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Today is the second volume of Fired Up Friday. Last week’s first edition was about Share A Story contests. Remember these posts are my opinions based only upon my own personal experiences. If what I am saying is wrong, please comment and let me know because I have an open mind and have changed opinions on things once I learned more about them. Today’s post is going to be about “Free Diabetes Supplies”
We have all heard the commercials on tv about call in now and receive free diabetes supplies. Sign up for this and get free diabetes supplies. Fill out this form and get free diabetes supplies. Honestly, when was the last time you got free diabetes supplies? Sure, I’ve received a lot of meters for free, but what good does that do for me, it comes with 10 strips! Guess what, I use 10 strips a day, so thanks your free supplies lasted me a day! You have now just lost my respect for your company because you’re trying to just sucker me into your customer mailing list.
There are a lot of marketing guidelines when it comes to anything that is medical related, and I know the word Free is a tough word to actually use in the diabetes market. Usually it comes with a little asterik next to it that has such small fine print that the patients on Medicare can’t read anyway. Being a marketing consultant myself, I obviously know the benefits of using the word FREE, but there are limitations and certain situations / products that it should just not be allowed. Diabetes is such an expensive disease to manage that when people see or hear free, their eyes light up and run right over. They may be in such dire need, that they just sign up for the free supplies and next thing you know, 90 days later are smacked with more supplies with a $400 bill. Is that really showing that you care about your customers, so that’s why you give things away for free?
When will you manufacturers and supply companies listen. Stop advertising Free Diabetic Supplies and just sending out a free meter and that’s it. I think giving away free meters is a great marketing tactic and a great way to get a new customer, but advertise it that you’re just getting a free meter. It is very confusing, especially to elderly people on Medicare that end up getting stuck with this large bill for the testing strips that go along with their free meter.
Enough of my thoughts, what do you think? Do you think it is ok for supply companies and manufacturers to always advertise free diabetes supplies?
Back in the first or second week of January, I wrote a post about my three words of 2010. These words were growth, dedication, and health. I outlined what all 3 of them meant to me and what my plans were to achieve and live those 3 words all year long. Today I wanted to take the time and give a monthly update on those three words. If you have read that post, I encourage you to so this post makes sense to you. I also encourage you to do your own 3 words and then share them with me, because I would love to see what yours are as well.
Growth
The main reasoning for this was to grow as a person, just become a better person. Over the last month I have been doing this quite well. I do not get to flustered over minor things, I don’t let the little things in life get to me and ruin my day like they once have. If somebody cuts in front of me in the grocery line, I just take a deep breathe and smile. A lot of times when my blood sugar gets high, my patience goes right out the door, I’m sure you all know what I mean, so I have been trying hard to control that as well. There have been times in the past that I have been short and snappy with Amanda just because my blood sugar is low, and she doesn’t deserve that because my insulin didn’t work properly. She understands that if my sugar is high that I am probably not going to be the happiest person in the world. There is still room for more growth, there always is.
Dedication
I have definitely slacked off here, big time. I have dedicated myself to my business a lot more. I am accomplishing more work for current clients, but haven’t spent enough time recruiting more. Exercise wise, there really hasn’t been any. I exercise, once or twice a week because I always feel like I have no time, but that is why I have made this one of my words of 2010. I have not dedicated enough time to cooking healthy meals either. I have been given a 1-month free trial pass to LA Fitness, so I am going to go there for a month and that should get me back into the motions of wanting to exercise again because of how good it makes me feel.
Health
For those of you that follow me on Twitter, know that my blood sugars have not been that good lately. I have been sick and have been having really high blood sugars all week long. There have been a few that hit the 400’s but the average has been around 250 or so. You can see my 7,14,and 30 day averages in yesterday’s post about not having an A1C test done for a while. This is my number one concern is my health. My dedication is going to be the key factor into getting my health better again.
So enough blogging about it, and time to actually do it!
Not having insurance for some time really sucks. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but it does. For those of you in that boat, you know what I mean. I was insured the entire time I was diabetic, so I had no clue how it would actually feel. I could only imagine, but now that my COBRA should be kicking in soon (fingers crossed), things may be getting better. I have not had an A1C test done or seen my doctor since October. I was seeing her on a regular monthly schedule. The very first thing that I am going to be doing when I get that confirmation letter that I am covered again is schedule an appointment with her.
I know that my A1C is not going to be good this time around. I am not even going to try and make myself believe that. Over the last month, my overall sugars have been crap! Below are snapshots of my 7 day, 14 day, and 30 day average levels, respectively. As you will see, not that good.
The 7 day average is mainly due to two bad sites and being sick. My last A1C was 6.9. I was happy with that at the time because the one before that was 7.1, so it was declining. Unfortunately, that is not going to be the case. At least one of my top 10 goals of 2010 should get accomplished. These elevated blood sugars can be explained with two simple words: diet and exercise. Actually, those words may not be as simple as we think. Let’s get into details.
Diet
If you do a search in the dictionary for the word diet you come up with 11 different varieties of the word. Yea, 11! You can choose whichever one you want, but I have decided to go with this one:
“a particular selection of food, esp. as designed or prescribed to improve a person’s physical condition or to prevent or treat a disease: a diet low in sugar.”
That sounds exactly like what I am trying to do. I select certain foods to make me lose weight and keep my blood sugars normal. That part seems easy to do, but it’s the management of it that gets me every time. I feel that I don’t have the time to make a healthy dinner every night. Well that’s just BS because the time that I spend sitting in a restaurant or waiting in line at a fast food joint, I could have spent cutting up some veggies and grilling or boiling some chicken. One tip that has helped me in the past with this is to just put my laptop next to the grill and do some of my consulting work while the food is cooking. Getting something accomplished while making a good, healthy meal.
The next part that ruins my diet every time is the cravings. One craving will kill a whole week’s worth of dieting. I always get cravings for Chinese food, which is my number one craving. I used to crave Taco Bell all the time, but I fought that one off, so I know it is possible to do it with this one as well. A good way to fight off these cravings is to cook up some veggies myself, grill some pork loins and then make my own stir fry with brown rice, there’s my craving fix.
The final struggle to my diet woes is portion control. Even when I do cook a healthy meal, let’s say for example that stir fry I just spoke about. It doesn’t make it healthy when I eat 3 plates of it when I should be eating only 1, maybe a half of a second plate. The way I always justify it to myself is that, well it’s healthier than eating 3 servings of Chinese food, which that logic needs to go, which I know this, it’s just the fact of actually doing it.
These 3 things are what are killing my diet, but I know what I need to do and will need to work harder to stop doing these things and I should be ok.
Exercise
This one is simple and easy to explain, laziness. I make way too many excuses because I am so busy. I work 3.5 days a week on site at Volvo Aero Services and then am doing about 50-60 hours a week worth of consulting or web design work, so there is very little time to fit things in. I also have season tickets to the Florida Panthers so there are nights that I can’t exercise because I don’t get done working until about 5-5:30 and have to leave for the game at 6:30. So that gives me one hour to either cook a good dinner or exercise, and typically neither one of those even happen.
I am sure that I share these same problems with everybody. If it was simple and easy, I’m sure we could all get over these hurdles easily, but they are not simple and easy. It makes it a lot easier however having the supporting cast on here that we all have. Every day that I am living with being overweight is just hurting me in the long run.
It all comes back to my 3 words of 2010 and getting it done!
My lack of sleep over the past few weeks is finally starting to catch up on me. I seem to always be dragging and not at full strength. I am getting a lot of work done and staying focused on my work, but as soon as I step away from my desk, I can’t seem to funcition. So I guess it is good for business, but not good for personal. However, I will need to rest up a bit because I am a tad bit sick.
Last week Amanda’s mom was a little sick with a cold and sore throat, guess who caught it? That’s right I did. The other night I was starting to feel a little stuffy and like a sinus cold was coming on because there was a big drop in temperature, so that was normal for me. Then on Sunday night my ear started to feel like it needed to pop, and when I woke up yesterday morning it felt that same way. I was told to try some Claritin D because it was probably just my sinuses acting up. When I woke up this morning and felt even worse, throat hurt more, ear felt more clogged, I decided to go to the clinic. This is where the adventure began.
I am without health insurance right now, I am in the process of getting Cobra, but that’s a whole other story by itself, being held up because my former employer isn’t playing very nice with me and my insurance provider to smooth the process, that’s a different story in itself. So I called around to see how expensive different clinics were and they all averaged about $100-$150. I then came across the CVS Minute-Clinic. It was only $65, so why not go there. Let’s first discuss this name, should be more like CVS 60 minute-clinic to get seen.
After waiting for nearly an hour, I was finally seen by the person, not sure what her credentials were. I explained the situation, so she checked my throat and my ears. She then proceeded to open up an operations and procedures binder and started asking me yes / no questions, like she was just going down a checklist of things I could have done on WebMD. After about 5-10 minutes of that she started to collection some information from me. Once I told her I was diabetic, she instantly started to freak. “Well, I have to follow different procedure since your diabetic, I have to refer you out to another clinic, I can’t prescribe anything for you because you have diabetes.”
She made a phone call to ac colleague I guess and they decided to refer me to an MD Now clinic in Boca Raton. Guess what, I called that place this morning and it was $130, exactly why I didn’t want to go there in the first place. After about a total of 90 minutes inside CVS I said, I’m not paying for this visit because you’re referring me somewhere else and I didn’t’ get anything out of the visit, and she agreed and said she wouldn’t charge, finally something good out of that place.
I went over to the MD Now and signed in and was asked for my insurance cards. “I don’t have insurance, I’m paying out of pocket.” Receptionist replies with, “Ok that will be $130 and additional fees for any services or tests ran during the visit, I can take your payment now, credit or debit.” Well, ok good day to you too. So I paid the $130, even though I was trying to avoid that, but no options here. I only waited about 5 minutes there and was brought back and was speaking with the doctor within minutes. So this is what I paid $130 for.
Sinus issue going on with your ear, take Mucinex D to loosen it up. It looks like it could be turning into an infection so here’s a prescription for amoxicillin. The best part about it was that I got the prescription for free from Publix (grocery store) because they give free generic prescriptions for up to 14 days. I was able to save money there which helped out, but still out $130.I guess it is worth it to have that piece of mind to know exactly what the issue is. Still sucks though because I can barely hear out of my right ear and feels like I have been flying for 24 hours without being able to pop my ear.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, Sunday was just very blah. Even after I posted the blog, it didn’t get much better. My blood sugar hit a high of 465, right before I was to go to dinner. I took almost a 17 unit correction and knew I wouldn’t be eating for about another 30-45 minutes. Everybody ordered pizza, but I knew that I obviously couldn’t eat that with a high blood sugar, so I opted out for a Greek salad. Luckily, the waitress forgot to put my order in and my salad came out 10 minutes after everybody else was eating. This gave my sugar more time to come down, which it came down to 285 before I ate. It just felt like crap sitting there not being able to eat the pizza because my sugar was so high. But this is that’s what goes on sometimes when you’re living a life with diabetes.
The salad was good for my diet however, so that was one good thing. One of the in-laws had asked me, why I was eating salad, was it better for my diabetic diet? I said, well I’m just on a general diet, nothing special because I am diabetic, I have insulin to take if I eat bad things. After having a short conversation, I said why don’t you read my diabetes blog on a daily basis, because you can learn a lot about diabetes from it, and from reading one of the other diabetes blogs. Hopefully you all see your reader base go up by one 
Because of the high blood sugars yesterday, I decided to take a break from my BBQ sauce that I have fell in love with over the past several weeks. I figured that it would be a good idea to keep that high fructose corn syrup out of my diet for a while. Somebody sent me an e-mail after I wrote that post about their sauce being the only one approved by the ADA, I’d love to try it, if you are out there listening.
Well it is a Monday, so I should probably start working on some projects that I probably slacked off  on over the weekend. I’d so much rather be doing this again (see picture on left, Par 5, second shot)
This Sunday morning has not had the greatest start to it so far. For one, I had a high blood sugar all night long. Partially my fault, and partially because a bad site. I changed the site this morning and my sugars are still a little high, but slowly coming down. I hate eating when I have a high and am trying to correct it, but I had just woken up and there was sausage and gravy over biscuits waiting for me downstairs, so I just had to. The weather outside is not very nice, not bad, just not nice. It is cloudy and just looks, blah. I shouldn’t complain though because it is about 75 here today.
To add to that I have this annoying cough that won’t go away. I’ve had it for about 2 days, but now it is at it’s worst. Amanda has been sick with a little cold, so I think I am picking that up as well. I’m hoping it calms down a little for dinner tonight. It is Amanda’s grandmother’s birthday so the whole family is heading to a local pizza joint for dinner. Today is also another big day in my sports world, no not the Pro Bowl. Florida Panthers best player, David Booth makes his return today after being injured with head injuries since October. The worst part is that the game is home, I have tickets, and I am skipping it for the family dinner.
Speaking about sports, last night my alumni Florida Atlantic University played a women’s / men’s doubleheader in basketball against their rival Florida International University. This is a big game in itself, but even bigger last night. Former Piston’s star, Isiah Thomas is now their head coach, so of course the FAU fans were getting on him big time about his little mishap while being the Knicks coach. FAU kicked butt and won.
One final thing, I watched the Julie & Julia movie last night, it was ok. I liked the part of the movie when she was blogging, but the France junk I didn’t like.
Well, my coffee is out, so I need a refill and I need to get back to work. Had a few proposals get denied, so time to get working on some new ones.
Last night I started to think about some things, usually not good when I do this kind of stuff. Diabetes makes me think a lot. Let me exaplain the background of the story first and why it came about. Over the last, I’d say 2-3 weeks I have fell in love with this new bbq sauce. It is the Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Chipotle. I am not getting paid by them, nor have I received anything for free, even though, I will admit I wish I did! This bbq was found randomly because a local grocery store, Albertson’s, is closing down. I tasted it, and that was the end of that. I have eaten it on literally everything. Salad, sandwiches, steak, fries, crackers, bagels, EVERYTHING!
Last night we decided to look at the ingredients and the very first one on there was high fructose corn syrup. Hmm, probably not the best thing for somebody, especially a diabetic. So my girlfriend asked, “is it healthy for your to be eating this much of this when you have diabetes?” My quick reply was no, “no definitely not, but it is amazing!”
About 2 hours later that situation popped into my head and I started to think about it. Has that ever happened to you? Somebody says something to you, and it means nothing but then some time passes and you actually think about what they really said. And on went my brain.
How much are my “live for right now” decisions hurting me in the long run? When will I get back in to see my doctor? Can I get private dental insurance as a diabetic? Why can’t I just stick to my diet? Why am I asking so many questions?
Those are just a few of the thoughts that went flying through my mind last night. Usually it gets me into a little bit of a down mood, but last night I snapped out of it pretty quickly. They have recently built a new Dollar Tree across the street from where I am living, so I wanted to walk there and get exercise. Amanda and I also decided to stop into Office Depot because there was a paper shredder there that I wanted last week. It wasn’t on sale anymore. This is when my mood changed.
As I was walking out the door to leave I glanced down and just so happened to see a different paper shredder in the ad for even less money. So I went and asked an employee if they had more because I didn’t initially see them the first time I looked. They did, but they were all on top of the shelf. As I was waiting for somebody to climb up and get the shredder for me, Amanda brought my attention to a $200 desk on sale for $45. It is a large desk, with storage, and lots of room for lots of stuff I have. SOLD!
The desk was already assembled, but I had to take it pretty much completely apart once I got it home in order to get it upstairs to my make-shift home office. And if you are wondering, didn’t you say you walked to the store? Yes, but we had her brothers come pick us up with the truck. I am working on-site today, so I won’t get to use the desk until tonight, but a good desk makes you do a lot better work. Or is that just me?
Sorry about the 2 or 3 different things I was talking about in this post, but that was everything that happened to me yesterday. Good thing I started a diabetes blog a long time ago to get this stuff off of my mind and know that there are others going through the same crap.
Just another day in the life of a diabetic!
After a really long weekend that was eventful and exciting, I had to go to South Beach last night because I was attending a conference there today and didn’t feel like driving down at 5 a.m. This past weekend was awesome, and there wasn’t that many high blood sugars either, it was pretty good. Friday night was just a normal night out on the town, until the end. We ended up at IHOP at 3:30 in the morning, so I wasn’t sure how well that was going to affect my blood sugar. Saturday was a whole lot of nothing, I relaxed a lot, and didn’t really get anything done. I hate days like that, but I guess you need days like that from time to time. Sunday was an amazing day. It was the day of the 25th anniversary of the chili cook off. The best part of that event was seeing Zac Brown Band live. That band is just incredible, enough said.
Yesterday was a long day, which is why I didn’t post anything, or go on Twitter at all. I worked on-site at Volvo from 9-4, then went right down to South Beach, made a few phone calls, answered some e-mails, went to dinner, did a little site seeing and then went to bed to wake up to go to the conference early in the morning. The conference was good. I must admit, I snuck out a little early and went walking around the beach and the shopping district with Amanda for a little and then headed home. I’ll be posting some Chili Cook-Off pictures, videos and also some from South Beach soon.
Time to catch up on more e-mails and make a few more calls.
It definitely feels good to relax pretty much all day today, but why do I feel like I am now so far behind everything. This is why I don’t like to take a day to relax and do nothing because I start to fall so far behind. It is fine for me to take a little bit of time off and relax by watching a movie or something, but I don’t know, I just can’t do the whole day off of not doing anything. I used to be able to turn the Blackberry off and not do any work, but that was different because I didn’t run my own business, so now things are a little different.
The good thing about today though was that my blood sugars were good. I had Chinese food for lunch, pizza for dinner, and having some Reece’s peanut butter sundae as well and my BG is 114 now. A while back I said I was going to create a sugar free Saturday, but that didn’t last too long. On the better side of things, I have been eating better overall and am losing some weight. Not as much as I had wanted by this time, but I am feeling better and am looking a little skinnier.
Well, it’s getting late and I still have some things to catch up on and then am going to do that relax thing again and watch a movie with Amanda because we have to get up early tomorrow to go to the Chili cook-off.
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