Everyday, I feel a bit older. Everyday, you are a bit older. I mean that I physical feel it. I am 32, and I often feel like I am on the fast track to a nursing home. Today, I had an appointment with a cardiologist.  Apparently, individuals with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome are at risk for heart problems. I had this appointment today, and from this appointment, I have to make 3 more. I heard they sell them in bulk as Sam’s Club. One for a CT scan of my aorta to make sure it is not super sized; one for an echo-cardiogram to make sure my heart is pumping like it should;  and one for a sleep study because I may have sleep apnea. He may not have sleep apnea, but he definitely has some sort of sleep disorder. I miss the days when I went to the doctor, he told me everything was fine, and there were no follow up appointments. It’s like taking your Frizbian to the mechanic. “While we were replacing your wiper blades, we realized that we had to rebuild the transmission.” Now days, when I go to a doctor, I leave with at least 1 more appointment to schedule.  Thankfully, despite memory problems being one of the symptoms of ADHD, I do not get distracted SQUIRREL! I am surprised her remembered the movie reference.

So, about red herrings. They don’t exist? The history behind the red herring, like most of history, is a little muddled. If only historians would have had a blog like this to right down the origins of popular phrases. Some believe that the strong smell of the red herring was used to teach dogs how to following a specific scent.  The red herring was used as a distraction to throw them off course or teach them to focus. Or to teach them that fish is yummy.

In my case, diabetes is the red herring. When I first moved to Virginia my A1C was over 8. It was over 9, but who’s counting? I was having a number of symptoms that appeared, to me anyway, to be unrelated. I was sent to different specialists for each symptom, and each specialist told me that once I my blood sugar was under control, the symptoms would go away. This was after the through examination which consisted of, “So, you have diabetes?” This year, I started pumping. Should I cue the choir of angels?  One of the requirements of my diabetes educator was that I have a good record of blood glucose, insulin, and carbohydrate numbers before I started using the pump.  Doing this actually brought my A1C down dramatically. Paying attention helps? No. Surely that is not true.  I began to have much better control.  Control which only improved after I started using the pump. The symptoms should start subsiding, right? Well, I assumed it would not be instant.  I did not start out with a high A1C. Despite his early attempts of treating diabetes with cranberry juice.  I spent a lot of time building up to that number.  What I did not expect is for things to start getting worse.  It seems that the more control I gained over my blood sugar, the more evident my symptoms became.  It is now to the point that just standing for a long time or driving causes a great deal of pain in my back. I cannot stand for long periods of time because my legs feel weak, and I start stumbling like a drunk. A reaction he also has to a teaspoon of cough syrup.

I am not certain what the moral of this story is. Don’t eat red herring? I guess it could be, if your doctors seem to blame your diabetes for everything, you may want to get a second opinion. Since we moved recently, we have changed clinics and our new primary care physician is trying to pick up on the real scent (and he is also the one that referred to my diabetes as a red herring). Hopefully, in the next few months, I will actually know what is wrong and be able to at least treat it. You are all welcome to send me donations to find a cure for the common Frizbian.

I know.  Its been a while.  I keep planning on writing but most days I am just so exhausted that watching TV is difficult. I am sort of on vacation.  Mamma is in Italy for a friend’s wedding, and I’m at home with the kids.

Last Saturday we went to a farmer’s market where we had tickets for a pony ride. That was a flee market. Actually, we had vouchers so that we could get tickets for a pony ride. I went to hand the lady at the near the ponies the tickets that I had printed from Living Social and she let me know that I had to go to the information tent to redeem my tickets and that the piece paper I had was just a voucher. When we arrived at the line for the information tent, it became quickly apparent that this wasn’t well planned. He bought tickets for a spectacular line.  We were in line for an hour and half. I didn’t bring the stroller because I didn’t think we would be standing around that long. If you have ever stood in line for more than ten minutes with a two year old trying to escape and a seven year old asking questions about why we have to stay in line, you can imagine the suffering.

We finally got our tickets and I could see that the hour and half line had now grown to well over three hours and was slightly thankful that we were done with that.  We took our tickets back to the pony ride and stood in line for another half hour. The kids loved the ponies for the entire three minutes.

The ponies were kept in area away from the rest of the market so after the rides we started walking back towards the market from the ponies, we passed a bounce house.  We stopped so that Tata could jump around a bit. Anyone else thinking about House of Pain.  Turns out we needed tickets.  I asked the guy if the tickets were purchased at the information tent and when he said yes, I gave Tata a choice: wait in line again or go to McDonald’s.  She didn’t even take a second to think. Duh. McDonald’s was our next destination.

The nearest McDonald’s was in a small shopping center with one entrance from the main road.  The entrance was a long, two way street that lead to a parking lot, but just inside that entrance was an Exxon gas station.  Apparently, without a stop sign, some people do not realize they have to stop. Someone exiting the Exxon ran right into us as we were coming down the road. Then, he drove away quickly. I did what any intelligent father with two small children in the car would do; I chased after him while honking my horn until he stopped. Logical? At which point he proceeded to tell me that he had the right of way and that he was just looking for a parking space and that he couldn’t stop in the middle of the road.  My brain was overloading. He had the right of way? I have never ever seen a gas station where the person exiting has the right of way. He was looking for a parking space? We were five feet from a parking lot. Couldn’t stop in the middle of the road? He speed up.  But I couldn’t articulate any of that. In fact, my brain and tongue seemed to be disconnected all of a sudden.  And then it hit me. My blood sugar was going to be low, right now. Right now, while I have this man yelling at me because he was the first man in history to leave an Exxon with the right of way. Right now, while I was trying to find the police department phone number of my BlackBerry. Right now, with Squishy in the back of the minivan going, “Wha happent Papa?”

One of the ways that diabetes can be helpful is, apparently, it completely readjusts people’s negative attitudes towards you when they think you are going to die. Suddenly, this guy was now my best friend and was asking what he could do to help. Then he noticed the kids in the back and started apologizing, asking if they were okay. My head was still spinning as I was chewing on my favorite correction medicine, SweetTarts. I called USAA and started filing the claim as I waited for my blood sugar to return back to normal.

My Dexcom Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) arrived on Friday. I plugged it in for 3 hours of charging and immediately started getting myself connected. He was like a kid in a candy store. Metaphorically speaking; of course. It has only been 3 days, and I have already learned a great deal from the little egg shaped device. What I thought my blood sugar was doing goes about like this:

1. I take my basal (Lantus) insulin at night keeping me steady for most of the night and my blood sugar would start dropping just before 5:30 AM (when I normally eat breakfast). Except on the weekends when he would wake up at 9 with a BG of 50.
2. At 5:30 AM, I would take my bolus (Novalog) insulin for breakfast and eat some cereal with milk. Some? His cereal bowl is the one normal people use to mix cakes with.
3. Around 11:30 AM, I would start to feel a little low and then I would test and I would be some where between 60 and 80. I would bolus and eat lunch. Usually, he skips step 3 all together.
4. Around 6PM I would make dinner for myself and the kids, bolus (which I always seems to under estimate the bolus needed) and spend the rest of the night bolusing until bed time trying to figure out why my estimate was so badly off.

That is what I thought was happening. Dexcom shed a little light on the situation. Any more light and his nose hairs would catch fire.

1. I take my basal insulin at night and then steadily drop until around 5:30AM. The trend looks a lot like a slide.
2. At 5:30 AM, I take my bolus insulin for breakfast and east some cereal with milk. Then, I spike to about 350.
3. I slowly, but steadily, fall back down to between 60 and 80 at around 11:30 AM. I bolus and eat lunch. Then, I spike to 300 or better and about a half hour later drop to around 120.
4. Slowly go down to about 112 and then at 6PM I make dinner for myself an the kids.  I bolus (which I still seem to under estimate) and spend the rest of the night steadily climbing higher and higher while bolusing to try to get back off the escalator.

What is that all about? Poor diabetes control? Talk about total shock. I had no idea my blood sugar was bouncing like that. He should really test more. I look at the two lines on the Dexcom my blood sugar is doing everything it can to stay out of them. And what is my basal doing? Drawing; like on an Etch A Sketch. When I am sleeping, my blood sugar is dropping like a rock and after dinner, my blood sugar just holds steady at 250. Tonight, I had two tuna fish sandwiches and some pork and beans. I would guess about 110 grams of carbohydrates. That is roughly 7 units of insulin for me. That was my bolus at 6:30.  After eating dinner, Dex started freaking out and my trend was raising to the top of the meter. I have been taking 3 units of Novalog every half since and my trend is almost a straight line. Not going up; not going down. At least he has some consistency. Just piling on the Novalog and the line isn’t budging. But I’ll bet if I take my basal dosage, I will be heading back down again. Its like before lunch my basal is trying to help me remember what hypoglycemia feels like and after dinner we are reminiscing about hyperglycemia. Have some ice cream. I’ll bet that will get that line moving. Thoughts? Anyone? PICK ME! PICK ME! Anyone else?

Emily Coles on Tudiabetes asked the PWDs of the DOC, “What would you do with a diabetes-free day?” I tried to think of something interesting; something amazing; something that would just be so much cooler than anyone else’s answer. He tried to think. Sadly, I kept coming back to some fairly normal answers.

For starters, I’m sleeping until 10AM. I’m not getting up because my blood sugar is going to be too low if I sleep any more. I’m not rushing to check my blood sugar at 6AM because I usually eat breakfast at that time. I’m not getting up to pee in the middle of the night and wondering if I that means my blood sugar is high. Not only that, but Mamma is sleeping too. I know she worries about me at night especially.

I’m going to eat and play. I’m filling my freezer full of ice cream, and I’m filling my dinning room full of pizza. I’m making up for every birthday party where Papá had to sit down for a second because we played to much, or Papá was getting angry because he ate too much pizza and ice cream. Tata, Squishy, and I are playing until they both pass out from pure exhaustion.

I’m hiring a baby sitter to watch the girls after they go to bed, and I’m taking Mamma to dinner and dancing. That could get ugly. I don’t care. Mamma loves to dance, and he makes the robot look graceful. And it would be nice to be able to give her my full attention when she is trying to show me how, instead of me trying to determine if I have enough sugar to make it through the song.

I’m caring candy in my pocket, and I’m going to eat it just because I want to. He does that already. No, I eat it because my hands and mouth have been working together for so long, they often forget to tell my brain what they are doing. Then, I get to worry about how much I ate, because I wasn’t counting the pieces or Reese’s while I was eating them.

The truth of the matter is, if I have a diabetes free day, I am giving as much of it to my family as possible. I don’t believe for a second that I am the one that suffers the most from my diabetes. When I’m low, I don’t even know I have diabetes, and when I am high, I get so angry I couldn’t care about it. All the while, my family gets to watch from the line of scrimmage. It may be my pancreas that has gone into early retirement, but my wife and my daughters are the ones suffering the most.

So tonight while chatting and listening at DMSA Live, I was reading the other blogs that I never have time to read and SUM had posted a video with a link back to a previous post.  I’m posting them both so that I never forget them.