Pumping Fun

I guess I'm just not a very good blogger. I read about people who update their blog daily, even hourly. I'm not sure who wants to read anyone's hourly postings, or even what you could post every hour or even every day, but they're out there. It has been about three weeks since my last update (sounds like a confessional: bless me Father, for I have sinned, it has been three weeks since my last confession... what's the equivalent here, email me, Internet, for I have lived, it has been three weeks since my last blog...). Lots has happened, of course.

Christmas was fine, we had fun, the kids in particular. The food was great and I mostly survived unscathed. I had a few very high episodes and a couple of very low ones, but nothing out of the ordinary. On Boxing Day, I had a horrid day of blood sugar readings - only at my lunchtime reading was I below 240. I was taking extra insulin all day. The next day, the 27th, I had a high to deal with in the morning, but I was low the rest of the day. See-saw. Christmas Eve I had a 305 at dinner time, but I'd been snacking for a few hours before that, and I obviously did not compensate enough. I was not surprised by that. On Christmas morning, my pump ran out of insulin at 5am, and I had to wake up early to change the set. I must have eaten chocolate or something that morning, because two hours after breakfast, which was just my standard SlimFast bar, I had a reading of 421. Yikes! I had a 66 at lunchtime, so I overcompensated there. I intended to work out that night, but I was exhausted after two long days and turned in early. That may have been what triggered my high day the next day. Whatever.

I had my surgery on the 30th, so the last day that I was able to work out was the 29th. I spent most of the 30th running around doing errands, then went in for the procedure at 3pm. It was pretty quick and pretty painless, thankfully. By the time we picked up the kids and got home, I headed straight for bed, where I was to stay for 24 hours. I did, mostly, though I got up to go veg in front of the TV at around 8, where I stayed until about 1. The next day, I stayed in bed most of the day, taking a couple of naps and reading a book until it was time to go to my in-law's for New Year's Eve celebrations. New Year's Day was quiet, and I was sore, so I took it easy. The doctor was firm on one point - no exercize for a week. Last night was my return to the gym, and I was happy to get back. I weighed myself this morning, fearful of the result, but I'd only gained two pounds, so I was pretty pleased. I'm hoping that with a renewed effort, I can get below 225 in the next couple of weeks. We'll see.

As for the pump, I had a first early this morning. Karen somehow got the pump under her body, and at 5am, as she rolled over, she picked up the slack in the tubing and pulled the set right out of me. It didn't hurt, but it certainly startled me out of a deep sleep. I left the tubing alone and inserted a new set, which was no easy feat as I was half-sleeping the entire time. I'm sure this will happen again, but hopefully not too often. Gotta keep some spare infusion sets handy for the next time, though, maybe one in the car and one at work.

I placed my first reorder of supplies yesterday. Animas called to remind me - of course they did! They don't want me buying from a local supplier! I had planned on asking my nurse about this, but Animas was on the phone... so I just did it through them. I have reached my annual max on out-of-pocket expenses for prescriptions, so I'm hoping that the order through them will be covered at 100%. I just bought my last batch of insulin and strips for 2004 at my local pharmacy, so the next time I need them I'll be paying for them. Next year the max has gone up like $250, so it will take longer to reach the max - which is the point, I suppose.

Christmas is now looming, just a few days away. I have Thursday and Friday off, Karen has just Friday. So I'm trying to decide what to do with the kids, whose last day is tomorrow. Friday, being Christmas Eve, is spoken for. We're busy practically the whole day, or at least for the whole day after noon. Brittany will be in the children's choir at church, so we'll go there for Mass (and won't have to worry about going Saturday, thankfully), then we'll go to my in-laws for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner and present-unwrapping chaos, er, party. But Thursday should be a day to relax, if the kids can stand it. They've told me I get to sleep in that day, though that remains to be seen. I might surprise them with pancakes or something, we have some maple syrup in the house and it is burning a hole in my pocket, as it were. Pancakes are pretty easy, and if I stick with just pancakes and not try to do bacon or something, it should be no biggie. I'm sure they'd like that. Better than Pop-Tarts.

Christmas Day we'll do our thing at home, watching as the kids open all of our presents to them. Karen and I bought our new TV for each other (and it has gotten some good use thus far) so there won't be anything for us under the tree, though I did get some things for Karen from the kids. At some point, we'll pack up and head to my parents' house for round three of the chaos, er, celebration. More presents, dinner, and lollygagging for several hours. Last year, both on Christmas Eve and Day, I went to the gym after all was done, and I plan to do the same this year. We'll see if that holds out.

Speaking of the gym, I ran on the treadmill for the first time ever on Saturday and Sunday, and I regretted it on Monday. Saturday wasn't so bad, but I didn't push myself hard enough in my 25 minute routine. So on Sunday, which is my cardi-only day, I ran for an hour and five minutes, but I started out with the same speed and incline I ended with on Saturday, and went up from there. My shins and upper thighs were screaming bny the time I was done. Monday morning I was in real pain as I came down the stairs. I decided that the treadmill was not really for me, at least not for my Sunday workout. The elliptical trainer is almost zero-impact, so I think I'll stick with it. Almost worse, the shirt I wore rubbed up against my nipples as I ran, and rubbed them slightly raw - when I took a shower Monday morning they screamed in pain, too. And I had a headache. Head, nipples, legs - a gamut of pain.

The birthday celebrations continued for Jacob and Ryan this weekend. Their kid party and family party were both this past weekend. The kid party we held at a local health club, where we got to swim for an hour before moving all the kids to the party room. It was the first time I've been swimming since going on the pump, and it worked just fine. I didn't wear the pump in the pool, even though the Animas is waterproof. As I think I've mentioned, I don't want to tempt fate, and it was just for an hour. So I just took it off. I was worried one of the kids would get snagged on the tubing, too. As it was, all I had to worry about was the set, and that was fine.

The next day we had the adult party, which included just us, my parents, Karen's parents, and my grandmother, at my grandmother's house. We swam there, too, which was nice since it was snowing outside. Again, no trouble with the set, although I was afraid a few times that Brittany was going to knock it out.

I got a call from Lisa, who got my log sheets on Friday (I sent several days worth at once) and she said that she was not going to change anything - I had had some lows and some highs, but nothing consistent, so they were most likely due to my food calculations, which I agreed with. One of the hardest things is accurate carb counting. If you add up two servings of pasta but end up with three, well that's 40 extra carbs. Or if I eat birthday cake, as I did several times this week, is a piece 50 carbs or 40? Is that piece one serving, or 1.5, or two? I don't want to go around with a carb book and a scale all my life, so I make a lot of best-guesses. Sometimes I seem to guess right, sometimes I seem to guess wrong. The nice thing is that if I do a BG two hours after a meal, I have a chance to correct myself if I guessed wrong, and those corrections always seem to work just fine.

I'm coming close to the end of my first batch of cartridges and infusion sets. I need to find out where Lisa recommends that I get more - from the pharmacy or from Animas? I'll find out from her what her feeling is about how most people do it. The sets, as I understand it, are standard, but the cartridges are specific to Animas, so I may have to do half-and-half. We'll see.

Today my sons, Jacob and Ryan, turn seven. Seven! It seems pretty incredible to me. I ran out and got them a couple of small extra gifts just from Daddy today at lunch, after I placed an order for their personalized cake. They picked pizza for their birthday dinner. We will be having two parties for them this coming weekend, one on Saturday for the kids at a local gym (they will all get to use the pool, quite a big deal around here once cool weather sets in!), and one on Sunday at my grandmother's place for just her, us, and the grandparents. My parents are away on a cruise of the Caribbean, but will be home in a couple of days. I hope they got the boys something in Mexico!

I set up a webcam in my office to try to nab the thief who stole my pool money. So far all it has logged are people walking by my office door (a lot of people stayed late on Friday!) and the maintenance staff. The lady who empties my garbage likes to look through it before she dumps it. On Sunday, someone came into my office at 10 in the morning, turned on the light, went off-camera for about 20 seconds, then turned off the light and left. I have no idea who the person is, I didn't recognize him. He did not go for the bait in the drawer, though, so maybe he was working on cabling or something. I'm hoping to see something soon because I want to close up the bait shop and start locking my door when I go home for the day. But not until I get a reasonably good chance of nabbing someone. Playing private eye is fun! But frustrating.

I tried to post to Blogger eariler in the week, but something was not working, and I got busy with other things. But it is working today - good. Lots to report on.

We had a good Thanksgiving. As usual, it was a food fest, with stops at two homes to eat a massive lunch and a massive dinner. I'm still feeling the effects on the scale! But it was worth it. Usually after lunch I settle in on the couch and have a nice nap but I guess there was too much going on this year, because I didn't get in a moment of napping. That's too bad... While we were at my parent's house, we got to see my father's new laptop with its new wireless network card. Karen noted that it was pretty neat how the computer could be anywhere. I told her she could have the same thing for her work laptop - we have a wireless network node in our house. She immediately made plans to got to Best Buy the next morning to buy a card. Normally, she unplugs my computer from the network and plugs hers in, but of course that keeps her anchored to the basement.

So we ventured out into the commercial world on Black Friday, and that was a mistake. Best Buy, for one, was a madhouse, packed to the gills with people. We found the card she needed and went to find the end of the line, and could barely spot it. We gave up and vowed to return later in the day. While there, we decided to look at TVs again. Plasma, LCD, wide-screen, standard... we looked at and considered them all. But we left empty-handed. As we discussed it, though, and once we decided that we could give up our entertainment center, we were ready to buy something.

We decided in the end that we were not willing to spend the money for a thin-screen plasma or LCD screen. For half the cost, or less, we could get a tube TV and be just as happy, and keep more of our money. We went to a locally-owned store and bought a top-of-the-line tube TV, a Sony Wega. We also bought a new DVD player (dirt-cheap, considering what we spent on the TV) because our old one will not play DWD+R discs. We cleared out the old entertainment center, built the new stand and got the TV on it. Hooked up a few connections, did some setup, and we're good. It is a nice TV. We're still deciding if we should pay to get an HDTV signal from the cable company. It is nice to watch things in wide-screen, but $10/month nice? Not sure yet.

We also sent out our Christmas cards this weekend, and offered up all of our old Disney video tapes for sale on eBay. I sold them all for $100 within a few hours of listing them - I guess the buy it now price I set was too low ... but oh well, what are you going to do?

I got the webcam, finally, for my effort to catch my Survivor pool thief. I bought a piece of software that will do motion detection and start the camera when something interesting happens. I'll be curious to see who comes and goes after hours around here. The camera is not great, but hopefully if someone walks into my office, it will capture enough detail to be able to identify them. And if they go through my drawers, they're toast.

As for the pump and all that, things are going fine. Karen almost pulled out one of my sets this past weekend, grabbing my side as we walked by each other. It didn't hurt or anything, but I'd have hated to waste a whole set to replace it. It was a close call. I set up appointments for my nerve conduction study in January, three in four weeks, each about 3 hours long. Oy. It is all in the name of science... My sciatica is almost completely gone now, thankfully. It still twinges every so often, especially during some particular stretches in my work-out, and I still tend to take Tylenol prophylactically on a daily basis. Hopefully it will be all gone by Christmas, even if I never understand why it ever started in the first place.

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!