Sometimes I feel that I am a sales person. Although I was trained to educate my patients about controlling diabetes, I find myself using every possible tactic to sell them good health.
Yesterday, I saw a woman for the second time. She has uncontrolled diabetes and is morbidly obese. She stated at the first visit that she realizes that if her poor eating habits continue it might “kill her”. She is fearful, however, at the same time, like an alcoholic, she just can’t stop.

Sure, I suggested low-calorie, healthy and well-balanced food choices so she could replace the higher-calorie and higher-sugar/fat cookies, ice cream and cake but there was more to it. I had to SELL her good health. I had to convince her to save herself. I had to use every ounce of my psychological skills to motivate her.

From the first visit to her second visit, yesterday, she had made changes. I was happy with her progress. My sales-pitch worked! Now we are focusing more on the 8-11:00 pm “trouble-time.”  I am hopeful. With my continued support and her compliance – we’ll seal the deal!

©2009 Do It Yourself Diabetes with Marci Sloane. All Rights Reserved.

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I often wonder what to say to my patients who have a legitimate story about why they won’t, can’t or shouldn’t follow health advice.  One example was a man who was a holocaust survivor.  When I was recommending to him to curtail his portions he looked at me and said, “I was starved almost to death in the Holocaust and then I had no money to eat and now FINALLY I have enough money to give myself whatever my heart desires.  But you’re telling me I can’t or shouldn’t have an abundance of carbohydrates.  I’m 80 years old, what do I care”.  So, my fellow readers, what would YOU say to that?  He obviously has a valid argument.  I simple tell him what I would tell anyone else: do not omit just modify.  Why open yourself up to a slow demise, complications that make you miserable instead of giving yourself all you want – IN  MODERATION!

Another woman came with uncontrolled diabetes and looking to lose about 100 or more pounds.  “I will not diet or cut out my favorite foods and I have trouble saying no to a food when it is in my house”.  I gave her options:  she can have bariatric surgery to physically/surgically make her stomach smaller or she can MODIFY (there’s that dirty word again).  Her husband was sitting next to her, nice and thin and in shape.  “Do you need those foods in your house to tempt her?”, I asked.  “No”, he said.  He turned to his wife of 50 years and said, “I will work with you.  We will only bring foods into this house that can help you reach your goals”.

The couple left and I made sure my patient knew I was there for her by phone, email, or next appointment and her husband would support her too.  That’s how we succeed.

©2009 Do It Yourself Diabetes with Marci Sloane. All Rights Reserved.

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Some quotes from patients on whether or not they have the “D” word: “My doctor has told me I have pre-diabetes for the past 25 years.  My A1c is 6.6% and I’ve been on Metformin twice a day”.  OK?, I think to myself.  An abnormally high 3-month blood sugar average (A1c) plus she’s on 2 doses of medication – but still the “D” word won’t be admitted, only the “PD” word.  Yesterday, I had a patient that admitted that she had the “D” word but her doctor didn’t!  Her A1c is 7% (non-diabetic range is under 6%), she’s on Metformin and she has been testing her blood sugar for months or has it been years.  Anyway, with this diabetes epidemic and obesity epidemic maybe using the words with their true meanings will be more motivating to put an end to this killer.  At least maybe more patients will take this devastating disease seriously.

©2009 Do It Yourself Diabetes with Marci Sloane. All Rights Reserved.

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My new diet is off to a decent start, two days into it.  I have stayed under 1,200 calories both days, and am still trying to do so today.  I am cutting out going to dinner and lunch for a few weeks also.  I am going out to dinner tonight however, but will eat healthy.  The place I am going to, Grumpy Grouper, I only ever get this chicken and rice meal, it’s the only thing there that I like.  The problem is that I usually eat what my girlfriend hasn’t finished, but tonight I will not.  I will take her’s to go and eat it for lunch tomorrow.

My eating habits are getting better, but I didn’t go to the gym last night because I didn’t get home from work until about 6:30, ate dinner, then the Panthers game was on at 7:30, so I was lazy.  This is the main problem right now is that when I get home from work, I am so exhausted that I don’t feel like going to the gym.  It’s a mental thing, mental toughness is the key, so I will just have to fight that laziness head on.

Well, you all have a wonderful day.  My posts are getting boring, I guess I need something exciting to happen in life!  But maybe that is a good thing, that I am not posting about these hospital visits, and bad doctor’s appointments, etc.

I didn’t accomplish my goal of setting up my CGMS over this weekend, but tonight I am going to start using the new pump, I promise!  I have nothing to do after the gym tonight, no sports to watch or anything, so I will be all free to do it.  My sugars this weekend were pretty good.  The past few Sundays my sugars were sky high, but some reason this weekend they weren’t.  My new diet starts again today.  I dropped like 15 to start off the new year, but of course put it right back on, but this time it is not going to come back on.  I have way too many clothes that I don’t fit into anymore, and it’s a waste of money to have all those clothes sitting around not wearing them.

I will be seeing a new endo and educator sometime this month, so I am pretty excited about that!  Well it is a Monday morning, so time to get back to work!

What a long weekend this was, and short at the same time.  Does that make any sense?  Saturday morning was an early morning because the Panthers had an open practice, so of course I had to go to try and get some autographs.  We did get there a little late, so there wasn’t any autographs that I could get.  We did get to watch a little of the practice and then some of the Bruins practice also.  I then had to run over the site of the ADA’s Pembroke Pines Tour de Cure to drop off some supplies to them.  Then my girlfriend and I had to kill time before the 7 p.m. Panther’s game.  We went to a mall and then over to the Sawgrass Mills.  We had some dinner and then it was time to go to the game.  And what a game it was, 2-0, 41 save shutout for the Panthers.  It was amazing in there, loud, play-off atmosphere!  My sugar was running a little high because my insulin was running low.  I didn’t realize when I left the house in the morning I only had about 60 units of insulin for the next 12 hours.  That may be a lot for some people, but I have a 2.1 basal rate, so that’s about 25 units right there.  Plus lunch and dinner boluses, I had about 2.5 units when I got home after the game.

Yesterday was another early morning in order to be at the Tour de Cure very early.  It was a great event, I wish I could have been riding.  After that I went home and took a nap and prepared for the NASCAR race.  Then my sugar went high.  I tested and it was about 350, so I corrected.  2 hours later I tested and I was 397, doesn’t make any sense.  I feel my infusion set and it is soaked, smell my fingers, and just as I suspected…..the great smell of insulin leaking!  So I used my insulin pen to correct and then inserted a new infusion set.

Now, it is Monday and I am back to work. H ave a great day!

What an experience the Daytona 500 was.  I can’t even describe it other then it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.  My blood sugars were pretty good throughout the whole weekend too.  There was one night and morning that they ran high, but that was expected because of the event we went to that night.  $10 cover, all you can drink and eat as long as you were wearing racing gear.  So, since I was wearing my JR hat (Dale Jr. ampEnergy) I was able to do that.

Feeling those cars fly by you and being about 10 feet away from the cars (we snuck down close to the start finish line right on the fence) was amazing.  I did receive a bunch of ampEnergy drinks and I have never drank an energy drink before, never a red bull, monster, rockstar, amp, NOTHING.  But since it’s racing season, I didn’t think it would be a problem to drink a few for my favorite racer.

Anyway, I didn’t post in a few days, because I have been swamped trying to catch back up after the race, but I just wanted to get some information up about the exciting Daytona

Well, it is off to my first Daytona 500.  No idea what to expect, and also never would have thought that I would be attending a Daytona 500, but here I am.  We are going up tonight and then coming back home Sunday night, which should be a lot of fun not getting home until about 2 in the morning.  My insulin re-order came in just in time.  As I was on the phone with the mail order pharmacy, the insulin was being delivered at the exact time, what a coincidence.

So, I have a full 3 month supply of insulin in the fridge, so I will take 2 full vials with me just as a precaution.  I will also take with my 5 infusion sets, 3 reservoirs, 2 infusion set insertors, 50 test strips, 10 adhesives, the all important skittles, and that’s just my diabetes supplies.  That fills a travel bag almost by itself.

Also, thank you to those of who left your numbers at diagnosis.  Now I’d like to see what your A1C levels or average sugar levels are.

I spoke to somebody the other day who was just diagnosed and we were talking about our numbers when we went to the emergency room or when we found out we were diabetic.  So this blog is going to be very short, but I hope you all respond, because I am very curious to know.

 What was your number?

Just reply back with what your number was, mine was 858.

As promised I am going to tell you the story about my insomnia that occured after I was first diagnosed.  I was watching a show on MTV over the weekend about kids who couldn’t sleep and their school work and work life was slacking because of this.  I was talking to my girlfriend about it for a while and explained the same story as I am going to now.  When I was first diagnosed and made it home from the hosptial my sleeping habits were normal, actually I was falling asleep around 9-10 instead of the normal 11-12.  However, once I became comfortable with managing it, that is when the sleep problems came because I was not as worried to get a full night’s rest (even though I should have been).  So I started to stay up later.

Then when I would finally lay down to go to sleep all sorts of things started running through my head.  Where was I going to transfer to, will I be able to play football where I transfer to, will I be able to play sports at all, why did this happen to me, what am I going to do??!!??  All this stuff would be running through my head so there was no way that I could fall asleep, so I would just stay up and watch tv.  I would also try and read because that would put me to sleep but then I would wake up abotu an hour or 2 later and couldn’t go back to sleep.  I would go to bed around 3-4 and wake up at about 7-8.  This was making my sugar levels go all out of control also.  This went on for several months until I realized it was only going to get fixed by myself.  It was just a mental thing and I had to be mentally strong and get over it.  And I did.

Now, I get to bed at around 12-1 and wake up at 7, which still isn’t as much rest as I should be getting, but I just can’t fall asleep earlier then that.  Sometimes I do if I am extremely exhausted, but that does not happen very often.

Have any of you had some of the same experiences?