes blood glucose go up

    a) food items with simple sugar (juice, regular soda, etc.) make blood glucose rise fast(er)

    b) items with fat take longer to absorb carbohydrates and make blood glucose rise slow(er)

3) Insulin makes blood glucose go down

A person with type 1 has the figure out how to find the happy medium of those 3 items above to get anything out of a workout.  Not to mention physical & emotional state of being (stress, illness, injury all do crazy things to blood glucose levels).  

Normal range for blood glucose would be 80 - 120mg/dl - I'm guessing most type 1s over age 16 in shooting for numbers somewhere in that range.    Before exercise, people with type 1 usually need to get blood glucose up at least above 150mg/dl.   Then, we need to lower our insulin rates to some yet to be discovered scientific method so that what the insulin would have done to lower glucose levels is actually done by the exercise.  So, eat food, lower insulin, exercise and hope for the best.  

As someone who has trained for and completed century bicycle rides (specifically finishing 105 miles on one day in Death Valley, CA in 2009) it took a lot of trial and error to get the carbs in, exercise out and insulin injected to something almost understood.   I also noted that after exercising strenuously (Spin twice a week, bike rides twice per week, etc.) for several years I had gained weight (not the side effect most people, myself included, were hoping for).   I mean, when I sat back and thought about it... most of my exercise I was trying to cram into small windows (meaning... 45 minute spin sessions... so instead of lower insulin dose 45 minutes before, ensuring BG was where it needed to be to start was missed, and I tended to just consume carbs to cover low BGs.  Which, of course, means i was consuming more calories to exercise than I was exerting.   

After six years of riding now, I might have a slightly better understanding of how to deal with exercise and diabetes.   So yeah, exercise and I are not friends.   We barely managed to not kill each other.     

How often do you test? Do you skip a lot? Which meter do you have? Do you use monitoring software? Which finger do you use the most? Take a photo of your fingers and lets see if we can connect the dots!

I'm currently in a not great phase of blood glucose monitoring.  And that accounts for my higher than I normally am glycosolated hemoglobin a1c ( < 7% is ideal) of 7.3.  

I've come to realize that I go in peaks and valleys of blood glucose.  I'll do really good at checking four times a day for a while... months even.  And, then, somehow, I fall out habit, I forget, life gets in the way, endless upon endless excuses and I find it's been days since my last check.  That's where I'm at now.  

I KNOW.  Shocking.    I'm not proud.   

Day 4 Juvenation Blog Carnival Challenge prompt:  Refrigerator. If you open up your fridge, what is the first thing you would eat? and why did you pick that food? How many carbs does it have?

I'm a sucker for salad, and thankfully, it's usually very low carb.  Usually a broccoli slaw as base, carrots, cucumber.   I go for lite salad dressing (which means it's higher carb than full fat, but less fat for my veins to deal with).  I'll usually give insulin for 10grams of carbs for a salad.  

This brings up an interesting topic though - so lots of people do low fat options, right?  Did you know that if they take the fat out, they pump up the carbs?   So fat free salad dressing has WAY more carbs than full fat of same brand/type.   Like  4 grams in a normal 2-tbsp helping of italian dressing, but a non-fat italian dressing will have 20grams of carbs for the same 2-tbsp.  

 The same holds true for the 'sugar-free' candy (which, there is no reason anyone has to buy this for someone with type 1 diabetes - but thanks for trying to be accommodating).  Sugar free candy options tend to have the same amount of carbs as a sugar filled option.  

One other item while we talk about refrigerators - You know your butter compartment?  I think in more than 75% of type 1 families the butter compartment is the insulin bottles storage place.  :) 

Done blathering.  

Today's Juvenation Blog Carnival Challenge topic: 

Day in a life. What is a normal day for you like? 

Wake up at 5:13a (yep, I'm one of those... can't set alarm for even or divisible by 5 number).   Then off to work.  Blood sugars (sometimes - I'm not the best at that, I know, I know).  Couple of cups of coffee, multiple computers problems fixed, and counting carbs and giving insulin for my fiberone bar breakfast.  Phew.  It's now about 8:30am and my coworkers are all arriving to work.

Somewhere in here, every single day, I'm doing something or other for JDRF.  Answering emails, checking Juvenation, conference calls, webex, etc.   Some days I'm moderating ODST, or PenPals too - that's a continuous check throughout those days.

Lunch around 11:30am - if a good day, I remember to check my BG before - that includes counting carbs for what I ate, and giving insulin.  Some days there's calls from Ellie's school about her forgotten Personal Diabetes Manager (PDM) or carbs/insulin or whatever - but thankfully, those are getting less often.    Leave work at 3p.  Girls off bus at 3:45p.  Check Ellie's meter to see what her BG day has been like.

Girls play, cook dinner, check blood sugars, eat while counting carbs and giving insulin to both Ellie & myself.

That's a good day - where nothing goes wrong. There's no insurance company to fight, or RX that needs a refill.  There's no tracking down which pharmacy has the flavor glucose tabs we like in stock.  There's no call from school that Ellie's pod is constantly beeping.  There's no doctor appointments (every three months for each of us) or blood draws.  No forgot PDM at home.  No calling and trying to track down the carbs in the lunch for the conference Ellie is attending the next weekend.  No extra physical activity.  No illness.  No frozen shoulders.  No yearly eye doctor appointments for both of us to get our eyes dilated.  The $3000 deductible was hit in February for our family so we are riding with 100% coverage for all of our medical and prescription needs.   There's no infection in a leg that requires lancing.  There's no too low blood sugars.  There's no too high blood sugars.  

Sometimes it seems like it's just bad day after bad day...   diabetes interrupts life.  Every day.  No day passes without diabetes being there.