So I came home for the holidays on Thursday afternoon, and I havent even eaten at any of the places that I usually eat at.  Last night I had a huge scare though.  I am already sick, and my sugars usually run a little higher when I am home because of the food that I eat.  Well last night, I tested my sugar at 3:00 a.m., after waking up 3 seperate times to go to the bathroom.  My meter read 475!!!!.

I quickly corrected it, and I went back to sleep and I woke up again at 6:00 a.n. and I had the level down to about 310.  I corrected again and then I woke up finally at at about 10, and it was at a manageable 175.  What a quick scare since I’ve been home.  I will be monitoring a hell of a lot more than what I usually do when I am home.  I was given a lot of vials of the 10 strip vials that come with a new meter, so it is my goal to go through a vial a day.

Hopefully I dont see a number like that again.

This coming weekend will mark the two year “pump”iversary for my wonderful pump and I.  We have gone through some good times, bad times, and not so sure how to feel about that times.  It has been there to care for me in times of ice cream and cake.  It has been there by my side throughout the night.  We are connected at the hip, part of it stays attached while I shower.

Ok, if you didn’t read the first sentence, my girlfriend would be ready to leave me if she heard those things.  But luckily, it is my pump that I am talking about.  I am still learning knew things about my pump, and certain things to do with certain food.  As we grow older together, we will grow to work with each other better.

Overall, life has been much easier with the pump.  I do not change my sites as often as I know I need to, but I am working on that.  I become lazy at times and refill my reservoir at a red light, but obviously can not do a site change before it turns green also. (If anybody has done this before, I would love to know how you did it!  And I will NOT call the traffic police on you).

I continue to celebrate this pump-iversary every year, right around Christmas time.

Does everyone else know their exact date of going on the pump?  Or am I just weird?

This past weekend I had to take my girlfriend to the emergency room for stomach pain and it brought back bad hopsital memories for me.  Now I have been to the emergency room so many times I am used to it, 2 diabetes visits, 7 concussions, 1 appendix scare, torn acl.  This was my girlfriend’s first.  After hours of waiting in the waiting room, she was finally given a room in the emergency room.  Watching her getting blood work done just killed me, because I know she is not good with needles.  I was thinking to myself, I would much rather be there in the bed then her.

Which then brought back the scary moments for me being in the hospital.  My mom works at the local hopsital, she works in the Surgical ICU.  When I was first diagnosed I came in with an 858 blood sugar and I was sent directly the Medical ICU, which I did not even know thats where I went.  I didn’t realize I was that sick until morning time came and I recognized where I was because it was my mom’s floor, and I was like, wow this is where a lot of people’s death beds are.

This nasty realization almost made me vomit and realize how serious of condition I was really in.  After that experience, my hopsital visits have been nothing compared to that.  But I knew for my girlfriend that wasn’t the case, and I wanted to stay with her all night, so they allowed me to spend the night at her bed side.  I obviously did not get much sleep, but it constantly reminded me of my visits, when you are woken up every 30 minutes because somebody is coming in or you here laughter in the hallway.  In the middle of the night you are so tired that when people come in, you don’t even wake up when they take blood, you just feel like, “whatever, do what you need to.”

Luckily, my girlfriend was ok, after being sent to the OR to get her appendix taken out, the surgeon, who was paged to come in at 3:30 in the morning, took one last look and decided not to do the surgery.  Almost a screw up on the part of the ER doctors.  Thats a whole other story in itself.  They almost gave surgery to somebody who did not need it, a misdiagnosis.  Maybe younger people should be made more aware of the shortage of nurses, because these ER people are working like 24-48 shifts at times and they can make mistakes like this.  Once again, a whole other story.

It is time for my first time hosting my Diabetic-Friendly Christmas party.  It’s starting off small this year, since I live down in Florida by myself with no family, and all my childhood friends are back up in PA.  However, this is my first Christmas with my own apartment, so I bought a tree and did a little decorating, following mom and dad’s footsteps.

I invited my girlfriend’s family over for a nice Christmas dinner, which is the first time I am having them over to my apartment for dinner.  Any ideas for some good Christmas-y things to do? I want to be creative and make a great impression.  First off, I better start by putting together the other 2 chairs that came with the set of 4 from the table I bought last month.

Any good ideas for some diabetic-friendly Christmas desserts?  My  girlfriend wants to bake something that I can enjoy without taking a million units of insulin, but I don’t know what.  Not too mention I haven’t even bought the food for this event yet, and I have a final tonight from 7-9, and I work tomorrow from 9-6.  Sounds like I have a lot of time to get everything done huh?

And oh yea, theres that thing that I have to test my blood sugar and take a break to have some OJ and a little snack.

Lately, I feel like I just do not have enough time in the day.  I would like to be able to post something every day, but some days I don’t even have 15 minutes to sit down and type something.  If I had that 25th or 26th hour, I may be able to get something else other than work and school done.  It would also  I guess its good that I have not had any real issues with my diabetes lately, because I haven’t had many things to get off my chest about diabetes.

Although, I have been a little sick lately.  A cough that just doesn’t seem to want to go away, but my sugars have been fine during the whole thing.  I used a certain cough medicine, I wont name names, but it was the worst, most disgusting tasting thing I have ever experienced in my lifetime.  I nearly gagged because it was so awful, but it kind of worked.

Not only have I not had time to look at my own blog, I have had even less time to look at other people’s posts.  I feel so out of the loop.  I will spend next weekend though catching up, since I am going home for the holidays and will have a lot more free time.  I’ll even post a couple times while I am at home, which I have not done before.

I was inspired today to talk about my experiences of how my friends, family, and co workers react to my diabetes.  I came across Allison’s blog today and I never really thought about how my friends had treated me and the questions that they asked since I was diagnosed 4 years ago.

When I first came out of the hospital, I didn’t hang out with anybody for a couple weeks, but the first weekend I did, it was just a straight Q & A for several hours.  I didn’t mind at first because I knew they were just concerned and they heard things about diabetes before, but they didn’t know what to do in case of an emergency.  They could not wait until I had to draw up my 30 units of nightly Lantus and then they can watch me inject it.

After a while, they got over that and then when I got the pump, all the questions about the pump started all over again.  How does it work, what is it, you know all the good questions.  Then it just became a joke that they would always ask me if I had my pager with me.  None of this ever really bothered me.

I know there are a lot of curious people out there, and I know I am a curious person, and I am open to any questions that any person has about diabetes, how I deal with diabetes, complications I’ve had, my opinions on diabetes, anything.

So the time has come to bake some holiday cookies and eat all those great treats.  The first batch of cookies that I made was weak, they were the pre-cut cookies that you just throw in the oven and bake them.

 Next up, I am going to try and bake some from scratch, well assist my girlfriend in doing because she is the amazing baker, not me.  I am going to try a more “diabetic friendly” recipe, but its still a lot of carbs. 

I am taking all recipes for some good holiday treats that won’t send my sugar levels all over the place.  Thanks.

Well, as some of you may have read from Friday’s post, I planned on keeping a detailed track of my blood pressure and blood glucose levels during the Eagles game on Sunday.  Unfortunately, I could not do this because the game was not on at my home, so I had to go to the sports bar to watch it.  I took along my glucometer though, so I at least tested my blood sugar, and the levels were not that bad.

However, if any of you have seen the highlights of the game you would know that with the score 28-24 with under a minute to go the Seahawks were punting to my hero Brian Westbrook, and he almost returned it all the way for a touchdown, and of course my heart was racing.  People I didn’t know were pushing me and grabbing me, but they were Eagles fans so it was perfectly fine with me (we are all family when the Eagles are playing).

Then, AJ Feeley threw another interception to end the game, seems like a repeating pattern, and my heart sank.  So without even using a blood pressure monitor, I know there were some not so great fluctuations.  My girlfriend tells me to just calm down its just a game, but I obviously don’t think like tha,t but I don’t know how else to keep my heart rates more even than what they do now during a game.  If we just won then it wouldn’t be a problem at all.

And at this time of the year, the stress does not stop.  My first final is this Sunday December 9th, and my last one is on the 13th.  Nothing but studying and stressing out from now until then.  I could really use that  remote controller from the movie “Click” that way I can just pause life and then study with no disruptions at all.