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Category: High Blood Sugar

My Three Words of 2010 – 1 Month Later

Chris Stocker

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!

No A1C Test for a While

Chris Stocker 4 Comments

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.

7 day blood sugar avg

14 day blood sugar avg

30 day blood sugar avg

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!

Blood Sugars Stayed High All Sunday

Chris Stocker

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.High Blood Sugar

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 Golf Courseon over the weekend.  I’d so much rather be doing this again (see picture on left, Par 5, second shot)

Just a Blah Sunday Morning

Chris Stocker

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.

Weekend Filled with Work

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Here it is another Friday and another week gone. Where has the time gone. This had been one of the busiest and craziest weeks of my life. Everything from battling high blood sugars, extrely high blood sugars, meetings with clients, writing proposals and contracts, actually doing the consulting work, exercising, dieting, losing weight, 3 am bed times with 7 am wake-ups. What a week!

I used to get so excited about Fridays and the weekend starting. But now? Not so much. I used to be able to relax on the weekends and go out on Fridays and Saturdays and have a good time. I have decides not to do that anymore. I will only go out one of the two nights and not even late either. Instead, I have a lot of work to get done in such a small amount of time.

Currently I am writing 2 daily blogs, I do on site consulting for about 25 hours a week at Volvo Aero Services and managing some other consulting services, trying to exercise and eat healthy, which is almost impossible when you’re working at a pace like this.

But you know what? This is the life that I chose, so I am not complaining about it because I love it! I’m doing what I have always wanted to do, screw the sleep. I know that it’s not the best for my health, but ya know what no matter what I do, there will always be something that is not good for your health.

Last thing I want to mention. This Sunday I am going to the 25th anniversary of the Chili Cook Off. Google it because I am typing this on my WP app and can’t add a link. It features Zac Brown Band, Gloriana, Sara Evans, Montgomery Gentry, and Rodney Adkins. Should be a great time.

Have a good weekend y’all.

Late Night High with a 17 Unit Bolus Correction

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Last night I was up very late again.  I don’t know why I even mention that because it is a norm for me now.  My new shutdown time is 3:00 a.m.  That is when I finish up whatever last project I am working on, well maybe not the whole project but part of it and then call it quits, lay down on the sofa bed and fall asleep.  Right now I am living with Amanda and her family and I don’t have a bedroom.  There is a family room upstairs along with 3 bedrooms, Amanda’s and her two brothers.  The family room is pretty much my living quarters.  This also happens to be where the computer desk is, so it is very convenient for me.  They all go to bed and shut their doors and I stay up, typing and clicking away not keeping anybody up.  Well, last night, my diabetes kept me up.

I have been eating somewhat healthy, but for some reason last night I wanted some type of dessert.  I was going to eat something healthy, but then Friendly’s was brought up, which is literally right across the street from the house.  We live on a long road, so it is about 0.5 mile walk total, so we figured, hey we will walk there and back and that will burn at least SOME of the calories off.  I tested my sugar and it was 155 when I ate the ice cream.  3 hours later, my blood sugar had sky-rocketed to 492!  This was at about 12-ish and I knew I would still be up for about another 2-3 hours doing work, so no big deal, I took my correction, which just so happened to be 17 units!  Seriously, what kind of correction takes 17 units.

I was knocking out my work like it was my job, oh yea, it is, and I had to have an energy drink because I just couldn’t go without one.  I knew this wasn’t going to be the best for me since my sugar is that high because caffeine makes my sugars go crazy some times.  Before I went to bed at 3:15 I tested again and my sugar was down to 230, so I was confident that come morning time when I woke up at 7:30 that my sugar levels would be around 150-ish.  Well I was a little wrong on that estimate as well.  When I tested my sugar again at about 8:30 it was still elevated at 215.  It still came down from 495 to 215 in 6-7 hours, but not where I wanted it to be at. As I am typing this post now at 12:30 my sugar was just 127, so we are good to go and it is almost lunch time.

I posted my sugar last night on Twitter and I want to thank @mydiabeticheart , @tinashaye , and @lizalovecyprus for all your kind support with the @ replies last night.

Not a Great Weekend For Diet and Blood Sugar

Chris Stocker

This weekend was not so good for the blood sugars or my diet.  My levels were running up close towards the mid 200’s on average all weekend.  Last night after dinner my blood sugar was over 400 for about 3-4 hours be fore it finally came down in the middle of the night.  When it is that high the first thing that I do is change my site.  It’s weird though because my sugar was 115, and then I ate a salad and about 30 minutes later I changed my site and about 30 minutes after that I had chinese food for dinner.

That leads into why my diet wasn’t so good this weekend as well.  Last night I had chinese food from Pei Wei.  On Saturday I didn’t get home until 6 and had to leave at 6:30 for the Panthers game, so I had to stop at Burger King quickly to pick something up.  I know I could have eaten a little better while ordering from BK, but I was starving and haven’t had BK in forever so I decided to go with two of their spicy chicken sandwiches and a junior whopper, like I said, not the best decision I ever made.  Friday night was even worse.  I went to a friend’s naturalization party, I know who has ever gone to one of those before!  It was a place in Boca Raton called The Lodge.  The beer is not normal beer, so it was a little expensive, but the food was amazing.  We had some BBQ chicken nachos and a grilled chicken sandwich.  My blood sugar was about 300 at the end of the night, but the amount of food that I ate was incredible.

I’m becoming thirsty right now thinking about all of these high blood sugars!  I might even have to go to the bathroom soon too.  Funny how thinking about certain things makes your brain want water and go to bathroom.

The weekend was very busy, so fast food just seemed like the right option for me.  I started doing some side work at a local fitness center helping out with directing sports during birthday parties and events for the little kids.  I coach football, so I enjoy doing these things on the side.  At the same time trying to keep up with the consulting work because unfortunately that doesn’t stop after 5 p.m. on a Friday.

Speaking of work, it is time to get back to it.  I hope everybody’s week is off to a great start.  See you all on Twitter throughout the day.  I’m going to have a nice little surprise for everybody on Twitter on February 1, so if you’re not following me yet, you better get to it, because the contest will be on Twitter only!

Time to Rest Up and Watch Football

Chris Stocker

Ahhh, finally it is finally Sunday.  I can finally sit down, actually lay down, relax and watch football.  I won’t really be able to relax until after the Eagles game because we all know how I react during Eagles games. They are playing a divisional team as well, so it will not be an easy victory, as it never is.  But after that I am going to lay down, watch the Vikings game and probably fall asleep.

I have not really slept much at all this holiday weekend, as my last few posts have talked about.  A lot of shopping and hanging out and no sleep involved in that situation anywhere.  I have not talked about my diabetes a lot lately in my blog, and there is a reason for that.  I am trying to go as long as possible not talking about my diabetes.  I just want to see how little it can be discussed.  I am not trying to hide it any way, it is simply just a little experiment if you will.

On Thanksgiving a few of the in-laws were talking to me about it and I love talking to them when they are asking intelligent questions.  Some of the older ones had some funny questions about not eating sugar at all and not being able to eat the ham because it had brown sugar on it.  Oh well, it tasted good.  It gave me the opportunity to talk about what an insulin pump is and how it works and how the insulin will break down the brown sugar in the ham.  It turned into about a 30 minute diabetes education 101 class, I should have charged.

Well, tomorrow is the last day of NaBloPoMo, the hardest month of my life.

Another High at the Movies

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

I’m not used to blogging on Sunday’s but I really want to accomplish this one post a day for a whole month thing.  I am actually going to try and continue to do this, not just for this month, but for the year, and then forever.  You just start to run out of things to talk about.  But today I want to talk about a really bad high that I had on Thursday night.

I went to a premiere for the new movie Pirate Radio and tested my sugar before I went in, 170.  Last time I went to the movies, I was over 400, so I didn’t want that to happen again.  As for the movie, two thumbs up.  It was one of the funnier movies that I have seen in a long time, definitely was not expecting it to be so funny, but it was.  After the movie I didn’t check my sugar because my meter was in the car and I thought we would just go right home after the movie.  Except, my tummy was telling me that I needed some food.

We were up in City Place in West Palm Beach, FL, which is a beautiful place if you’re ever in the area, so we decided to go to Cheeburger-Cheeburger.  Now, you can’t go there and not get a milkshake, so I got a strawberry cheesecake with Reese’s Piece’s mixed in, best shake I have ever had.  I also had a cheeseburger, not a big one, and some fries and onion rings.  I took around 25 unit bolus, but my site was stinging a little when the insulin was going on, so that usually means that something is wrong.  When I got home and tested, my suspicions were true.  Blood sugar 475.

I changed my infusion set and bolused for the correction, when I woke up I was a 117.  I felt like crap in the morning though because when I go to bed really high and wake up low or normal, it just messes with my body.  But I am happy that the sugar came back down.

Happy Sunday people.

Long Days, Late Nights, No Sleep

Chris Stocker

Last week was filled with a lot of work, I mean a lot of work for me.  I have been working on continuing to re-design this blog because to me it just doesn’t seem right.  Is it easy for you to read, anything distracting you, or fonts too difficult to read?  Along with that blog I have been working on a re-design on the other blog that I write about internet marketing and social media, Chris Stocker, Inc.  I have also been updating the Facebook accounts I have, and my LinkedIn, and Flickr, and about 10 other things including designing a website for my new company, CSI Marketing Solutions, LLC.  I also recently read Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuck, which if you want to get things and not sleep for about a week, I recommend that book.

With all of this work, and it’s not been completed yet, I foresee the same thing going on this week as well.  Last week from Monday-Friday I slept, in total, about 15 hours.  I was going to bed at 3:30 and waking up at 6:30 and getting back at it for an hour before I would begin getting ready for work.  See I work a 9-5, and run a business and do contract work on the side so I need about 8-10 hours a day to do that.  Then there is the 2 blogs that I write on a daily basis which adds about another 10 hours a week.  So, adding that up, we’re looking at around 20 hours of work a day, and no time for sleep.  This picture pretty much sums up my week last week.Coffee and SF Red Bull

Typically, the later I stay up, the more my blood sugars go up.  It’s basically a hand in hand thing.  I tend to start eating snacks in the middle of the night as well because I am up later and getting hungry and need to eat something.  I told myself last week that I am not going to let this happen, if I’m staying up later, I will make sure my sugars don’t go crazy.  I have done a pretty damn good job of it.  Throughout the nights my sugar didn’t really go over 200 maybe once or twice.  Here is a breakdown of my morning sugars this past week (my best ever):

Monday – 112

Tuesday – 88

Wednesday – 94

Thursday – 104

Friday – 125

Friday night however ended up being a different story.  My sugar, after being great in the morning, just shot up all day long and didn’t come back down.  It was on average about 325, with a high of 496.  I went to the movies to see Saw VI and I went to the bathroom when I got there and then I usually will go right before the movie starts so I don’t miss any of the movie.  So, I went as soon as the previews started but when I came back I told Amanda that I feel like I already have to go again.  I just thought that maybe my jeans were a little too tight and they were pushing in on my bladder, because that sometimes happens if I’m wearing a pair of jeans that don’t fit me the best.  About halfway through the movie I just had to go again, I couldn’t hold it any longer.  And for those of you that know the Saw movies, you know you can’t miss a second, because something is going to happen.  I literally ran out to the bathroom and ran back within about 20 seconds and didn’t miss anything.  As soon as the movie was over, I had to go again.sawVi

When we got out to the car I tested and that’s when I was at 496.  I was about to correct, but I knew that it was a bad site, so putting more insulin into it wasn’t going to do a damn thing.  I took just a little bit just so it wouldn’t go any higher, I knew it wouldn’t bring it down, but I was just trying to eliminate an even higher number.  Once we got home I took out the old site and was getting the stuff together to put in a new one.  Well guess what, I couldn’t find the pretty blue insertion device to put in the infusion set.  Finally after digging through my room Amanda found it, in the first place that I looked.  In the morning when I woke up my sugar was down to 185, so it went down.  Saturday was a little of the same story, high all day long, but not as high, this was in the mid 200’s.  So, I wasn’t sure what was going on.

Throughout the daytime hours my sugars aren’t going all over the place either.  Even with drinking about 4-5 cups of coffee and drinking at least 1 energy drink, sometimes 2 a day are not affecting my sugars. The coffee usually does, but energy drinks don’t ever make a difference on my sugar levels.  I know that the sleep deprivation is not good for me, but I don’t plan on doing it for a while, just until I get this work finished and everything is up and running.  I just fear that when I am done with the work and want to go to bed early, I’m not going to be able to because I will be so used to staying up later.

We shall see.