HI

Post originally written on May 23, 2008

So last night was pretty scary as it goes for diabetes. I had the highest high I've ever had since the day I was diagnosed (actually it was higher last night). So here were the events leading up to this high.

I hadn't gotten much rest on Wednesday night because baby decided he wanted to stay up all night long. I started feeling pretty tired and kinda ill. So I laid down and then I decided I'd get ready for bed. I checked my sugar and it read "HI".

That's bad.

So I checked again and got the same reading. Well, since I didn't exactly know how high "hi" was, I decided to try to bolus about 9 units. I guzzled a bunch of water down and went back to bed. While lying there, I checked on my site and realized that it had completely come out. So, I wasn't getting any insulin. That's bad on a normal night, but this particular night I had decided to get a mango drink at Taco Bell to go with my dinner (free coupons online btw). I usually NEVER eat more than 70 carbs at any given meal, but last night I was feeling saucy or, rather sugary, and so I had 120 carb meal.

Anyway, I decided I'd better pull out my better meter and test to see if it would give me a number. It read 578!!! Yeah, that's the highest I've ever been. So, I changed my site and let my pump do the math, I needed to take 15 units of insulin. So I bloused 5 and took a 10 unit shot. I then checked my sugar every half hour for the first two hours. I decided that after it had only come down 6 points in the first hour that I should take another 5 unit shot.

Then I tested my keytones and they were luckily negative. My blood sugar had just dramatically risen because of the meal and no insulin. So I drank some more water and went to bed.

I checked my sugar ever hour or two until it finally came down to about 250. I decided it would be okay to take more insulin at that time and bloused 5 more units. By 5:45am when baby woke up to eat again I was at 48.

Husband brought me some apple juice and my sugars were surprisingly normal today.

Gave us quite a fright last night though. I'm just glad I wasn't feeling really ill throughout the whole thing, and I did get SOME sleep.

7 Years

Post originally written on April 29, 2008

I've had diabetes for seven years! Can you believe it's been that long?! It sure doesn't seem like that long to me. Seven years is a long time.

I remember that when I was diagnosed that I made the decision to make diabetes be a way of forced good health. I knew that I would have to eat healthy, exercise, and do all of the things everyone should do anyway. I felt that my reason to live a healthy life was chosen for me. I went information crazy and tried to learn as much as I could about diabetes. I printed out hundreds of pages off the Internet and read them, highlighted things, put them into a binder. I was really craving to know as much as I could.

Things started off rocky for me, as is the case for a lot of newly diagnosed diabetics. But, I had a good doctor and a GREAT nurse who tried to get my insulin dosages correct. She would call me twice a week to go over blood sugars and insulin dosages.

About a year after being diagnosed, I decided I was ready to try the pump. This was honestly the best decision I made in caring for my diabetes. I was lucky enough to come across the BEST doctor in the entire world, Dr. Robert Day. He and his staff at the Diabetes Clinic at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center have really become a big part of my life. They've taught me so much about caring for myself that I feel forever indebted to them. This team of educators, nurses, dietitians, and doctors really work wonders. I now travel over 40 miles to go to doctor appointments at this office.

About three and a half years of living with diabetes, my blood sugars were finally good enough to try getting pregnant. We were lucky enough to conceive in the first month and nine months later our healthy baby Ryan was born. His blood sugars at birth were minimally affected and he shows no signs of developing the disease.

In my sixth year of diabetes, continuous glucose monitoring systems were being covered by some insurance companies for patients with special circumstances. I was covered 100% through our great health insurance plan about two months into my second pregnancy. Blood sugars were a very small issue during this pregnancy due to the incredible technology of the CGM. Evan was born with no blood sugar issues whatsoever, another healthy baby boy!

Throughout the past seven years, I've been really good at taking my medication, counting my carbohydrates, learning as much as I can about the condition. We've even done a little work for charity too. Diabetes is an all encompassing disease that sometimes gets me really down. Overall, though I think it has been a blessing in my life. I've gained an enormous testimony of the word of wisdom through living with it and I've certainly learned and experienced a lot. I don't mind that I have diabetes (most days) and I love to tell people all about it, mostly because I get tired of hearing very ignorant questions and comments about my condition.

My Latest A1c

Post originally written on November 19, 2007

Today I had my tri-weekly (every third week) visit with Dr. Day at the Diabetes Management center. He is my favorite doctor ever. His personality and mine couldn't be more different (this man is my polar opposite) but for some reason, that works for me as a diabetes doc. Anyway, I had my HbA1C taken today and it was .................(drum roll)................ 5.2!!!

This is as good, if not better than a non-diabetic person's. So, I've talked about an A1c before, but for those of you who aren't familiar with this diabetes lingo- it is basically a two-month average of blood sugar (Web MD link). Anything under 7% is considered normal. So, I'm pretty proud of myself.

Overall though, a good A1c means I'll be healthier in the long-run, have less long-term complications that come with diabetes, and have a healthy baby during this pregnancy. I'm pretty excited. I even did better than one of the nurses in the office who gave me a hard time a while ago. I had to rub it in his face today! :)

Using the Sensor (CGM)

During my second pregnancy, I found the CGM or sensor, as I call it, to be quite helpful in regulating my blood-sugar levels. Here is a post I wrote about using it.

Post originally written October 3, 2007.

Well, I've had the sensor for a week now and have just started my second site for it. So far I think it is working pretty well. The only complaint that I have is that it is keeping me up at night. Almost all night long it's beeping at me and telling me that my sugar is high, or my sugar is low. I guess that is good because then my sugar can be more even during the nighttime as well. However, I was starting to get quite sleep deprived.

Last night the sensor ended and so I took it out. I decided to leave it out for a night and wait until this afternoon to re-connect. I am really glad that I did too because I went to bed at 9:00pm with a BG of 140. I woke up at 6:00am with a BG of 96.

I'll see Dr. Day on Monday so he can have a lot of sensor data to look at. I think this will really help my sugars during this pregnancy. I was really proud of myself for the first three days because my glucose graph was almost a perfectly straight line, I was really excited about that.

Right now I am starting a new sensor and I'm having a lot of calibration errors. I've heard it can take up to 12 hours before it will work well though so I'm trying to be patient with all of the beeping and testing.

Anyway, I just wanted to post something about the sensor so you can all get a feel for how it is working for me.

Great News!

Post originally written on September 20, 2007

I got a phone call at work today that wasn't work related. I think that's happened about twice in my life. Anyway, it was Minimed calling to tell me that my insurance had approved me for the Continuous Glucose Monitoring Sensor (CGM)that goes with my pump!

I am so excited I can hardly stand it.

The sensor itself is relatively inexpensive at about $1000. The kicker is that the senors you have to change out (every 2 to 10 days)cost $30. each. That can get pretty expensive- $90 to $450 per month. The best part of it all is that my insurance covered me 100%! Minimed told me that my balance is zero. They are overnighting the sensor to my doctors office and it will be there tomorrow. I'll have to get trained on how to use it and everything but it should be up and working early next week. Yea!

If you're wondering what it looks like or how it works, click on the hyperlink "sensor" above.

Crazy Blood sugars

This post was originally written on May 16, 2007. It is just ONE example of the many times I've had crazy blood sugar levels.

Last night I changed my pump site; took out the old one, and put in a new one. When I put in the site it hurt a little but it felt like an okay site. This was at about 10pm. At 1:30am I got up and went to the bathroom. I was hot so I took off one layer. I felt sick to my stomach and worried I'd gotten sick from one my three students who went home sick on Tuesday. At 5:00am I got up and went to the batrhoom again. This time I was less groggy and thought about testing my blood sugar. I did and it was 375. I bolused 8.8 units.

At 6:15am when Colin got up I had him bring me my meter and checked again, this time it was 490. I took an injection of 15 units and stayed in bed until 6:30. I decided to get into the shower and thought about testing my keytones. I did and they read out at the highest level. By this time I was feeling really sick and decided to call in a substitute. I called the sub line, wrote my lesson plans, called the secretary, emailed in my lesson plans, called the baby sitter, then called Colin to let everyone know I wasn't going to work.

I called the answering service of Dr. Day and she put me through to him. I told him the story. His advice was to drink lots of fluids, try to get the sugar down in the next three hours. He said that if there was vomiting that I should go to the ER for fluids, and to call him if things weren't going well in three hours.

By 9 am my sugar was still at 450 and I spoke with the nurse about correct dosing when keytones are present. By 10 am my sugar was still 454. I took another injectoin of 17 units and things finally started turning around. At 11:00 am I was down to 268. 11:30 no keytones and 168. I ate lunch and took a nap.

When I woke up my sugar was 96- finally back to normal. By 2pm I had a low-62. I figured that this would happen because of all the insulin that was in my system.

I feel a lot better and am glad that my sugars are back under control again.

Doctor Visit

I saw my diabetes specialist today. The news was pretty good. My weight has remained the same in the last 4 months and my blood presure was great. My HbA1c was at a 7.1, up from 6.8 at my last visit. He did say though, that I am still in good control and that I'll just need to monitor my sugars a little more closely. He reminded me about writing down glucose levels which is something I used to be very faithful at, but haven't done in over 2 years.

One topic of discussion that came up was the continuous glucose monitor (CGM). This is a device which is fairly new to the public market that monitors glucose levels continuously- hence the name. So, this means it is taking a reading subscutaneously (under the skin) without a finger prick. But, this does not eliminate the need for blood testing because this must still be done about 3 times a day to calibrate the monitor.


The crappiest thing about this though, is that insurance is not covering the monitoring at all yet, so it is very expensive. The monitors range from $300-$1,000 and every three days a $35 site has to be changed. You can see how quickly this could add up. However, it would not necessarily have to be worn all of the time. I guess it would ideally be worn for a 2 week period to study out trends in glucose readings and would not need to be worn again for a few weeks or months. Some people use them to help themselves recognize hypogylcemia (lows) so they might need to wear it on a more regular basis.

Minimed CGM
Dexcom CGM

Anyway, I've also been thinking about upgrading my pump to one with some of the latest features. My pump is currently out of warranty but working fine. As soon as it breaks though, I'd have to buy a new pump. I am not sure what kind of coverage I have on my new insurance, but my last pump cost us $1,000 after insurance. Pretty good for 5 years of 24/7 use. I'd also like to get a glucometer that "talks" to my pump so I'd probably go with the Cosmo or the Minimed.

Mini Med pump and corresponding glucometer
Cosmo pump and attached glucometer

Lots of money in the heath-care industry.