This past weekend I was in New Orleans for a birthday trip to see my Philadelphia Eagles play the Saints on Monday Night Football. Amanda and her family paid for the entire trip for my birthday gift because I mentioned that it would be a dream to go see the Birds on Monday Night. This was my second trip to New Orleans. I went a few years ago when the ADA Scientific Sessions were there and was there as a vendor and had a great time. The food is amazing, but I ate a lot, so my sugar levels were all over the place. Nothing changed on this trip. Read More
Category: Living Normally with Diabetes
She Said Yes
This post is not really about diabetes, so it’s going to be pretty short. But for those that have been reading this blog for the 5 years that I’ve had it, you know that I’ve been dating Amanda for almost 7 years. Well, even though I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to marry her, this was the time that I decided to propose to her.
And she said yes. Just one more thing to add to my life right now, planning a wedding!
No D-Day – FIFA ’13
So, today is No D-Day where we are to talk about anything but the D. So, I wanted to take some time to talk about something that has been taking up a lot of my time, FIFA ’13. This is my first year buying FIFA for XBox. I have played it in the past here and there, but never got too involved in it. But my interest in soccer has grown since the last World Cup, so I have been paying more attention and have decided to skip buying Madden ’13 and going with FIFA ’13.
So, to those that read this and play FIFA ’13 for XBox, let’s have some online friendlies.
My gamer tag is KeyOregon360.
That is the tag that they gave me and I never changed it, so that’s why it is weird. It was easy to remember, so I kept it.
Add me folks.
A Fresh Start on Life
This weekend I decided that it was time for a fresh start. A fresh start on a new attitude towards life, diabetes, work, family, and well everything that is included in life. On the diabetes side of things, I want a fresh start. So, I deleted all of my data from all of my diabetes devices. I cleared all the old stuff and am starting fresh. I am also starting with a fresh new diet that actually includes eating breakfast, which I never have before. Read More
Still Re-Designing and Stuff
So, the site is still being re-designed. There were some issues with the design that pushed back the timeline and it is not ready to go. I am working out all of the kinks and it should be good to go by August 1, fingers crossed. In the meantime, I will still be posting.
I just came back from vacation on Saturday night, so I finally feel recharged and re-energized and motivated. I love how vacations make me feel like that. The bad part is that the feeling sometimes leaves pretty quickly, so I guess I just need more vacations. Read More
I’m Here but not There
This past month or so has been totally hectic and crazy. Whenever I feel like I have some time to start working on a few diabetes projects or catch up on some writing, something else comes up. I can’t complain because the busier my business gets, the better off I am. I have a vacation coming up in the next two weeks, so I plan on just relaxing, unhooking for about a week and get some well deserved rest from these inter-webs. I feel totally out of the loop over the past couple of months, so this weekend while I relax by the pool, I will be catching up on all the blog posts and conversations that have been going on.
I look forward to catching up on what’s going on in everybody’s life and happenings. If you haven’t noticed, the blog design is not finished like I expected it to be, but it should be by the end of the month. When it is up and fully running again, I have some pretty cool things planned for it. A lot of interviews planned to go live, guest posts and some more video blogging.
Take care ya’ll.
Thank You to the Soda Machine from Outer Space
I have written several times on my blog about my disgust with restaurants and their limited drink choices for me. When I go to dinner and everybody else has multiple options for something to drink, mine was always water, diet Coke / Pepsi, or unsweetened iced tea. Read More
Happy 8 Year Diaversary to Myself
Today is my 8 year diaversary. I don’t celebrate or put much attention on it, but this year I have decided to talk about it a little more than that I usually do. 8 years ago from today, it was a Friday and I was extremely sick. I can still remember that day like it was yesterday. Having no clue or no idea what was wrong with me, while all my college football friends were out partying. I remember that it was recruit weekend, and I was supposed to have a recruit staying with me, but I had my roommate take him out instead, I felt bad. After throwing up for nearly 12 hours, one kid who decided not to go out that night felt that I needed to go to the hospital because in his words, “I looked like death”.
That’s when my life changed forever. A trip to the emergency room at about 1:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 3, 2004. As soon as I went into the emergency room, they attempted to test my sugar and I just remember that machine making a loud beep noise and the nurse saying, “ut-oh, that’s not good.” Yea, no shit!
I went straight back into an ER room when they started taking blood and giving me ice chips and an immediate insulin drip. That’s when the doctor walked in and said, “you have diabetes.” Three words that changed the rest of my life. I didn’t know how serious it was until he told me that if I would have went to sleep that night, I probably would have went into a coma and not woke up (BG was 8585). That was some pretty serious stuff to me.
Fast forward 8 years and here I am now. My life has changed completely. I live in a totally different part of the country, I am getting married in a year, I own my own business, I live every day to the fullest, and I am pursuing my dreams. Wait, by the sounds of that, you would think that I am a normal person? Oh yea, that’s right, I am. I am just a person living a normal life, but with diabetes.
I’ve made a lot of improvements in my diabetes management and attitude towards diabetes since I was diagnosed, but I have a far way to go to be where I want to be. I have never let diabetes let me down or get me sad. It’s just something that was thrown at me and it’s another challenge I must overcome. When I was a junior in high school, I had a knee injury, that to me, changed my life even more. I was an ESPN top 100 football recruit with full ride scholarship offers to some of the top schools in the country. My dreams of playing QB professionally were looking good. Then BAM, a total knee-reconstruction and I saw those scholarships slowly start disappearing. I didn’t let that stop me, I kept working until I was able to land a spot on a college football team. I used that as my motivation to help me get through the diabetes diagnosis.
8 years down and many more to come.
Bumpy Start to Month of March
The month of March has not been the best start of a month for blood sugar levels. I have hit 300 every day so far this month. Not just once a day, but for a few hours every day. Morning blood sugars have been around 250-300 and when that happens it pretty much just screws up everything. Dinners have not been anything out of the ordinary, and neither has breakfast or lunch. I’ve just been in a diabetes rut, if you will, for a few weeks. I can’t seem to get myself out of it.
A couple of weeks ago, I tweaked a lower back injury that I had back in college and it has pretty much shut me down exercise-wise for about 2-3 weeks. I have not been able to ride my exercise bike, go for a run, or really do anything in that time frame, so it’s been really screwing up my diet and weight loss plan. I have a pool in our community, but I have not been utilizing that, I think it is time.
I have a doctors appointment in 2 weeks and my doctor said she would have liked me to lose some weight before that next appointment, and I don’t think that I am going to hit the goal that we had set for myself.
Well, this is just another day, week, month of my life with diabetes.
Take care ya’ll
Achieving Failure Diabetes Style
Have you ever heard the phrase, “Achieving Failure”? I know, it sounds weird. The phrase can mean something different to everybody, but I am going to talk about what it means to me and how I feel about it. To me, it is very simple. When you set yourself up for failure, you are making it so much easier to achieve that failure. So it seems that the easy solution is to just not set yourself up for failure right? Sounds pretty easy, but it’s not. I’ve come up with a few ways that I have achieved failure with my diabetes and if I could just listen to my own advice, I think I can change that failure into a success.
Achieving High Blood Sugars
Of course this is something that you don’t want to “achieve”, but you don’t want to achieve any failures. I have been able to achieve this failure because, like I said, I set myself up for it. Deciding to eat fast food that is extremely high in fat and having a lot of carbs in it, not testing my sugar before I eat, not testing sugar after I eat, and not exercising. These all lead up to disaster blood sugar levels. So how do I set myself up for more success than failure with blood sugar levels? I think this is pretty easy, wear my Dexcom at all times. Of course changing the eating habits are going to help as well, but if I’m wearing the Dexcom, I can at least see the high blood sugars coming before they get too high.
Achieving Weight Gain
A lot of the same issues that go into the high blood sugars also affect the weight gain. The Dexcom is not going to help me with the weight gain, but cutting out the fatty foods and exercising more will help with the weight gain. So how am I able to st myself up for a more successful life and have better success at losing weight? Buying only healthy food and only having healthy food in my house. That currently is the case, but I still find ways to get unhealthy food into my system. So the next step is more will power, mental toughness if you will. Even if I don’t feel like eating what’s in the house, tough luck, I need to eat it. Giving myself a better opportunity to achieve success is what it is all about.
Achieving Unproductivity
I think that just about everyone has achieved this failure multiple times in their life. The unproductiveness that I am speaking about here is keeping up to date with the blog and interacting with other blogs and just keeping myself updated on what is going on in everyone’s life. This happens because I set myself up for it by not always putting dedicated time to the side for it. I run a business as well, so that takes up a lot more of my time than it once did, but it also provides me a lot more time (does that make sense?) Being productive within that time is the only way that I can continue to achieve success.
Achieving failure is typically a lot easier than achieving success. However, after reaching those failures, it is easier to reach the success afterwards, as long as you make the necessary changes. Well, I wish the best of success achievements to everybody out there. If you hit a failure, do not let it stop you. Learn from it, make changes, and turn it into a success.