Hello, internet. So I finally got hooked up to my insulin pump last Thursday. I drove to Austin (a couple hours) for the training because I didn’t want to wait another week, and I’m SO GLAD I DID.
On Friday, Andy and I drove to Broken Bow, Oklahoma to visit with my family in a cabin by Beaver’s Bend. I think I would have been miserable had I not been on the pump yet with the poor control I was having with shots recently. With the pump I was able to eat whenever, and go on a long hike without worrying about balancing insulin shots.
Adjusting to the pump was so easy. And I don’t mind it being attached to me in the least. I quickly learned that most of the time, I can hook it to the middle of my bra and you can’t see it, and I don’t notice it at all. I had always assumed I would have to have it hooked to a waist band, and this always made me hesitant because I knew that would annoy me. But the bra (or the top of my shirt if I’m lounging around the house or sleeping) is perfect.
And words cannot express how cool it is to press a couple buttons to figure out exactly how much insulin I need for a meal.
I’m not hooked up to the continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS) yet. The training for that is tomorrow, and she’s coming here, so I won’t have to travel this time. I’m quite excited to see what my blood sugar is doing during the times I don’t prick my finger! I honestly don’t know what to expect there, but I know finding out is going to help me a great deal.
How the CGMS works is that it’s a separate thing attached to your body and it takes glucose readings from under your skin and transmits them wirelessly to the pump every 15 minnutes or so. You still have to prick your finger 2-4 times a day to calibrate the CGMS. But pricking only 2-4 times a day is much better than 6-8! Plus, the CGMS shows a graph of your BG throughout the day and will alert you if you’re going too low or high.
Haha, I can’t wait to see what’s going on during exercise and sleep.
So far, on my pump, I’ve been setting my basal rate (rate of insulin delivered per hour throughout the day) to about 50% during the night while I sleep. Otherwise, I go low. This amuses me for some reason, given my history of nasty night lows. I really wonder why my body does this at night.
Anyway, similarly, I’ve been increasing my basal rate to 125% of normal while I exercise and for a bit after. And this worked out fantastically today and yesterday. Friday, I didn’t adjust it (kept at 100%) and was high afterward.
My blood sugars aren’t completely awesome yet; there’s an adjustment period for figuring out the right basal rate, correction factor, and insulin/carb ratio. But the first guess at these rates is already a billion times better than how I was doing on that god awful 70/30 insulin.
And instead of taking 100 units of insulin a day, I’m already down to 60-65. YAY!
In other news, check out this fucking rat. My god, the TAIL. I just cannot get over that picture. A friend of a friend posted it on Facebook. This is R.O.U.S. come to life!!!
I have nothing to look forward to this week. It’s Monday afternoon, and I’ve been going crazy since last night.
Friday was an extraordinarily awesome day. It was the last day of Adventure Boot Camp (for one week, then we start again), and we only had a half-day of work due to this state employee charity thing. I also got my monitor back from the Acer repair center, got some books I ordered from Amazon, and my insulin pump came in.
I was pleasantly surprised with how quickly everything came together with the pump. I had my doctor appointment last Monday, where we discussed my options and my doctor agreed a pump would be the best solution. The pump company called me right away, got everything squared away with my insurance company, and by Friday afternoon I had everything. Everything except training with one of the pump company’s representatives and my doctor that is. It’s not so simple that I can just start using this thing, so I have to meet with them first.
Well, I tried calling a couple different people last week. One told me to call the other, who happened to be out of town. So I left an email and heard back today that she’s still out of town the rest of this week and will call me Wednesday.
Now that is a huge amazing disappointment. Everything else happened so fast, and to get stuck at this point is nothing short of sheer evil torture. This week would have been so perfect to set this whole pump situation up. It being my off week with boot camp being the main reason for that. I don’t really like the idea of starting the pump right in the middle of the week with boot camp in the mix. I’d like to get used to it for a day or two before dealing with it in boot camp.
Plus, at the end of next week, I’ll be going on a trip with family and would also like to have as many days as possible under my belt before that as well. Going out of town with diabetes is always an adventure as it is.
So I’m really not happy that this lady is not available for training. Every time I talk to my doctor’s office, they tell me to call this other guy because he “gets things done” and I wonder if this is why. But when I called him, he told me to email her, so who knows. I might try him again tomorrow out of desperation.
I’m probably being a bit impatient, but then I remember just how expensive this insulin pump is, so I don’t feel so bad. My insurance company is covering 80% of it (plus this continuous glucose monitoring system that comes with it), and my total payment (which is the remaining 20% plus whatever my deductable is–I think maybe $300) comes out to around $1500. So yeah, not so cheap, this insulin pump. But hopefully worth it. If I ever get to use it that is.
Having this thing sitting on my floor is also making it harder for me to give a flying shit about my blood sugar readings at the moment; in other words, it’s difficult to try very hard with dealing with shots when I’m looking forward to starting something so new soon.
Anyway, with boot camp not meeting, getting my insulin pump set up was the only thing I had to look forward to this week. This week is such an in-between waste of time week. Last week was good with boot camp and Friday’s schedule to look forward to. Next week will be good because boot camp starts again and I have a trip to look forward to the following weekend. This week contains nothing but work, oh joy! >:|
As far as bad weeks go, this one was probably in my top three. Well maybe not, but I have a bad memory of bad things, so it’s one of the worst in a long while, let’s put it that way.
My blood sugar is just a mess. That’s all there is to describe it. In my post on Monday I said it was doing better. Well, apparently I jinxed things saying that. The next day I was low before I left to exercise in the morning (58), and it was 357 when I got back. This morning it was 130 before I left (following a 2am low of 38), then it was 385 when I got back. There just aren’t words for the ridiculousness of that.
The consensus seems to be that I’m running out of insulin in my system at that time in the morning. And exercise is causing my body to create glucose, but it has no where to go. Something like that anyway.
I was frustrated beyond all reason this morning. Just plain pissed. I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever been so frustrated with having diabetes. I’ve had my share of bad moments, mostly revolving around lows in the night, but that didn’t get me down quite so much. I think what’s bothering me so much about this situation is that it’s revolving around my new found exercising, and it took everything in me to start exercising in the first place. As I’ve already talked about many times here before, I’m coming from a bad, bad unhealthy time in my life.
My diabetes interfering is just pushing me over the top. It’s hard enough for me to keep up with other people in that camp as it is. Six years of gaining so much weight and not exercising even a little bit did more damage than I even realized. My knees are not in good shape at all. But I expected some of this. I even expected a bit of a mess with my diabetes, just nothing even close to this bad.
Being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 18 didn’t even get me down like this. Not even close, actually. In fact, I took the news of being diagnosed fairly well, and I think that is because it made me lose so much weight in a the span of few months before I landed myself in the hospital. It made me fit into a size 8, so I forgave it. Haha. But nine years later, I’m less willing to excuse its fucking bullshit.
I’m tired of it. I spoke with my doctor. He suggested splitting my evening shot up, but I’m skeptical that it will cover me properly that way. I’m skeptical that the insulin I’m on right now is going to adjust to my new schedule at all, actually. I’m going to see him Monday morning. Hopefully I won’t lose my shit. I’m one of those people who cries easily when upset, pissed, or frustrated. I loathe the idea of bringing that into the doctor’s office, but oh well.
I posted about this to the diabetes live journal community, and of course everyone there thinks my life will be easier if I consider an insulin pump. Not that I’m surprised by that. People in that community are quite big fans. In fact, all pumpers I’ve heard of highly recommend it. I don’t know many type 1s in person, in fact, I think the only one I know is my cousin’s husband (well, and their first child), and they live in California. He does have a pump, and last I heard loves it and would never go back.
But despite all this, the idea of having some thing attached to me all the time scares the shit out of me. But if it helped make me more flexible to change and avoid completely absurd situations like I’m in now, perhaps it’s really time I get over that.
This week was also not made any better by the fact that there are a couple things work-wise stressing me out. One was a time-crunch situation early in the week, that wasn’t really anyone’s fault, it just happened to come with some bad timing given everything else going on between my mess and my being out of town last week. This group is really, really good to me, so I’ll do anything I can for them. But that ended Tuesday. The other thing is concerning a different group I do work for outside regular hours. I did a project for them that mostly ended this summer. They paid me once at the beginning of the year for it, and though they talked about continuing with new things in the future, they never talked about when this would happen, and more so, they didn’t discuss payment with me for these things. Then in September, out of the blue they throw some new stuff in my lap, and it seemed to me like it was expected of me to just do it, and there was no talk of payment at all. Perhaps if it were any other time in my life, I would have just shrugged it off. But as you all know, I’m going through some craziness at the moment. Now is not the time to expect free shit out of me. Well, I didn’t get back with them right away. My schedule was pretty full with the other project I mentioned, me going out of town, and my state of pitiful health.
So then this week, they’re wondering if I’m going to just be permanently busy, or if it’s just tempory. I decide it’s time I bring up the fact that if I’m going to be doing new projects for them, we need to make a new contract. It’s stupid, and I’m probably making a bigger deal of it than it is, and this being done all over email, maybe I’m just taking it wrong. But whatever the case, I HATE dealing with this side of things. I HATE being put in the position where I have to bring this up at all. And lord knows if I even did it tactfully. It’s just stressing me out.
My in office job isn’t causing me stress at least, other than just being required to show up. Haha. Seriously, that is the most stressful part at the moment. After my nutty blood sugar level this morning, I took off today, and I felt stupid and guilty as hell doing it. I don’t know why. I guess I just feel like a turd after being gone all last week, even if I was gone for work. I get preoccupied with worrying that they think I’m just this weird freak that can’t get her shit together. The logical part of me knows they don’t really think this. I just have issues with being so different from everyone sometimes, I guess. I’m not normal like everyone else there. I’m quiet, I’m geeky, I have a lot of weird interests compared to them, I can’t keep a normal human schedule to save my life, and my diabetes naturally makes me a freak of nature. Most of the time, I can accept this. But times like now it gets to me. I feel more guilty being such a “special case” because I know I’m lucky to be there. Too incredibly lucky. Let’s just say “someone” I know was told at his evil job that it’s frowned upon to choose to take his vacation time at the end of the year. Of all the stupid on the planet ever. That kind of crap really puts my complaining about work into perspective.
Oh, and in other crappiness, my big 24″ monitor shit out on me completely (after a period of hinting at it) right after I came back from my trip last week. With everything else going on this week, particularly with my knees hurting like a bitch, I haven’t shipped it off to be repaired/replaced yet. It’s still under warranty, luckily. So for now my poor pitiful self is stuck with my old 17″ with 1280×1024 resolution, and it’s a little bit of torture. Especially while playing Sims. >__>
Okay new goal: my next entry here isn’t going to be so pouty.
