Archive for October, 2011

Getting Involved

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One of the things I am not very good at, but wish I was, is getting involved with diabetes. He means other than the daily injections.  Today’s blog post is going to be how you can help me help others like me.

For starters, I want a new pancreas! Ouch. The artificial pancreas is the most revolutionary advance in treating type 1 diabetes since insulin.  He stole that sentence from the JDRF. This morning I signed a petition to the FDA to get some movement in getting me an artificial pancreas.  Your new pancreas won’t help your blog. You can sign it to.  Click here to help me get a new pancreas.

Also, November is world diabetes month.  Actually, I think November 14th is world diabetes day, but one day isn’t enough and we decided to take over the month.  To help raise awareness, I’m going to try and remember to participate in Blue Fridays.  I may need someone to remind me.  To learn more, go here or watch this:

There was also apparently a walk yesterday.  I’m not sure what I have to do to get on the mailing list for these things, but I had to work anyway.  Visit diabetes.org to see what is going on in your area.

I think that’s all for now.  Help me help us!

Beauty Rest

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Squishy isn’t exactly known for her ability to sleep through the night.  Some nights she sleeps; Mamma and I wake up because we expect to.  Most nights she gets up at least once.  The last few nights have been worse than normal.  She has fevers up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit.  When I have a fever, I can’t do anything but sleep.  When Squishy has a fever, she prefers to share the pain with everyone around her.  I can image it comes from a place of confusion.  Something is obviously wrong, but a great lack of understanding puts her in a very foul mood.  I hadn’t noticed.  I do not function properly without sleep.  Not even close.  Just typing right now is very tiring, and I’m strongly thinking about calling it quits for the night.

Without adequate sleep, I do not move at my normal pace in the morning. What is this morning you speak of?  I woke up at the right time, but I was late to leave, and we were out of cereal so I didn’t eat breakfast.  I also forgot my insulin and meter on the kitchen counter.  To top it all off, I forgot to make my lunch.  Maybe it would be easier to make a list of things you remembered.  At around 1:00 and after about 5 cups of coffee, my body just started shutting down.  I could feel my blood sugar getting low, so I ate some sugar.  Some sugar?  You made Hansel and Gretal look like health nuts.  I didn’t know exactly how low because I couldn’t test.  I expected the sugar to take affect in about 15 minutes.  At around 1:30, I was still a little loopy, I didn’t feel like my blood sugar had gone up at all, and my coworkers started to worry.  It was time to go.  I couldn’t really get control of my blood sugar without my meter.

The drive home was exciting.  And I was thinking more like terrifying, horrible, frightening, worse than death, abandon all hope here, or just screaming like a girl.  There is nothing better than swerving through traffic while sliding in and out of consciousness.  His sarcasm is a defense mechanism to hide his true feelings of shear terror.  It was one of the scariest roller coasters I have ever been on.  I remember staring out the windshield with my eyes wide open thinking, “Why is that orange barrel driving towards me?” Turns out I had that backwards.  At least when you are falling asleep behind the wheel you have your eyes closed.  When your blood sugar is low, you just wonder why you are seeing the things you are seeing.  It was like I was completely aware of what my surroundings were, just not how they were going to affect me. Click here for examples.

When I finally reached the house, I plopped down in the lazy boy in the den and almost fell asleep immediately.  Mamma was on the couch playing with her laptop.  She said she had just put Squishy to bed.  Like clock work, Squishy started screaming as soon as if the period at the end of Mamma’s sentence was her cue.  I went up stars, took squishy out of the crib, and we laid down in my bed together.  Within seconds we were both in dreamland.

Mamma woke us up and Squishy’s fever started coming down.  I just put her to bed and she has had a normal temperature for about 5 hours with no medicine or cold washcloths.  I have been feeling gradually worse since I woke up.  I know I slept, but I don’t feel like I have slept.  It is like the battery charger for my body is no longer working.  I plug myself in, go to sleep, and when I wake up the battery power is lower.  I think it may just be my subconscious way of worrying about Squishy which is not letting my body sleep properly.  I hope that’s what it is anyway.  For now, both girls are in bed, and the couch and I have an overdue date.  Good night world.

P.S. If your blood sugar is low, driving may not be the best idea.  Ya think?

In Your Free Time

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I have a wife who is going to school full time, a child in the first grade, a child still in diapers, a cat who is always starving to death, and two frogs that are easily forgotten.  When I started this blog, it was right after I earned my master’s degree and right before Beth started school.  I thought I would have free time to keep the world updated on what it is like to be father/husband with diabetes.  Plus, I wanted to be able to get some humor out this disease, as there is not a whole lot of humor in diabetes, with the remarks of my lazy pancreas.  No applause necessary.  I have since discovered that free time is not a luxury I have.  I need to get a schedule going because there is so much to say and so little time to type it out in the little text editor.  I could help.  Really?  Really.  Good.  Produce some insulin.

And it is not like my diabetes stopped and I have had nothing to say.  Oh no.  My pancreas is still just as worthless as a screen door on a submarine.  The problem is that my daily routine is go to work, come home, watch kids, and sleep.  That really is it.  In between those events, I try to remember to do things like eat, check my blood sugar, take insulin, use the restroom.  Usually, I forget to each lunch, I’m doing the pee-pee dance before I remember to go the restroom, I can smell my blood sugar before I remember to take my insulin, and I can feel the earth spinning before I remember to check my blood sugar.  By the time I get to typing in the blog, I am half asleep and taking a little extra insulin because my blood sugar should not be 180, but I couldn’t resist the ice cream sandwich.  The ice cream sandwich?  I quit because you resist food.  I had to be a mathlete just to produce the appropriate amount of insulin.

Tonight, we went to Old Country Buffet.  The words “all you can eat” are like music to my ears.  I am 100% prepared to stay up all night adjusting my blood sugar to enjoy eating as much as I want of many different dishes.  That’s what I am doing tonight.  I ate french fries, tacos, fried fish, fried chicken, ice cream, mashed potatoes, corn, corn dogs, steak, cookies, and cheese cake.  That should be a couple of units of Novalog.  Eesh.  I can’t help it.  Food loves me.  I just wish I had a pancreas to accommodate my desire to eat food.  If Wal-Mart ever has a sale on pancreases, I am totally getting a new one.  What? No sentimental value? None.

Well, I do believe that is the end of tonight’s rant.  Hopefully, I will remember to rant more often.  Fingers crossed.

Bear