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Airport Security

I know there has been a lot of discussion lately about airport security and the new guidelines and the new types of screenings that show images of your body and what not.  I was first going to post about the issues that I already have to go through, as well as other diabetics when going through security.

As is right now, when I get to the security gate, it’s not just taking off a jacket and worrying about taking my shoes off, but I take my computer out of the bag, take out the bag of insulin and supplies and put that in it’s own separate bin that way I don’t have to get an individual search, even though that still happens most of the time.  I also disconnect my pump and put it through the x-ray machine as well because my clip sets off the metal detector, so it’s easy to just disconnect for 10 seconds then it is to unclip it and then re-clip it.

After that, it’s over.  I dont have as many issues with my security checks as I did when I was using insulin pens and needles and syringes.  At that time my bags were checked a lot.  I’ll be taking a lot of insulin with me for this trip since it is for Thanksgiving, so I already know there will be a lot of carb intake, ha.

Well have a great day ya’ll

Diabetes in a Meeting

Earlier today I had to go to a client meeting and knew it was going to be about a 40 minute drive there, an hour meeting and then about another 40 minute drive home.  Whenever I have to sit it on meetings, I get nervous that my blood sugar is going to get low, and I hate pulling out Skittles in the middle of the meeting because people look at you weird, like are you serious, in the middle of a meeting you have to eat?  If they knew I was diabetic, then there would be no problem, but I don’t introduce myself as, Hi Im Chris, nice to meet you and I’m diabetic.  If I feel my blood sugar is low, I will not hesitate to pull the Skittles out and eat some because my life and health is more important than any meeting that I will ever be in.

Before I left for the meeting I tested my sugar and it was at about 155.  At that level and with a small lunch that I ate, I knew that it would go below 100 before the meeting was over.  I took a small bag of Skittles with me and headed to the meeting.  We were a little early so we stopped at Starbucks and I got a regular coffee, but sprinkled some Cinnamon on it, (which is my favorite way to drink coffee from Starbucks.)  I knew that this would also raise my sugar a  little and keep it from going too low during the meeting.  Once we got to the meeting, I realized that I forgot my meter back at the office so I couldn’t test again.  I just ate a few Skittles before we went into the meeting, because I would rather my sugar be around 170-200 during the meeting then it drop to 70-90 and start to get sweaty and start to think less clearly during the meeting.

To sum things up, it was all good.  The meeting went exceptionally well and my blood sugar did not go down at all and by the time I got back to the office, it was not high either, it was right around 160-ish, don’t remember exactly right now what it was.

This leads me to asking you all, how do you deal with having to go into meetings with diabetes?  Do you bring in juice, candy, do you let the people in the meeting know that you are diabetic and may need to excuse yourself? I’d love to hear all of your comments on how you handle.

Sugar Free Saturday Volume 2

Well, last week I decided to go back to trying my Sugar Free Saturday way of cutting back on my insulin intake so I can possibly get that OmniPod I want so bad.  Sorry if you are tired of hearing about how I want the OmniPod, but it is the only way to continue to remind myself what I am fighting for, why I am eating a salad at lunch or a half of sandwich instead of a whole foot long sub or food court chinese food.  It is all because I am losing weight to make lifestyle changes.  There is going to be some sugar in my food intake tonight, unless the wedding that I am going to doesn’t serve the cake until after midnight.

Speaking of which, this post isn’t going to be long because I have to get ready for this wedding that I have to go to tonight.  Going to weddings are not really fun in my mind, but I try to make the best of them.  I have to make sure that I always take an extra infusion set and insulin, and strips and anything else that I may need because there is no going back to get more supplies or leaving the wedding earlier.  Unfortunately, that happened to me one time.  My cousin got married back in 2007 and I flew back home for it because I was in the wedding party.  Well long story short, the reception was at a campgrounds about an hour away and we were to spend the night there.  About 2 hours into the reception, I realized that I only had about 15 units of insulin and forgot to bring more. So I had to go all the way home and miss the whole night of fun and time with the family.

Well, have a great day everybody.  Only one more day until World Diabetes Day.

Sunday Funday

I normally don’t blog on Sundays because it is a day that I just like to relax and do nothing at all and not even really open up my laptop except at night to start preparing for the week.  However, I am trying to post every day this month, so I am taking time to post today.

I am leaving in a little while to head down south to the Parrot Bar in Fort Lauderdale, which is an all Philadelphia Eagles fan bar.  If you’re not an Eagles fan, then you don’t belong there.  My Sundays do not typically end up in good blood sugars because I eat extremely unhealthy on these days.

One more week until WDD, I’m excited. This is a quick post because I have to change my reservoir, my batter in my insulin pump and get a new box of strips ready to go for my meter. Fun, Fun Fun.

Another Weekend Approaches, Another Monday Here Fast

Ahh, another Friday, another short weekend and then back to work on Monday. It seems that my weekends lately have just gone by so fast and I don’t get anything accomplished that I want to. I have been trying to work on like 10 different things at once, and am not getting anywhere on any of them. Which leads me to believe that I should just work on one or two things at a time and get them finished and then move onto the next thing. I was looking to release the beta version of the #bgnow app soon, but there have been big delays unfortunately.

As I talked about in my post yesterday, I have been dieting and exercising a little differently, and it is still going well.  The weekend is what I am worried about because that is when I start to really to eat unhealthy because I have access to more time and food to make a decision on where I want to go eat, plus I get bored and then just eat.  This weekend I do plan to get a lot done however.  Theres still a lot to do for World Diabetes Day, and I feel that I just haven’t had the time to get the things done that I want to get done.  Do you ever get that feeling that there is always something that comes up that just completely throws everything else off?  I always get that feeling.  It just seems that I have time planned to do something and then bam, something comes up that just totally changes everything and I can’t do it anymore.

Anyway, on another, good note.  Amanda is taking me somewhere on Sunday for the Eagles game as an extended birthday gift, mainly because the Eagles didn’t play last week during my birthday weekend, well pre-birthday weekend.  It should be fun.  Also, I have to re-order my insulin soon through my new insurance, so I am a little nervous on having to do this, because I don’t have much left and there are always problems when trying to re-order insulin.  I will let you all know how that goes.  I should be re-ordering it on Monday, so we shall see.

Have a wonderful weekend everybody.

Busy Day Today

Sorry that this post is so late at night, but I had a long day and just got around to it now.  I was at work until 6:15 tonight and then I started my Spanish classes at my job tonight, so that didn’t get over until almost 7:45.  After that, I came home, ate, relaxed for a few minutes then got a haircut, showered and now here I am.  I am excited to be taking a Spanish class.  This is the first class that I’ve taken since I graduated college a few years ago.  I have a textbook and everything!

Before class started, around 5-ish, I noticed that my blood sugar was down at 103 and I didn’t have any candy or anything.  When I went upstairs at 6 for the class, I saw that there were chocolate chip cookies, so I ate two of them to keep my blood sugar steady during class.  When I got home, my pumped beeped and I was out of insulin.  It totally slipped my mind that I was supposed to rewind my pump and put in some more insulin at 6:00 before the class.  Ooops.  When I came home tonight before dinner, it was up to 387.

Big jump, but it is my own fault.  I was not able to make it to the gym today, but I ate healthy for lunch and for dinner, so that is at least one goal that I wanted to accomplish.  I still feel that I am just accepting the fact that I didn’t have time to go to the gym, even though I could have forced myself to go, I was just so exhausted and I didn’t think it would be a good idea.

Well, have a good day tomorrow.  Phillies begin their World Series journey tomorrow.

Life of a Diabetic Has Been Busy

The life of this diabetic has been crazy busy over the last few days.  This new work schedule is finely starting to feel normal, and I must admit, I actually like the schedule.  Let’s take a look at how my new day goes:

7:00 a.m. – Alarm goes off

7:15 a.m. – I actually wake up

7:15 a.m. – test blood sugar

7:20 a.m. – coffee, breakfast, shower

8:00 a.m. – hitting the road for my commute

8:45 a.m. – get to work and test sugar again to see how breakfast was holding up

11:00 a.m. – test sugar to see if correction was good

12:30 p.m. – test sugar because it is lunch time soon

2:30 p.m. – test sugar to see how good my bolus was

5:30 p.m. – test sugar once more because I am getting ready to leave at 6 to drive home

7:00 p.m. get home from work and go for a quick walk

7:30 p.m. – get home from walk, start to cook, eat and cleanup dinner

9:00 p.m. log into blog, check out comments, attempt to respond to twitter comments

10:00 p.m. – check sugar

12:30 a.m – laying in bed trying to fall asleep to start the same thing over the next day.

There is not one time throughout the day that I hate that busy schedule.  I absolutely love it.  Living a schedule like this with type 1 diabetes or any disease in that matter can start to wear on your health if you are not taking care of yourself properly.  I try to force myself to test my blood sugar during these times because I know that I will forget to do it.  I set the alarm on my pump now, I have never used that alarm before in my life.  I think it might annoy my co-workers, but nobody has said anything yet.  They are all usually listening to music anyway, so I don’t think they even notice.

Tonight I am going to be up later because I have a lot of other things to take care of, lots and lots of e-mails I haven’t responded to in almost 3-4 days.  So if you e-mailed me, sorry I will get to it tonight, promise.

Time for that energy drink.

Have a great Friday tomorrow everybody.

What is a Normal Life with Diabetes

The other day somebody was talking to me about my blog and I mentioned that it’s a blog about how I live normally with diabetes.  They then asked me, what does that mean?  What does living normally with diabetes mean?  Well, I had never been asked that question before, but I thought about it and here is my answer.  This is how I live normally with type 1 diabetes.

I’ve spoken about my life before diabetes on here a few times, but it’s 99.9% about my life now, which obviously includes being a diabetic.  When I was diagnosed 6 years ago, I knew my life would change, but I wasn’t sure how, and I didn’t know how much.  Living normally with diabetes means to me that I live a normal life, just like anybody else, except that I have diabetes.  This means that I have some additional things that I must do.  For instance, I go to the gym, well try to, just like anybody else, except I must test my blood sugar before, during, and after.  I go out to dinner just like anybody else, except I pull out my insulin pump, count my carbs, and intake some insulin.

Insulin pumps, testing strips, blood glucose meters, IV preps, lancets, lancing devices, reservoirs, infusion sets, this is normal to me.  Therefore, I’m living a normal life with diabetes.

Ever Feel Like You Are Always Falling Behind?

Do you ever get the feeling that no matter how hard you are working or how much effort you are putting into something that you are just always falling behind?  I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.  Sometimes I just feel that I can never catch up.  No matter what it is.  As soon as you try to catch up on your work, you fall behind on exercise.  You try to catch up on tv / movies / reading, you fall behind on work.  You catch up on e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, and you fall behind on family time.  It is just one big revolving cycle.  There is one thing that sometimes takes a back seat, but I need to make sure it moves right up to the front of the line, diabetes.

Too often I am skipping a test because I am busy and just want to eat quickly and guestimate my bolus.  “I’ll just bolus for the carbs and then check later to correct”.  How often do you find yourself saying it?  Because I know I’m not the only one who odes that either. But as bad as I know it is, I still do it.  Why?  I guess it’s kind of like a kid knowing a stove is hot, but still touching it anyway?  Or is that just a bad analogy?

Why does it have to be so difficult to manage at times?  I do so well managing it for weeks at a time, but then I get complacent with my numbers and start to slack and then all of my hard work is now ruined with a few days of really high numbers.  That’s it.  I’m putting my foot down diabetes. You are not going to make me feel like crap ever again.  I am going to test, test, test and test again when I feel like you are starting to win a battle over me.  If you are gaining on me, I will send in reinforcements in the form of insulin and conquer you!

Take that one diabetes.

Vacation Over Means Back to Blogging

What is this thing called a WordPress dashboard that I just logged into?  Luckily my password was saved in Firefox or I may have not remembered what the password was.  Hello everybody again.  It has been a while since my last blog post and that was a decision that I made several weeks ago.  I was beginning to spread myself too thin between a million different projects that I had going on, plus my personal life was very busy as well.  I just got back from a nice trip back north and have some good things to talk about.

First, I had decided to go to the 140 Conference in New York, so since I was going up there I may as well make a trip out of it and visit family.  I flew into Allentown on Saturday and spent 2 days in PA with my family before taking the bus up to NYC for a few days.  NYC was awesome!  I have been there before, but only stayed over night there one time.  This was Amanda’s second time in NYC and first time staying over night, so she was beyond excited.  I think the million photos and over 20 minutes of Flip cam video we have proves that.  I just finished editing the video last night to make a 15 minute movie, so I will cut down some of that into clips and post online soon.

I went to NYC with only 3 testing strips, more on that in tomorrow’s post.  On Wednesday, we took a bus back home and it was more time with the family until this past Saturday when we had to fly back home.  Anytime I go up north and see family, it really puts things into a totally different perspective for me.  Down here in Florida I am constantly on the go, whether it is writing 5 blog posts right after each other, then jumping into Photoshop, then heading to Starbucks for a meeting, then desiging a new web page and before you know it, it’s 2:00 a.m.  Up there, everything slows down.  I only check mail a few times throughout the day on my phone, if it’s not an emergency, then it can wait.  Seeing my 5-month old niece for only the 2nd time since she was born is a bittersweet moment as well.  It’s great to see her, but also realize how much you miss by living down here.

Then comes the diabetes part.  Every family member that I visit is asking me about my diabetes and sometimes I wish I just had a recorder to give the same answer to everybody.  But all in all, it is good to be back, mainly because I don’t receive paychecks up north, ha.  And I’m back to getting up at 7 and starting my new diet (going to beach in July with parents and brother’s family, so I can’t weigh more than my brother!).

Have a great Monday everybody and I look forward to talking with you all on Twitter again.