Monthly Archives: March 2011

Speaking Live!

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DSMA-Live-Logo

Tonight, I’ll be the guest speaker for DSMA Live!. The show starts at 9pm EST and you can listen in by going to this link:

Blog Talk Radio : Diabetes Social Media Advocacy – LIVE!

You can also participate as a guest in the chat by either phoning in or chatting in the chat window. So come on over and join us for an hour of recap of last night’s DSMA chat questions and discussions. It’s fun!

Tonight’s topic? FOOD! And I am so happy because food is one of the most controversial topics between diabetics and non-diabetics (sometimes also known as “The Diabetes Police” – but that’s a whole other story) and I’m hoping that through last night’s twitter chat and tonight’s DSMA Live! chat, we’ll bring more light to how things are for diabetics now verses how it may have been years ago concerning food and the choices we make.

So, if you can, please come and join us for the Live! chat tonight. And, if not, that’s okay because we’ll have a link to the chat that you can go back and listen to it later.

 

Twitter DSMA chats are moderated by my good friend, Cherise, and DSMA Live! chats are hosted by Cherise, Scott, and George on Blog Talk Radio. To find out more about Diabetes Social Media Advocacy (DSMA), visit www.diabetessocmed.com.

BabyK Kicks!

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Sorry for the blur. I may have to re-film later to get a better quality picture, but this is as good as I could get last night while he was kicking.

Edit: I revideo’ed this afternoon… hopefully you can see him a little better here:

Snickers Heaven

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SNICKERS BAR

I had to do it.

I couldn’t help myself.

I bought a Snickers Bar and ate the whole darn thing.

Chocolate has been a BIIIG craving of mine lately….. along with anything salty. I swear you would think I’m in a constant state of PMS right now with all that I want to eat and stuff myself with. I guess giving in every once in a while can’t hurt.

This is, in one way, that I am thankful that I am diabetic because it gives me a honest-to-goodness valid reason to not give in and eat anything I want when I see it. It takes thought to eat anything I put in my mouth, even more so now than before. There is a definite war going on inside my brain that no one else can hear, but it’s there, every single time I see something that I want to devour. Do I really want to bolus for it? Will I still want it if I wait my prebolus time, or is this something I want just because I see it now? Do I want to wait out the 4 hour ride that could make my blood sugar skyrocket beyond belief?

And that age old excuse of “Oh, go ahead dear, you’re pregnant! It’s okay!” is not a good excuse at all, and having to monitor what I eat because of diabetes makes turning down the use of that excuse a little bit easier and harder at the same time. It’s like someone giving you a free, golden ticket to go on a trip to somewhere you’ve always wanted to go, but to go on that trip, you have to take care of their whiney dog. You reeeally  want to go, and you know you would enjoy it, but you also know that the fact of having the annoying, whiney, need-every-second-of-your-attention dog would also make it hard, if not impossible to go on this trip and fully enjoy it. So, you wage out the good and the bad in your mind and do your best to decide whether it’s something you reeeaally want to do or would you be better off passing up.

Today, I didn’t pass it up. I took that “golden ticket and the leash to the whiney dog” and took the trip to the wonderful, awesome, savory place called Snickers Heaven. And though I enjoyed every single bite, I’m sure that “whiney dog” – a.k.a. my CGM, will be whining aaaaaannny time now.

A Plea To UnoMedical

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Today, I had to change out my entire set up – cartridge, site, tubing, everything, because it was time to do so.

Diabetics who are on insulin pumps and do this multiple times per week follow the routine and hope that everything works out ok.

We change out sets, test, and watch our blood sugars to be sure everything is working correctly.

But sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes we choose a place that isn’t optimal for site insertion due to scar tissue.

Sometimes we hit a bleeder.

Sometimes absorption just is down-right crappy in the area we chose for no reason at all.

Which leads us to have to change out the site and put in a new one.

This is something that is happening more and more as I try my best to find optimal real-estate for sites during this pregnancy. I try not to use tummy sites (but I will if I must), and leg sites are pretty well out of the question now.

All of this leads to this one point… This one plea to UnoMedical, the maker of the Inset that I use.

Please, UnoMedical, make a box available of just sites… not the whole shebang of tubing connected. Why? Because of this:

Wasted Tubing

I had to do a site change because this morning’s site wasn’t absorbing. The tubing is fine, just the site needed to be in a different place. This created a big waste of otherwise perfectly good tubing.

Granted, that would be some awesome tubing to save for a Diabetes Art Project, but I would rather not waste, but rather use it for it’s intended purpose. If I held on to these suckers, I could probably have a drawer-full of never-been-used tubings from simple site changes.

I know I’m probably wasting my breath (or typing abilities?) here, but I do think that this is something needed. I would certainly appreciate having some spare sites only for times like these.

Setting A Timer

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Prebolus: v. To give a bolus (short burst) of insulin given via shot or insulin pump prior to a meal, often given 10-30 minutes before, depending on the person.

Dawn Phenomenon: n. The lovely thing that happens when you wake up and your body releases it’s own glucose for energy to get you going since you haven’t had anything to eat since the night before, just in diabetics, we don’t make our own insulin to combat it, and it’s hard as all get out to figure out how much to bolus to keep us from going high since it can vary from day to day.

Prebolusing is something that I have had to really try my best to stick to since becoming pregnant. If I don’t, my blood sugars go even whackier than they did before. Which prebolusing wasn’t that big of a problem before in the first trimester because I either didn’t have to bolus at all or I would be bolusing very little to cover the meal… if you want to call it a meal. But now that I’m in the second trimester and all of the icky morning sickness isn’t there, hunger that I didn’t have then has come back full force, making it very hard for me to wait my time after bolusing to eat.

Of course, some situations don’t really allow me to do so. Like when we go to a restaurant and they don’t take as long to fix the food or when we go to my in-law’s for lunch or supper and it’s already done. Do you know how hard it is to sit there and tell them you’re waiting on your insulin to work? When you’re smelling the good food, wanting to eat it, and they’re telling you “Come on, eat!” ? Which I will have to give my mother-in-law a lot of credit. She is beginning to understand why I do what I do and even tells me Sunday Lunch’s menu when we’re at church so I know before we get there. How cool is that?

But it’s still a challenge. Like for breakfast. Calculating a prebolus for food with timing when you add the lovely Dawn Phenomenon in the mix is just brain-wracking, especially for me now. I wake up, I’m starving and my blood sugar is going to the sky without me doing a thing, making me want to eat everything in sight. Sidenote: I hate when I’m high and I want to eat everything! Especially knowing the hunger is not real, but only from being high, and that if my sugar came back down, I wouldn’t be hungry. It is becoming very hard to wait the time, and often I think my wait time has passed when it hasn’t or I wait too long and end up low, stuffing my face, and then skyrocketing anyway.

So, this morning, I did it. I finally set a timer. Figuring in the slight high (who would ever think I would freak at seeing a 130 on my meter! Oh how pregnancy changes EVERYTHING!), dawn phenomenon, and the craving for a Hardees Cinnamon and Raisin biscuit, I prebolused 30 minutes ahead and set my timer….

And waited….

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

When my time was up, I ate my biscuit (slowly as possible… if you can imagine that for something you can devour in two bites if you wanted…) and prayed for the best. Now the wait to see how this works out.

Speaking of waiting…. I just realized Diabetes is a whole heck of a lot of waiting… but that’s another topic for another day.

It’s A Boy!

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baby boyJust in case you missed the news yesterday, we found out that we are having a little boy. And trust me, we – along with the ultrasound tech – are very sure… like 99.9999999% sure.

Only a few minutes into the ultrasound and her checking his position (where his head, heart, legs, etc…) were, she asked “Does anyone want to guess what we think it is?”. My sister-in-law said “boy”, but I couldn’t hear her, and she looked at me and I said “Well, we’re hoping for a boy, but what do you think?” (I didn’t want to say “BOY!” and be wrong… silly, I know). We were staring at the screen for what seemed like an eternity for those couple of seconds of silence. Then she moved the wand just a little to the side and there you could see all of his glory there on that 43” TV screen on the wall and said “Yep, you’re definitely having a boy!”. I’m sure if anyone in the waiting room could hear, they would have heard the squeal of my sister-in-law and mother-in-law over in the corner. My sister was there too, but I don’t know if she was in with that squeal or not… we’re not really the squealing type… but I know I looked at her and she was smiling big.

He was squirming all over the place at one point. Moving, playing with his hands and kicking all around. Then at one point he curled up and kicked hard, which moved the wand on my stomach. Erik couldn’t believe it. “I knew you said he was kicking you, but man! He just reared back and kicked the mess outta ya!” I laughed and said “SEE! I told you he was kicking me!” which made him move even more.

Erik, of course, was happy – but he honestly would have been happy either way, boy or girl. We both were more worried about how the baby looked and wanted to make sure everything looked like it had formed right as far as his heart, brain, all that good stuff. From what the ultrasound tech could see, she said that he looked great – no problems from what the ultrasound was showing her at this time. His heart was beating away – all 4 chambers looked good and she even showed where his little bladder was getting full, as sign that his kidneys are working just fine. Thank the Lord!! :-)

After the ultrasound, my inlaws and my sister left and off to the waiting room / lab area we went. My labwork had already been done at my endo’s office (we stopped by there to drop off last week’s bloodsugars) so that didn’t have to be redone, but they weighed me and my weight gain is right on track which is great.

We were put into a room and a few minutes later the doctor came in. He looked at my blood sugars, wanted to see my pump and what basal rates I’m on, asked about my bolusing and wanted to be sure I’m bolusing for meals at least 3 times per day. I’m sure my face turned red because I didn’t quite understand him because I responded, “Yeah, I bolus with every meal… at least 20 minutes ahead.”, thinking “duh, I’m pregnant and I have cravings, so yes, I eat MORE than 3 times a day!” And he looked at me and grinned and said “At least 3 time a day, right??” Then it hit me.. he was making sure I’m eating enough. Which, I am… and I told him too… my meals are spread out all day so I’m either snacking or having a small meal just to try to help keep the bg spikes to a minimum, all the while trying to space them out so I’m not insulin-stacking too – something Dr. C (the endo) warned me about at my last visit. I asked why he wanted to see my pump settings since that was handled by Dr C, and he said they just wanted a base-line for when I’m in the hospital, they know what’s going on and all. So, I guess I’ll be printing out my pump settings report along with my bg’s to bring to them too.

We were going to start me on going every 2 weeks after this appointment, but he said that things are going so well that I won’t need to come back for another 4 weeks, and then he’ll bump me up to every 2 weeks. He also said that he’ll do another ultrasound at the appointment after next (6 weeks from now), so that eases my mind a little bit too.

So it was an awesome visit, though it’s still sinking in…. A boy. We’re having a boy. Our very own son.

 

Oh and the voting results?

voting results

Thank you all for voting. It was fun to see the results as they came in. You guys are the best!!!

20 Weeks

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IMAG0045

I’m now 20 weeks along as of Saturday. I can’t believe how this is going by so fast!

Today is ultrasound day and I am excited and nervous. Excited because we get to see this little baby that’s been kicking and rolling around in me. Nervous because I know they’re going to be checking things like heartbeat, heart structure, body size, etc and I want this little one to be perfect.

My emotions have been on a rollercoaster, and I’ve been very keyed up all weekend. Everything from finances to blood sugars to freaking out because I didn’t feel the baby kick after I got into bed has had me worried beyond what I ever dreamed. Yesterday I was a ball of emotions and it all came out… twice. Once at my inlaws house when Erik and I were talking money stuff and again when we got to church. We had a night of just singing, no preaching, and the song Erik picked had me in tears halfway into the first verse and I couldn’t finish the song. I’m sure I looked pathetic back there, tears streaming like a fully turned on water faucet… trying to keep my composure.

My bgs are starting to creep up during no-food times (which is a rare occasion these days… I swear I’m becoming a Hoover vacuum!!) and they skyrocket a lot faster after meals and I end up needing 1 or 2 more units of insulin to bring me down, leading me to believe my IC ratio needs to be increased now as well. I uploaded all of my graphs and charts last night, printed them, made notes, and they are ready to be dropped off by Dr. C’s office on the way to the OB’s appointment today.

I have a post drafted and ready to go when for when we find out. I’m hoping to be able to edit it to show the right information in between the ultrasound and waiting for the doctor and then publish it right after we leave so I can share the news with all of you as soon as possible. So be looking for another “special” post this afternoon, ok? Until then, if you haven’t already voted in the poll, please do. It’s been fun to see all of the responses!

[poll id="2"]

Diabetes Sisters

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Disclosure time again!

A few months back, I was talking via email with some of the ladies from Diabetes Sisters about the upcoming conference. This conversation lead to them asking me to be a blogger for them in the T1 section when their current blogger’s contracted time was up.

At first, I was reluctant because I already had the blogging contract with Well,Then at the time and wasn’t sure if I wanted to take on a new place to blog at the time as well as keep up my personal blog here. I was going to agree, but then we found out that I am pregnant, so I let them know and they asked if I would be interested in blogging after their current Pregnancy blogger, Ronda.

After a few emails back and forth, I agreed and will now be writing blogs in the Pregnancy and Diabetes section of DiabetesSisters.org until a couple of weeks after delivery. Granted, I’m not starting as early as some other pregnant bloggers for them have, but I’m sure that’s ok.

Granted, even though this is done under signed contract with them, that part is simply a formality. I am not being compensated monetarily for the blogs, just getting paid the joy and satisfaction of sharing my story with so many other diabetic women who are hoping to become pregnant, who are pregnant, or who have been pregnant before.

If you want to go over and check out Ronda’s posts and some of the other pregnancy posts by people before her, you can click the link on the upper right-hand side of the page that looks like this:

blog4DSlogo

My first post will be up tomorrow (3/19/2011). I am so excited to be a part of this new blogging experience with Diabetes Sisters.

Thank you so much Markee, Tanya, and Brandy for allowing me to be a part of Diabetes Sisters.