Pumping Fun

I had an appointment with my doctor yesterday - the endocrinologist, not my "regular" doctor (I put that in quotes because I see my endocrinologist more often than I do my primary care provider). Because of all the appointments for the pump, it has actually been a while since I've seen him. They did an A1C test and I came in at 6.9, which is great - I have not been below 7 in at least a year, probably more. I'm not sure there is proof that the pump is responsible for this, but I can say that it certainly has not hurt. So that was good news. There was no bad news to speak of. He said my BP was good, and he did not do any blood work because all of my numbers from the last time, cholesterol, potassium, etc., were all good. I told him about the sciatica and the accompanying neuropathy, and he did not seem too concerned, especially since both have subsided considerably.

In fact this morning, I was in pain on my right side, which I was half-happy about, since my left has hurt for so long. I think I didn't stretch well enough yesterday before doing claf raises at the gym, because it is my calves that hurt, my right more than my left. But the pain is unmistakably muscle pain and not nerve pain. Tylenol put the brakes on the pain, though it is starting to come back now...

Anyway, he doesn't want to see me again until April, though I also made an appointment to see the DNE in January for a follow-up. Of course, I'll keep sending in my logs so they can see if anything goes wrong at any point. The only other change was that he asked that I change my basal from 9pm to midnight to 1 unit. He noticed that I had a lot of lower readings, though not always "lows," at my midnight blood glucose reading. The other night was the lowest it has been for a while, a 48 - I compensated by eating some peanut butter crackers and by taking no insulin bolus. The next morning, though, I peaked at over 400. I said next time I will take a bolus, but he said no, he'd rather see me high in the morning than risk a severe low while I slept. Compensation boluses throughout the morning got me back to normal by lunch, and he said that was good. So when I have a low that low, I will avoid a bolus and just try to eat something, and see what happens.

Today I have my consult for my vasectomy - it was supposed to be at 3:45 but they called to move it to 12:45 instead - the doctor probably wants to take the afternoon off. As long as I get it done - the last time I had a consult, I canceled the procedure a few days before it was supposed to happen because Karen had second thoughts about it, but this time I think she's committed. As she said, we're not getting any younger. The need to "save" fertility seems less and less needful.

So tomorrow is the big turkey day - I can't wait, I love turkey and the fixings, though I'm going to be paying for the calories for the next week in the gym. That's OK, it is worth it. We always have a good, though long, day. I look forward to it and all the familiar things that go along with it (including the days off!).

It has been an eventful week for me, though not for my pump - the pump is continuing on as normal, no problems to complain about, no real issues to contend with. My blood glucode numbers have been pretty good, a few lows a few highs, mostly right down the middle. I went to KFC with my wife and parents for lunch the other day and I tried a combo bolus - it didn't work very well. I think I'm just not cut out for it - either that or I need to change the ratio. I did 50/50 over an hour, so I got 8 units up front and 8 more over an hour, but two hours after lunch I was 292. I had to take almost 6 units to counter that, so maybe ratio should have been 20/80, with much higher small doses over the hour. Maybe next time I'll try that, for grins.

I had to leave work 15 minutes early because I ran out of insulin in my pump. I could have gone the whole day, but I had used it all up in a bolus and had to cut the bolus short, so I was down anyway. And what's 15 minutes?

As for the rest of my life, my Constitution web site got so many hits in the first two weeks of this month that I very quickly used up almost all of my bandwidth allotment of 30 Gb. The projected overage for the month was going to be $75 or 15 Gb. I told my users that I might have to shutdown the site for the rest of the month and they responded by donating money to a fund to keep the site running. Contributions are nearly $100 at this point. I was humbled and my heart warmed by the support. I hope that if I were ever a part of a site, I too would be willing to donate money to it to keep it going.

Last Friday I went to get $10 out of my Survivor pool fund and found that the funds for the pool had been stolen. I was unable to give the first juror his due and had to send out a message to all the other players that their money was gone. $240 stolen out of my office - and while it was not locked up, it was hidden, so someone went through my desk to find it. Asshole. I have purchased a webcam on eBay so I can try to set up a sting and catch the thief on "tape" in case he or she is rifling through my things on a regular basis.

We've planned the boys' birthday party, set for the Saturday after their birthday; Brittany is selling Entertainment books online; Brittany has a lock-in tonight at school (whereby all the kids in her class go to school at 6pm and spend the night in their classroom); my grandmother celebrated her 88th birthday this past Tuesday night. I've run out of contact lenses and am having a hell of a time getting more (they cannot seem to decide if I need to go in for a special exam or not, even though I was just in a few months ago and got new glasses to boot) - I hate working out wearing my glasses, as they fog and get sweaty. I got the oil changed in my car today (finally) and got to take a look at the Saturn Relay while I was waiting - sweet car. I took Sierra to the vet. She shit all in the cat carrier on the way there (which was good in a way as it gave them a stool sample) and pissed all in it on the way home. Fun - and they charged me $4 for "biohazard disposal" at the vet! Quite a nice racket. I guess that's about it.

Next week will be busy. I have two doctor appointments, one with my endocrinologist to review how the pump is going; the other with a urologist to have a vasectomy consult (again - I did this two years ago, but ended up canceling the procedure at nearly the last minute). Of course there is Thanksgiving, and the accompanying two days off. It will be a standard Thanksgiving, I think, with two big meals that day, one at my in-laws and one at my parents' place. Carb heaven!

Last week was a crazy, crazy week. Karen was away for one night, and Thursday was chock-full of meetings. I barely was able to catch my breath. On Saturday we went to Friendly's for lunch and I left my meter there - I didn't realize it until dinner time and went there to get it, hoping no one thought it was a nice toy that they should keep. Fortunately, though it took a while to find where it had been stashed, it was returned to me.

Everything is going pretty well with the pump, no complaints. I had a few lows last week, but nothing really serious - not like the week before. I think I had a low last night - I was writing some things for Karen and had total writer's block ... but then again it could have just been writer's block. The past few nights I've eaten a bagel at night before bed, which is totally out of the norm. My breakfast blood sugar has been high both mornings after. Maybe the carb content is higher than the 60 the book says they should be. I may have one more tonight, we'll see. I had one really high reading last week, over 400, but I compensated and was back to normal by my next meal. So, as I said, things are going pretty well.

My sciatica is not gone, but it is a lot better. I used be taking four to six Tylenol a day, and I'm down to two to four - I think there were a couple of days last week I took none. I still do not have my full range of motion - in fact, the other night I tried to do a stretch on that leg and I put myself into some pretty intense pain. I scheduled my next appointment for the drug study for the first week in January, and that will include the nerve induction tests - I'm curious what those will say.

Yeah, yeah, I'm still here. The worst thing about a blog, diary, or journal is keeping the damn thing up to date. I don't know what to think about people who update daily, even hourly. Like now, I find it hard enough to come back every two weeks!

So, anyway, things have been going pretty well. My dinner fast worked out pretty well, and showed no big spikes. I just heard from Lisa today about my breakfast/morning basal rate, and she wants me to extend my raised basal from 7am to 9am, so from 3am to 9am, I will clock in a rate of 1.6 units per hour. We did not make any other changes, even though some of my nighttime readings have been elevated - the real problem is that they are inconsistently elevated, so it is hard to say add a unit here or change to a different ratio there. We're going to work on the morning first, and see what happens there, and make adjustments at night later. It could be my ratio is too low, it could be my carb counting is too low, or it could be I need to apply a square wave on the tail end of the post-meal period. We'll see.

I did survive Halloween and the week following, though I ate a LOT more chocolate than I had in a long, long time. Last year at this time, I had just started working out in the gym and was watching pounds melt off, and was very diligent about staying away from candy - not perfect, mind you, but better. This year, not so much. But because it was a pretty short period of time, I seem to have weathered it pretty well. I did weigh in at over 230 for the first time in a long time, but I'm back down below now. I skipped my work out a few times last week, because of the election mostly, but Karen and I bought an elliptical trainer last week, and I was able to work out on that several of those nights, so it was not a complete loss.

Later this week, Karen will be away on business, so I won't be able to go to the gym one night, maybe two - but I will be able to get in my cardio with the trainer, so it is good to have. It does take up a lot of space in the family room, but we got a heavy-duty model and that's the price you pay for that - the ones that folded up out of the way were all too flimsy. Some day we may have a special area for the equipment, but for now we just have to make do. It is worth it.

Well, as I probably could have predicted, the entire Halloween weekend was a bust for fasting. I gave it up completely, and today I will be doing my dinnertime fasts instead. Friday we had a Halloween thing here at work, and the kids came over and got candy at all the cubes and offices. I was not supposed to eat after 1pm, but I did. It was better this way, actually, because the kids were out at a kids night out from 5 to 9, and so Karen and I got to go out to eat at a real restaurant. Saturday was a bust, too, because I had a blood glucose reading of 436 at 5pm.

This reading was a little puzzling. The kids and I had gone to Ponderosa for lunch, and I had a 38 BG reading at the restaurant (I was surprised it was that low), but I had a 91 two hours later. I did break my fast by having a Little Debby Peanut Butter Bar around 2pm, but I took a bolus to compensate. Those things are only about 35 carbs, so it should not have thrown me off that much. I tried hard to recall eating anything else, and I did not. So I'm at a bit of a loss. I thought maybe the reading was bogus, but I bolused a full 10.5 units, and at dinnertime an hour later, I was back at 72, so it was real. Anyway, with a reading that high, the fast is off, so Saturday was a bust.

Sunday we went to a friend's house for dinner, and it was Halloween, so I just blew off the fast for one more night. So tonight I'm definitely doing it. I did eat some candy last night, having raided the kids buckets, and I overcompensated because I woke up this morning at 4 with a 47, but I treated it with a pop tart and was just 154 at breakfast this morning. It has been an odd week, but even so I'm pretty pleased with things.

Tomorrow is election day, and I'm going to be working at the polls counting ballots. My shift starts at 9pm, which is when my fast ends, so I'll bring dinner with me in the form of a sandwich and a bag of chips or something. I won't be working out tomorrow night, so even though I wanted to skip Saturday, I didn't, else I would have missed too many leg days in a row. I was able to do all my leg exercises Saturday, but I had real trouble with the angled leg press and the leg lifts still kill like crazy. I try to remember to take Advil or Tylenol before I go to the gym, and that seems to really help, but I don't always remember. I was hoping by now for some real improvement, but there has been none. When I spoke to Kelly, the sudy nurse, she said my next appointment was going to include a never conduction test, where they shoot electrical pulses up and down the nerves in your leg (it is freaky) and that might actually be a good test that my doctor might want to see the results of - I'm not sure if it would help with the dx of the sciatica or not, but I will be curious to see if the test shows anything unusual.