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Category: Endo Appointment

Time To Re-Order Supplies ASAP

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

I contacted my endocrinologist today because I need a new prescription for my pump supplies before I see her later this morning.  I was hoping that I could just wait until I saw her on March 25 to get a prescription from her, but there is no way that I am going to have enough supplies until that time.  I only have four infusion sets left and about 7-8 reservoirs.  The reservoirs, I don’t really care too much about because I re-use them a couple times before I actually throw them away.  Infusion sets obviously can’t be re-used.  I have been keeping one set in for on average about 6 days, and that is not the best idea either.

I am also getting low on testing strips so I am going to get a prescription for that also.  I believe that I am going to stick with using my Freestyle Lite meter just because it is the one that I am the most comfortable with and have used for the longest time.  I don’t know if she will write the ‘script out until I actually see her, but I’m hoping that she will, she’s really nice, so I’m sure there is no reason why she won’t.

I have been out of sensors for a long time because the ones that I have expired in October or November, I’m not sure of the exact date, but I know that I shouldn’t be using them.  Thanks to a fellow d-blogger, not sure if you want to stay private or not, so I won’t mention your name unless you give the ok, was nice enough to lend me a few sensors until my insurance coverage gets a little better and I can start getting them on my own.  Now I just have to re-charge my transmitter because I haven’t used it in so long, not since October.  I am going to try and start using them on Wednesday, so I can get 2 full weeks worth of data for my doctor’s visit.

I hate being this low on supplies, but it is part of life.  I can get them, I just didn’t know the process of getting them and just became ignorant to that fact and haven’t taken initiative until recently to make a few phone calls to figure out what I was supposed to do.  Well, time to wait on the e-mail notification on whether or not I am going to get my scripts today or not.

Have a wonderful day everybody.

Diabetes Makes Me Think A Lot

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

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!

Using CGM, First Time in Two Months

Chris Stocker

Today I have decided to wear my sensor for the first time in almost two months.  I had it charging all night long because it wasn’t even connected to the charger during that 2 months.  I am not even sure if the sensors are still good because I know that they have  short expiration date.  Oh well, I will still use it and see how it goes.  I better change the battery in my pump though because I think it is almost at half life and the sensor kills the battery within a few days, even when it’s a brand new one.  I use the Medtronic CGMS just in case you didn’t remember.

I have a doctor’s appointment coming up in a few weeks and she really wants to see the results from the CGM and she usually only looks at the 2-3 weeks prior, so this is good enough amount of time for her to see, and also for me not to get in trouble again for not doing it.  I also have to get my A1C down next week, which I am not looking forward to because I don’t think that it is going to be a good number.  I have managed my sugars pretty well the last 3 months, but there have just been some random highs here and there that just concern me.

Today is also Monday, so we all know what that means, time to start the diet again.  I had coffee to start off the morning, but didn’t eat anything.  For lunch I am going to have a salad and a little bit of left over pasta.  Tonight for dinner I am going to a banquet for the football league that I coached this year.  There is going to be a lot of different random food because I believe it is a pot luck type style.  My assistant coach and myself are supposed to bring pizza, so I’ll be bringing whatever pizza is on sale, the kids won’t care, they will love it either way.

The afternoon today is also going to consist of more job hunting and submitting resume’s online.  I’m not just looking for a regular 9-5 but also some contract or telecommuting type jobs as well for CSI Marketing Solutions.  I haven’t been real aggressive in looking for clients, but I think it’s about time that I start to do that.

Well have a good week everybody.

Lack of Exercise Has Brought Weight Back On

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

In a post I did earlier in the week, I explained that I was working a lot and not really sleeping at all.  Well, along with that I have been working right through exercise time as well.  My exercise has consisted of throwing footballs and doing a little jogging at football practice when I am coaching, that is about it.  I also have not been eating healthy again because I haven’t really gone to the grocery store in a long time.  I don’t really have the funds right now to go out and by $100 worth of groceries.  Business is good, but there are plenty of other things that require my money at the current time.  Back to the subject, I have put some weight back on unfortunately.  Not a lot, I am still down a few pounds from back in September when I got serious about losing weight, but still not down to what I want to be.

I have a monthly goal of losing 5 pounds before every doctor visit, which at this time is every 4-6 weeks.  I may have to cancel my next visit that is scheduled for later this month because I may not have insurance coverage at the time, we shall see and I should have a better answer shortly about that situation.  Once again, if anybody has information about being on Cobra, I really need your help.  I’ll post more tomorrow, but I no longer work at the diabetes supply company that I worked at for 2 1/2 years.

I will get back into my workout habits again, it doesn’t take much for me to get back into the gym, it’s just making sure that I continue to go everyday, well at least 5 times a week.  I also need to cut back on my coffee intake and fast food.  Lately I have not been cooking breakfast, instead I have just been going to Dunkin Donuts and getting a large coffee and a sausage biscuit (it’s only $0.99 so that’s why.)

Here is my goal and I will keep a daily record on my blog of this starting on Friday November 6, 2009.  I’m going to look for a cool WordPress plugin, if anybody knows of one, let me know, that will put a chart or graph into my blog and I will add it into here.  But I will keep track of my daily calorie intake, as well as how much exercise and energy drinks that I intake.

MMM….Insulin

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

MMM….Insulin.  That’s what I said to myself today around 10:00 a.m. when a co-worker came up to my desk and said, there’s a package downstairs for you.  I was starting to get extremely nervous because about 20 minutes before that, my pump beeped and said “Low Reservoir” and I was completely out of insulin.  I am supposed to get a phone call when my insulin is shipped, but I never received a phone call, so I was really worried because it was Friday and I knew it wouldn’t be delivered on the weekend.  I finally received that call about 3 hours after the insulin was delivered, what good was that?

Once that new shipment of insulin came I took out 1 vial to let it settle to room temperature because I knew I would need to re-fill it soon.  I think we all know that cold insulin does not feel good at all.  I can remember the first time I took cold insulin, it was through an insulin pen, it burned like crazy.  I felt like somebody took a lighter and just put it up to my skin.  Never did that ever again. Now, into the problem that I have with my insulin company.

I have never seen a company so…ridiculous…for a lack of words.  It is the mail order company that my insurance requires me to use for my mail order services.  Last Friday I filled out the order form and faxed it in and faxed in the prescription that my doctor had just written out for me.  Not good enough for them because the prescription has to come directly from the doctor.  So, I called the doctor’s office and they then faxed it over to them.  Nope, still not good enough.  I have to fill out the order form myself, with my insurance information, billing, shipping, all the good stuff.  Then I have to fax that form to my doctor, who then has to fill out the prescription on that piece of paper, so it can’t be a separate prescription, it has to be hand-written onto that sheet.  Then finally my doctor’s office can fax it over.  So this took up until Monday to finally complete.  Then once they receive it, it takes 24-48 hours to enter the order into the system (I don’t know how it can take that long).  Once the order is in the system it takes 3-5 business to process the order (once again, no idea how it takes that long), but oh don’t worry they ship it overnight for free.  Well you freakin should for taking a damn week to process it!

Well, as you see here, my insulin is in my possession, finally, and I am very happy to see it here.  Time to now put it into the fridge and let it stay there until I need it.  Luckily I won’t have to go through this in December when I re-order because the prescription will be on file.

Well, it’s 8:00 p.m. Friday night, I need to go.  Good news today, my LLC finally went through, official company name is “CSI Marketing Solutions, LLC”

Doctors, Deductibles, Diabetes, Contract Work – OH MY!

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Doctors and deductibles.  Both have things in common, but also a lot of differences as well.  You don’t want to have a high deductible, just as much as you don’t want to have a high doctor.  Your happy when you meet your deductible, hopefully you are happy after you meet your doctor.  But then comes my discussion and dilemma, which I know a lot of you share with me.  Do you skip or hold off on visits because you have met your deductible and then in two months it sets back to zero and you have to start all over again?

I need to go to the dentist because it has been almost a year and a half since I last saw my old dentist back in PA.  I don’t want to go right now because I haven’t met my calendar year deductible.  So why not just wait until January 1, right?  My endo was fine with that decision except that I said the same thing last year as well, which is exactly why I haven’t seen a dentist for as long as I have.  So then I started to think, is it just a lame excuse to not go and see the doc?  I also need to go get my yearly eye exam.  I do believe, however, that I went for a check-up earlier this year because I needed a new prescription for my contacts and needed new glasses.

Now, some of you may be thinking, how in the world have you not met your deductible this late into the year?  I got a new insulin pump in January, I have infusion sets, reservoirs, transmitter and sensors for my continuous glucose monitor (CGM), but they were all billed from an out-of-network provider, so that ate up my out of network deductible, but didn’t touch my in-network.  All of my doctors are all in network with the type of insurance that I have.  And of course the money that I pay every 90 days for my insulin does not go towards my deductible, why would it?  So that leaves me with only one thing going towards it and that is my doctor’s visits.  So until I meet that deductible, there is no co-pay, it is strictly going towards the deductible.

I started seeing my new endo back in May or June, don’t exactly remember and I have had monthly, well every 4-6 week visits since then.  And since the insurance isn’t covering anything yet, I’m sure you know much it is costing me for these endo appointments.  So I am paying a monthly premium for my insurance, but still paying monthly doctor bills.  I guess it could be worse because I don’t pay anything at all for my pump supplies and testing strips, at least not yet.

Now, getting a little off of the deductible topic and into a more general insurance topic, private insurance.  For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you know who I work for, and that has been disclosed before the FTC crack down on it.  Any who, I receive insurance from them as a full time employee.  I have also created a company within the last 60 days as well.  This wasn’t really a planned thing so I will explain it briefly.  I had friends and relatives that knew I was really into geeky, cool, tech things like website design, blogging, and social media.  A few people needed help getting started on Facebook and Twitter etc.  So then I said well why not start getting paid for doing this stuff.  Then it started to evolve and had people asking me to do their PPC campaigns, (Google Adwords primarily) and also some organic SEO stuff.  Now I definitely have to charge for that type of stuff because it is not the easiest and quickest stuff to do.  Do I have to disclose when I am talking about my own company?  Well, just in case, I own Chris Stocker Inc, with 10% of all profits being donated to JDRF.  Now you know the story, here is the question.

Since I am diabetic, I feel restricted that I have to work for a corporation that will offer me insurance.  Is this new PPC / SEO business paying the bills?  No, not really, so I’m not looking for this to be a full-time gig or expand it into something large with several employees, then in which I would be able to get some group insurance.  This is just something that I am extremely passionate about and love to do, so I do it on the side and would love for my career path to follow this way.  The only problem with that is a lot of work in this industry is done on a contract basis, and there’s no insurance in contracted jobs.

So what am I to do?  Are there any of you out there now that do this type of thing or any contracted work?  Or own your own business?  Like I said before, at this time there are no plans to expand to the level needed for insurance.  I would really appreciate all of your help on this.

Monday Ramblings, Pink in the NFL, New Basal Rates, No Stress

Chris Stocker

First weekend with the new basal rates and carb to insulin ratio, not bad.  I didn’t see much of a difference, but the after meal highs have come down a little.  There were still highs, but they were about 170-180 insteado f the 230-240 I was having.  It could have also been the food that I ate this weekend because I must admit, it wasn’t the best choices.  Friday night I went to Chile’s.  Saturday night was food court chinese food (my favorite food in the world)  Sunday was a chicken sandwich at the bar watching the Eagles.

This weekend also didn’t really have any stress involved at all.  Saturday Virginia Tech took care of business easily, and so did the Eagles yesterday.  Nothing to stress about sports wise.  My Panthers got beat, but oh well, what are you going to do.  Anyway, onto other things.  I am working on finishing up an interview with my local JDRF person.  She pretty much does everything for the JDRF in this area, so I’ll be posting that later this week.  I have some plans that I’ve been putting together to work with the local office of JDRF and do some more volunteering and working to get more donations.  Hopefully it will all work out, mainly when I actually have some time to.

Seeing all this pink in the NFL again this weekend is pissing me off, because I know that there is not going to be a single thing done for diabetes month.  And there are a few NFL players with diabetes, one of them being a Pro Bowler (Cutler).  Diabetes gets no respect.  Diabetes is the Rodney Dangerfield of comedians, no respect I tell ya.  But all I can do is use my resources that I have to try and get a voice out there and work with you all that have voices as well so maybe one day somebody will hear us.

Well, it’s Monday and Monday’s are always my shortest posts, so I hope you all have an amazing day.

Results From Endo Appointment

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Today’s post, although later is about the results from my endo appointment today.  I just came home from football practice a little bit ago, so that is why it is such a late post tonight.  But anywho, onto the appointment.  A diabetic’s mandatory meeting.

I was actually on time so that started out well.  I handed my pump and my meter to the receptionist so they could pull the numbers off of the two.  For some reason, my meter decided that it didn’t want to work anymore and wouldn’t give the readings so they were going to give me a new Freestyle Lite meter.  I told them to just keep it because I have plenty of meters at home, leave it for somebody that needs one.  [Plus didn’t know if I’d have to report that to the FTC also 🙂 ]

Next up was the blood pressure.  If you recall from my last endo appointment, my blood pressure was a little high, 140/80.  I was very stressed out that day and was running around like crazy before the appointment.  Today I wasn’t stressed at all, it was a perfectly fine day.  My blood pressure was 122/70, perfect.  So there was nothing to worry about with that.  For some reason they weighed me after the blood pressure.  The scale at their office is always about a 10 pound difference then any other scale I step on.  Their scale last time said 254 when mine at home said about 244.  Today, their scale said 246.  So even though I’m not that heavy, I am obviously losing some weight.

As I explained recently, I have had a month full of highs and was trying to figure out why that was happening.  I discussed it with the doc today and we both agreed on all the possible reasons that I mentioned.  Probably a site issue.  We eliminated those highs so we could see patterns in normal days.  Overall, the sugars were pretty damn good.  Just those few high days did it to me.  Like usual my sugars overnight are killing me, literally!  We increased my basal rate during the late night / early morning hours to 1.8 and kept the rest of them at 2.2 – 2.4 depending on the time of day.  We also increased my carb ratio to 1 unit of insulin for every 4 carbs at night time and kept it at 5 carbs the rest of the day.

I felt very good after leaving today’s visit.  Things are going good and somethings are getting even better.  My goal for next month’s A1C is to have it below 7.  I have busted my butt exercising and eating better to do this, but I can’t stop now I have to continue.  Well, next appointment isn’t until end of November, so I’ll update you again after that appointment.

Endo Appointment Tomorrow, Charlie Kimball Friday

Chris Stocker

I received a phone call today from my endo’s office to confirm my appointment for Friday and I was confused.  I said, there’s no way that I could have scheduled an appointment for that day because Friday is Charlie Kimball’s race down in Homestead – Miami that I am going to so I can’t have that appointment.  She said, well I don’t think that we have any other openings.  I said, you don’t understand, I can’t miss this race, I am going to meet Charlie and be at the race.  So she said she would look and see where she could fit me in and give me a call back.  5 minutes later I get a phone call and somebody had cancelled for tomorrow, so it looks like now I have an appointment for tomorrow.

First thing that I am going to explain to the doc when I get in there is come straight out and admit that it hasn’t been a good month for me.  In fact, a pretty effin’ bad month.  I had a lot of highs, some major lows and just been all over the map with my sugars.  However, I did manage to find more time for exercise and lost some weight.  I put a little on over the last week, but I had lost enough before that to still be down some weight since the last visit.  The last thing is to explain that I haven’t worn the sensor at all for multiple reasons.  For one, it started to fall out all the time.  Secondly, the ones that I had expired way back in May and never realized it because I just kept thinking, well I still have 2 full boxes.  I will probably still attempt to use them though.

I must also remember to get new prescriptions from her however because I am almost out of insulin.  That also reminds me that I better re-order very soon because there is always an issue, especially when I need a new prescription sent in.  The first time that I had to send in a new prescription, it took me almost 2 weeks to get my insulin delivered, not good customer service in my eyes.

Today’s post a little short because I just got back from the gym and I am tired and I am trying to cook dinner and do laundry and have a lot of work to catch up on tonight.  So you all have a great day and I will have a better post tomorrow.  Hopefully something positive from the endo appointment.