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Well, below is my first video blog.  I didn’t really have much to talk about, but I just wanted to give it a try. If you can’t view it below then please leave me a comment, so I know that there were errors.

Click here to watch on my YouTube channel.

Another Monday brings another weekend recap of a normal diabetic life.  This weekend I told myself that I was not going to do any work at all.  I had been working way too much, too late at night, too early in the morning and too much throughout the day.  I have been sick for about a month, so I wanted to get some rest.  Well, I didn’t do much work, but the rest didn’t come as easily as I had wanted.

Friday night, Amanda and I went to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino down in Hollywood, FL. Not a bad outcome, we came home with about $150, which is not usual for me when I go to the casino, I typically lose what I bring.  It took forever to find a parking spot, and then all night to eat dinner before we finally got to the casino.  There was an MMA fight there that night that we did not know about.  Before dinner my blood sugar was about 150, so I was happy with that.  We ate at Tequila Ranch which is one of the greatest Mexican food joints I’ve ever been to.  By the time we got home from the casino, my blood sugar was approaching 350, and I didn’t know how because it was fine at the casino.  Took a correction bolus and went to bed.  I had a very early morning on Saturday.

Saturday was an all day country concert, and when I say all day, I literally mean all day.  We got there at 9:45 a.m. and the last song didn’t end until about 11:30 p.m.  There was a full lineup of singers, but the number one singer was Billy Currington, and the number one song I wanted to hear all day long was “Good Directions”, well that ended up being the song that ended at 11:30 p.m. the very last song of the concert.  I had a lot of fun that day.  It was called the Rib Round Up, so they were selling ribs, $1 per rib, from a bunch of different vendors.  Amanda thought it would be funny for me to wear my “I <3 BBQ” shirt on a day of a rib eating contest, and people loved it.  I think I will be in more Facebook photos today than I ever have been in my life, and I don’t even know the people.  I will have more pictures posted tomorrow.  Join my Facebook page and you can see all of them (caution, this was a country concert so there is alcohol obviously involved!)

My blood sugars went a little out of control at one point.  I tested my sugar and it was at 450!  I had no idea how that happened because 2-3 hours before it was like 175 and all I had been some ribs.  I was drinking diet coke with the whiskey, so I know that wasn’t the issue.  I corrected and took a little nap and when I woke up my blood sugar was back down to about 215, so I was good to go.

On Sunday, I finally did what I wanted to do, absolutely nothing.  I slept till about noon, then woke up to watch the race, which I was falling in and out of sleep while watching.  I then watched about 4 movies the rest of the day.  I laid around all day long and it was amazing.  That was the first time that I did that in months, maybe even years.  Usually I feel guilty or disgusted with myself for not getting anything done, but yesterday I didn’t, it was amazing!

But, it is back to work today and going to be a long night tonight.

Take care everybody!

Next month is my local JDRF walk in Boca Raton, FL.  The walk is usually in March, but this year it is in April, which is actually better in my opinion.  For the past 3 years, at least from my understanding, the JDRF walk has been on the same day as an ADA Regional Conference, so two non-profits fighting for attention, I’ve expressed my opinion on the ADA-JDRF battle already as well.  My goal is to raise over $2,500 this year.  I would love to raise more, but I try and keep my goals realistic, so I can make them, but still challenge myself in the process.  I will be posting an online donation toolbar within the next few days.  I don’t expect to raise much from all you who are reading this because you have your own local JDRF initiatives to donate to, but it’s more for local friends and families who I don’t see enough to collect money from them.  But if you would like to donate, then be my guest.

As CEO of my own company, I can make pretty much all decisions on my own and have final say.  Because of this, I have established from day one that 25% of all my profits from my marketing consulting business are automatically donated to the JDRF on a quarterly basis.  I do not want any of the $2,500 goal to come from this, so in reality, I will be donating a lot more money throughout the year.

I am trying to create a few fundraisers to collect money before the walk, but I am still working on the planning of those.  If you live in this area and would like to meet up to do some sorts of fundraisers, then let me know.

That is it for today, really, really busy day today.

I am super, super, super excited today.  My Flip cam came in today.  It was supposed to come in yesterday, but it didn’t, so I’m going to be spending all day today playing with it.  I plan on starting off with one video blog every other week, possibly even every week.  I don’t plan on editing them at all, so I can probably do it more frequently.  I think v-logging is awesome.  I like it better because I feel like I get a better understanding of who that person is when I can see them and hear them.  I wouldn’t want to see a v-log from people everyday, but every so often I think it is good.  It should definitely save a lot of time because you can get a v-log done in 5 minutes in what may take 30-45 minutes to type up.

This post is going to be really quick, sorry not too much to say, plus I’m ready to start recording things.

Have a great day everybody.

This post is going to be pretty short, but it is extremely important.  As some of you may know I used to blog on a different URL before I switched over to this one in about October.  Well the url that I used to blog under was owned by the company that I formerly worked for.  Long story short, I can’t have you all linking to that anymore.

So if you do have a blogroll, please, please, please update it.  There are some legal reasons behind this that I’m not going to get into with the blog.  If you do want to know details, e-mail me and we can discuss it, but let’s just say that I can’t have things linking to that blog and still call this blog The Life of a Diabetic.

I appreciate your help with this and if you stumble upon someone’s blog that still has the old one, please ask them to switch it.

Thank you all in advance.

I am back from Daytona after a really long weekend.  You have not seen me on Twitter, Facebook, or blogging much and there is a reason.  I just have honestly not had enough time to be on there.  I have been more busy these past few weeks then I have ever been in my life.  The worst part is that I don’t even know what the heck I have been doing that is making me that busy.  The main thing is that I have been sick, so I haven’t been staying up late because I just don’t have the energy to do it.  3 day weekend in Daytona took up a lot of time as well.  I am working longer hours on-site so I don’t really have much access to Twitter and blogging while there.  I use my phone from time to time to check what others are saying, but find it hard to actually type up a Tweet.

Onto some more important things.  I am running out of testing strips.  I have about 25 Freestyle Lite strips left, which are my favorite, and I have about 200 TrueTest or TrueRead, or True something, I don’t even know.  Whichever of the Home Diagnostic’s True brand goes with the True2Go.  I like that meter, but not as a primary meter because it doesn’t have all of the other features in the Freestyle Lite that I like.  Like I said before, I love the Contour USB, but the strips are just too expensive for me to continue to use it.  I am grateful and happy that Bayer was kind enough to send a sample to me to try out.  I still haven’t gotten to that blog post yet either, but that was more or less technical difficulties.  I couldn’t get the graphs to work, it was taking too long on my computer at the time, and never got back to it.

Normally, in times like this I take a weekend to sit down and plan out everything that I need to do for the next couple weeks to get caught up and then also get ahead.  This past weekend I couldn’t, this upcoming weekend I will be attending WordCamp Miami all day Saturday.  Friday and Saturday night will give me some time to get caught up on things.  Also, the only thing on this Sunday is the race, so I can do work during that.  I just can’t get too far behind or else I am going to be screwed.  One of the main things that I have on my to do list this week is to figure out my whole supply situation and when I am going to refill and also what brand of strips I want to use.  To be blunt about it, I am going to use whichever brand I can easily get to that costs me the least amount of money.  Over the years I have used just about every single meter that is out there and they all basically do the same exact thing.

Overall, I am feeling better.  My right ear is still clogged and not even the Neti Pot is working now.  I am scared that I am permenately deaf out of that ear because I don’t get the pressure feeling in there that I was getting before.  From time to time I do feel it trying to unclog itself, so that is the only thing that is giving me a positive outlook on it.  Well, enough of this post, it is time to go to bed.  I am typing this Monday night and posting it Tuesday morning.

Have a great day.

After over a week of feeling like crap everyday, having high blood sugars, not being able to hear, coughing, being stuffy, and just plain ole miserable, I am happy to say that I am back.  I am disappointed in the route that had to be taken to get here, but whatever, it’s in the past and there is nothing to do about it now.  Let’s dive into this adventure.

I told you that last week I went to the clinic because of the clogged ear and cough and throat, etc.  Well basically after paying out of pocket for the visit ($130), 2 packages of Mucinex D ($50) and loss of sleep from coughing all night long I still wasn’t fixed yet.  So I decided to spend $14.99 and purchase a Neti Pot.  After about 2 seconds of using it, my left ear was unclogged.  After using it a second time, the right ear was unclogged.  So, spending $180 on doctor and medicine didn’t do anything, but if I would have just purchased the $15 item from the beginning then everything would have been ok.

My right ear is still a little clogged up, but it is getting better everytime that I use the Neti Pot, so it should be ok.  I don’t really like to say that I wasted the money on the doctor’s visit, even though that is how I feel.  Reason I don’t like to say that is because I wasn’t really sure what was wrong with me or what was going on.  I wanted to take every precaution because there is way too many weird things that go on out there and people have no idea what is going on and think it is just something small.  I ignored a sickness for 3 months 6 years ago when I went into the emergency room with an 858 blood sugar, I don’t want to ever live through something like that again.

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged in several days and that I haven’t been on Twitter much.  Reason is because I have been sick with a really bad hacking cough and a blocked Eustachian tube.  If you haven’t experienced this yet, well it sucks.  It all started last Sunday, Pro Bowl Sunday, not Super Bowl Sunday.  My right ear began to feel clogged and couldn’t really hear out of it.  I went to the medical clinic and they basicaly put me on amoxicyllin and Mucinex D.  After a week, that did nothing at all.  It has now been over a week and now both ears are clogged and I can’t really hear out of either ear.  I now feel pretty much deaf.  I don’t know what to do because each visit to the doctor is $130 cash.

A few people have suggested to use the Neti Pot, and I think today I am going to try it because nothing else has seemed to work, except make it worse.  I am just nervous to use or try something that I have never used before.  I know that it is good for sinuses, but does it work for a blocked Eustachian tube also?  My nose is not runny or clogged at all, I have no sinus affects in my nose like I usually do.  It is all in my ears, so is this going to work for that?

This post is really short today, but I just wanted to get as much feedback as possible so I know I’m making the right decision.

Th