Everyone Else

I don't want to be like everyone else.

This in response to a comment on an email list I'm on - are type 1 diabetic folks like everyone else? The point was that people with type 1 are NOT like everyone else - they may have kidney disease, poor eyesight, mental difficulties from blood sugar excursions.

I think that this is an important response to the "people with diseases and disabilities are just like all of the normal people" argument. Of course I'm a normal person. I parent my child, I go to work, I make food, I eat food, I agonize over personal relationships, I attempt to balance my accounts and still have some treats in my life.

Yes, I will likely run into diabetes-related complications that make my life more complex. I do now. When I have to sit down on the floor of the library with my daughter and read books because I'll fall over if I stand up, that's a complication of diabetes right there. And when she yells at me to get up because she doesn't want to sit there - and I explain that we have to wait - and everyone looks at me like I'm a nut - that's a complication right there too. And when I need to say that we can't go for an unplanned walk right after breakfast because she said that she didn't want to and I've already taken my insulin - that's another complication.

But I digress entirely. Ranty rant rant.

What I meant to say was that having diabetes has made me recognize that complications ARE normal. Most people I know have complications. One had breast cancer, another has MS. Another is a caregiver for a spouse, another has a spouse who's left the family struggling. All of these things make our lives more challenging and more complex.

Complications are a huge part of most peoples' lives. Sure, some of us might live charmed lives. But as we grow older, our health and our family situation and our lives in general tend to create situations that can be mentally and physically painful.

So despite the fact that I don't want to be a normal person, I am. Complexity is normal, and type 1 diabetes is just one part of the complexity is my life. I accept that, as I accept that others have their own complications - and I hope that they support me through mine as I try to support them through theirs.

Eye Spy

My daughter was making a pretend bed the other day, and she made sure that she laid out her jellybeans. We cosleep, and yes...there are jellybeans beside my bed.

Other exciting goodies beside the bed include:
* Said jellybeans, for middle of the night lows.
* Extra glasses that I wear at night so I can see my pump
* Xylitol gum, just in case I can't brush after jellybeans
* Toothbrush and paste
* Extra pump battery and pump site and alcohol wipes, for middle of the night site failures.
* Flashlight, so I can change my pump site in the middle of the night without getting up.
* Test kit (finger poker and metre) so I can cross-check with my sensor or calibrate it at night.

Fun times! A bedside table is definitely on the want list.

Midnight (ok, 3 am) madness

I'm turning into the person who turns off her alarm clock, rolls over, and forgets about going to work until 10 am.

Except that's what I'm doing with my pump alarms.

My sensor settings are set quite tight, so I deal with a fair number of alarms during the day. At night, when I hear the alarm I wake up, I deal with my blood sugar, I go back to sleep. At least I think I do.

What sometimes happens is that I wake up, I fall back to sleep and I DREAM that I've dealt with my blood sugar. Then I wake up low.

Yikes!

In an effort to outsmart my sleeping self, I now wear tight shirts to bed, stick the pump under the shoulder part of the shirt, and voila - annoying pump alarming next to my ear to wake me up.

Except last night, my site came out as I slept. Without a sensor, I would have woken up vomiting and in DKA. Fun all around. With the sensor, I finally woke to my blood sugar creeping up. Luckily, the site had only been out for about an hour - according to my blood sugar records.

This has never happened before. I suspect that while I vigorously returned the heavy covers to dd, my pump slipped from my shirt and I threw it over dd. She moved, and the site pulled out.

Or did it?

Other option: I knew that I needed to change my site this morning. I set out everything to do it before I went to sleep, so I would remember in the morning (today was a busy day). Could I have possible tried to change my site in my sleep...and woken to a site removed?

Yikes.

Ok, I'm switching my site-changing time to right before dinner. Next step in my plan to outwit myself.

Eyeballs from outer space

I rarely feel like a freak because of my diabetes. Not that people don't notice the pump - they just think it's a pager/mp3 player with a cool cord.

But dd is in preschool now, and as a parent in a participation preschool, they needed my medical info too.

So what will happen if you have a problem with your diabetes?

Well, I don't know. I have never been so out of it that I've passed out...or couldn't help myself. But if I sit and stare at the wall for a while or fall to the floor, um...check to see if I respond, then call 911.

That's what's on the preschool wall chart. Might sit and stare at wall. And everyone gets to see it all of the time. Freakity freak freak.

Of course, I might just sit and stare at the wall on a tired day, just to see what everyone does. Grin.

Things I've been thinking about

Ok, so maybe I do need to blog after all.

Things I have been working on:
Actually hearing the bleeping (literally bleeping) sensor when I'm asleep. If I can't hear the low alarm, what's the point of the sensor system?

If my pump is in my pocket or in the bed, there is NO WAY I can hear it.

Now I sleep on my back with the pump tucked into a shirt, close to my shoulder and close to my ear. It still catches the signal from the sensor on my thigh, but it's close enough to my ear that I can hear it at night.

The weird things we do.

On another note:
Yesterday dd and I were playing "hospital" in the front area. Well, I was unwillingly being forced into playing hospital, more like it.

Her pump broke.

You see, I've always told dd that she has a pump inside her. My pump inside me doesn't work, so I have a pump outside me.

So she had to go to the hospital and have a poke, and then we decided that she needed a pump outside her. Much was made of the potential colour of the pump, and she finally decided that if it couldn't be green or red it was going to be purple.

And so goes our odd world we've created.

Pizza - will it come back to bite me?

Corny, corny.

After three years of random acts of pizza and regret, I think...I hope...that I may have learned how to live with pizza at dinner time.

This summer, we visited friends and got pizza for dinner. It was GOOD pizza. I can't eat 1 slice of good pizza. That is pizza torture. I have to eat at least two slices, maybe three. But I am afraid. Afraid of the evils of the low blood sugar right after eating, afraid of the great sneaky rise in blood sugar in the wee hours of the morning.

My official sources tell me that pizza slices have 25-35 carbs per slices. That is hooey. So I bolused 40-50 grams per slices, with a grand total of 150 grams of carbs for the meal. Ack!

I usually divide my dinner insulin 50/50 over three hours in a dual wave bolus. This is one of the reasons I need a pump - to make sure I don't go crushingly low right after dinner.

So for pizza, I divided it by 35/65 over four hours, corrected a little at two hours, and sailed through the night with a minor correction at 3 am.

Repeatable?

I did repeat it once again over the summer, to similar success. Now, 150g of carbs is still a whack-o-carbs to be going to bed on. I wouldn't do it without my sensor to guide me and warn me to pending lows. But it did work - twice - and I am considering eating pizza again.

Now ain't that a radical thought?