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?

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 came across this little article this morning that talks about a pizzaria in Tacoma, WA that makes a whole wheat pizza dough.  I know there are other places out there that must do the same thing, I just have not heard of any yet.

 Read the full article here.

The pizza was inspired by a young kid who wanted to know if there was anything in the pizza place to eat, but unfortunately there was not.  So the owner created this pizza for him.  This is such a wonderful story of a local small business owner doing what he can to help the fight against Diabetes.

There needs to be more action taken like this.  The more people who pick up against the fight the better off the whole world will be.  The diabetes epidemic is starting to get out of control, and the publicity is not at the level that it needs to be at.  I respect breast cancer, and Aids, and malnutrition, but Diabetes is not as well known, and it should be.

I give thanks to all of the fellow d-bloggers who give all of us a voice in the world, and together we will all make a difference in the world of Diabetes

Happy World Diabetes Day everybody.  It feels good to have a day that I am actually part of.  It is great to honor our veterans on Veterans day and Memorial day, but it’s great to spread the word about Diabetes too.

It is an accomplishment to have this day, but there still needs to be more.  If Diabetes could get half the attention and publicity that breast cancer receives, we could educate so many more people and possibly prevent the diagnosis of so many more Diabetics.

But enough about that, today for me is to celebrate my Diabetes.  I am proud to be a diabetic, its part of who I am.  It has made me stronger, responsible, mentally tough, and mature well beyond my years.  Yes, my life has changed since the day I was diagnosed, but this is for sure, I control my Diabetes, it doesn’t control me.

So for all of you who are trying to spread the word of Diabetes, its complications, preventions, fundraising, dieting, whatever it is you are doing on your World Diabetes Day, I thank you.

I came across this article online today from somewhere near my hometown back in Pennsylvania.  Halloween is coming up and good thing I didn’t have Diabetes back when I was going trick or treating, but it is an issue for a lot of people.  So, what do you do as a child with Diabetes and you get all dressed up, collect all this candy, and then…. what do you do?

A store in PA allows children to take their candy and bring it to their store and they will give them a free toy instead.  They should do this with every child, diabetic or not.  I am sure a lot of parents would love the fact of their young ones playing with a new free toy rather then being jacked up on sugar running around the house with their old toys.

This is a great sign though that large companies are looking out for diabetics.  I know when I go back home next week for  Halloween, my birthday, and my brothers wedding, all within 4 days, I will be intaking a lot of sugar.  I also know that my nieces who I will be taking trick or treating will be intaking a lot of sugar also, so maybe I should try this exchange program and try to lower their sugar high levels, and also cut my urge to be eating all of those wonderful pieces of sugar filled candy.

Growing up as a non-diabetic, Halloween was never an issue for me.  The only issue I had to deal with as a child was bringing the candy home and letting my dad inspect it to make sure that none of it was opened yet and none of it was poisoned.  Unfortunately, while that was going on, I had to go through him putting some to the side for himself also.

Be smart when you go trick or treating.

I haven’t posted on here in a while, sorry.  As those of who have read my recent posts know that I have been in the process of moving, and have not had the luxury of internet in order to post or read others.  So I am a little behind and lost in what has been going on in the lives of fellow d-bloggers. 

I’m now trying to plan for my brother’s bachelor party, since I am the best man.  I think we’re in order for a deep sea fishing trip in sunny
South Florida.  Sounds fun, as long as I come prepared with enough juice or something else to cover a low in case I get one in the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean. 

I used to get scared that I was going to get really low when I am flying, until I realized there is plenty of juice and sugary things on the plane that I wouldn’t need to freak out.  What would be on board a charter fishing boat?  Raw fish bait?  Would there be enough sugar in that in an extreme emergency? 

That leads me to my desire for there to be a survivor show for diabetics.  I like these shows that show you how to survive in the wild, but unfortunately I need to overcome another obstacle and keeping my sugar high.  What plants or bugs can I eat in order to keep my sugar high?  There needs to be a show in order to help me in case I was ever stranded in the middle of nowhere.  I think I could survive if I wasn’t diabetic, but I don’t know how well I would do when you threw in that curve ball. 

Does anybody else think this is a good idea for a TV show, or am I alone in wanting to know how to survive in the wild with diabetes?  Please let me know if there are others out there wanting to see a show about this also, and maybe we can get somebody to finally do a show.

I have heard about this in the past, but I thought maybe it was just a rumor and not a real product.  A cell phone that you can test your sugar on.  How crazy is technology getting today.  Now a days you can check your mail, weather, sports scores, watch videos, do everything on your phone.  And to us diabetics, we can now test our sugar levels.

I don’t have the type of phone that it is being used on, and do not intend on switching from my Palm Trio, but if they can make something for that phone, then I am willing to give it a shot.

So, I moved in to my new apartment over the weekend, and my stress level has finally gone down, and I am back to testing 5-6 times a day again.  On the moving day, I had 3 lows of 55, 70, and then 65 throughout the day.  Luckily I had some Skittles with me twice, and sugar tabs the other.  It was almost 100 degrees and I was sweating so bad my sugar levels were dropping like crazy.

Back to a normal diet also.  No more fast food everyday because I had no time to cook and then do dishes either.  I have no cable yet, so I did not get to watch the latest DLife.  It’s also about the time for me to re-order insulin and other supplies.  I better get to that now before I get side tracked once again.

I came across this article today and it is really scary and made me think about my insurance issues that will be coming up in the near future.  I will be turning 23 in a few months, and graduating college in less then year, so that means….. mommy and daddy’s insurance will no longer cover me, and what am I going to do?

I’m no longer even fully covered now, as it is anymore anyway.  So supplies can be tough already at this point, but what am I going to do if I have zero, no insurance at all?  I have somewhere that I order from now that gives me great prices, but why must insurance companies be so damn complicated.

Here is the link to the article if you are interested in reading more about it.  It is a harsh truth that, like many others who deal with it already, I will have to deal with it in the near future.

I came across this cool contest when I was purchasing my supplies.  It’s a CDE of the year contest… I already suggested mine, she’s pretty good, so it may be to tough :)  I think its time we show appreciation to these people who inform us of all the ways to control our lives, so diabetes doesn’t control us.

Take a few minutes to fill it out, the link is posted here.

Yesterday I had attended a luncheon with a lot of diabetes advocates, Certified Diabetes Educators, a few doctors and of course a couple of sales reps from various diabetic companies.  I won’t go into detail about all of the sales pitching, but I do want to share with all of you the great information I received from the “kidney guy.”  He was there to inform everybody that Diabetes had just surpassed Hypertension as the number one leader in kidney disease. He was discussing the importance of your glomerular filtration rates.  Yea I know, what the heck does that mean, so let’s just refer to them as your GFR.  Basically it is just a measure of how much creatinine is in your blood.  As it was explained to me, the poorer your kidneys the higher the creatinine which then lowers your GFR.  A healthy GFR should be above 60, if you are below 60 then you should definitely go see a kidney doctor.  I have never heard of this number before.  This number is becoming an even more important number for diabetics to know.  You should know your GFR just like you know your A1c and your blood pressure.  More on the A1c a little later.  Kidney disease is no joke, and it’s not painful.  Nobody knows they have it until it is too late and your on dialysis. Next time you go to get a script for your blood work, ask your doctor about it.  Tell them you just want to be tested to see where your number is.  If you are above 60, then you won’t get an exact number because you have nothing to worry about it.  If you’re getting blood work done anyway, why not just take a little more to find out if you are at risk. Now, let me get into the A1C discussion like I promised earlier.  Pretty much we can all start to so goodbye and farewell to that oh so important number.  The A1C will be slowly faded out over the rest of this year and the beginning of 2008.  It will now become called your “median blood sugar.”  It will also have a slightly different level of reading.  So your lucky number 7 or below that you have been targeting for so long will no longer be as important.  There will become a whole new scale you want to aim for. I also found it interesting that all of the CDE’s had expressed the same belief that they have never had a patient come in with an A1c of lower then 7 who did not experience multiple lows throughout the course of the day, which, because of this, could leave to gaining weight because of all the eating trying to fix a low. 

Please comment on any of this, I’d like to know if anybody out there knows about the GFR, or is it just me who is clueless.  Thanks.

Read more about Kidney disease and GFR here.