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Mindy Bartleson’s Kickstarter for Her New Self-Published Book

Chris Stocker

Mindy Bartleson is writing a book and she needs our help to crowdfund in order to self-publish. The Kickstarter campaign is already live, please go  check it out here – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535066151/coming-of-age-with-chronic-illness-and-mental-heal

Below is a guest post from Mindy talking about her book.

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Over the years, I’ve adjusted my blog. I wanted to talk about it all together- the type 1 diabetes, PCOS, endometriosis, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, (other diagnoses), loss, and more- because like the title of my blog says- “There’s More to the Story”. I wanted to talk about it honestly- the good and the bad. I didn’t used to do this. I thought I had to pick a viewpoint and couldn’t change my mind. I had to either be positive or negative so I found myself not only lying to the world around me, but also to myself. I eventually changed this mindset and aimed to be honest.

Mental health is important- regardless if you have a mental health diagnoses or a chronic illness. Sadly mental health is taboo and a lot of people don’t see it as important. I used to not acknowledge it at all, but over time I realized how important it is. I also realized that I cannot just focus on one thing in life- one diagnosis- because that means that things can get missed.

About two years ago, I made the decision to start a project. I decided to write a book about chronic illness and mental health. I’m aiming to balance the positive and the negative together on growing up in general but also with chronic illness and mental health along for the ride.

Over the past two years, writing this book has pushed me to process a lot of my past. All of it. I’ve seen how far I’ve come and realized the importance of so many situations.

I’m pursuing self-publishing and utilizing crowdfunding to make this dream happen!

Mindy is self-publishing an honest book about growing up with chronic illness and mental health. She wrote the content before rose colored glasses impacted her experiences too much. To help this book get published, you can visit the crowdfunding page to learn more, back her project, and help spread the word. You can also follow Mindy on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and her blog “There’s More to the Story”.

Mindy Bartleson Kickstarter

fever with diabetes

A Few Day Fever

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

A couple of weeks ago I was back up in Pennsylvania visiting family. After coming home from my brother’s house where my daughter and two nieces and one nephew were playing for a few hours, I felt extremely tired. I wasn’t sure if it was just the exhaustion of watching 4 kids play and runaround or the lack of sleep was just catching up to me.

I ended up falling asleep around 9-10 p.m. that night. I know that might sound late to some people, but to me, that is early.

The next day I was still a little sluggish but decided to go to the park to meet up with my friend’s kids and I just felt like crap. I was just sitting on the bench watching the kids have fun, but didn’t feel like getting up to do anything.

Ketones

My first thought was ketones. Definitely ketones.

Now, let me give a little history here. In my 14 years of living with diabetes, I have never, ever, checked for ketones at home.

Never.

My mentality has always been to just drink a lot of water when I had a high blood sugar or just felt sluggish with a “normal” blood sugar.

My brother was coming to the park too, so he was going to bring my some ketone sticks to check. Well, as soon as I got home, I checked and I had trace ketones.

I guessed right. That’s why I was sluggish and tired.

But then several hours later I felt warm.

So I checked my temperature.

101.4

Ut-oh.

That’s not normal.

Fever

I went for the Tylenol and hope that the fever broke and I would be ok.

Well, this went on for 2 days. Fever would go away, then come back, then go away and come back with the help of Tylenol.

I didn’t want to take Tylenol for more than 2-3 days so I knew that come Monday morning I was going to the doctor.

Now I know that with type 1 diabetes, you shouldn’t mess around with a fever, but here’s why I did.

No Out of State Insurance

My ACA insurance plan is only good in the state of Florida. I didn’t know that when I chose the plan, but if I went to the doctor or ER in PA, I would be set back a couple hundred dollars, if not more.

I was willing to go to the doctor or ER on the 3rd day if I had to, but I wanted to try and beat the fever.

Luckily, on the 3rd day I woke up and the fever was below 99.1. A few times it crept to about 99.3 that day, but nothing higher than that.

Now, I thought this was weird because I had an appetite, I wasn’t vomiting or feeling like I had to. Just a fever and tired.

I also had trace ketones the whole time this was occurring as well.

I am the type of person that coughs once and freaks out and thinks that something horribly wrong is happening. So I kept freaking myself out that something more serious was or still is going on.

Now that I am back in Florida I have set up a doctor’s appointment for next week to just get a check up and make sure everything is working inside of me.

I know that if you are reading this you are probably screaming through the computer screen or smart phone, that I should have went to the hospital or saw a doctor.

And you are 100% correct. I should have.

But I chose not to, so now I am hoping that it wasn’t anything serious that had long lasting effects on my body.

But we shall find out soon enough.

Bright Spots and Landmines Review on YouTube

Chris Stocker

Hey everyone. I finally did my review of Adam Brown’s Bright Spots and Landmines and decided to do it over on YouTube. I have embedded the video just below, but you can also click over to YouTube to watch the video with this link.

In order to be eligible to win the FREE copy of Adam’s book, you must Like, Comment and Share the video on YouTube.

If you’d like to purchase Adam’s book you can do so with this link (http://amzn.to/2uxOfHO), I believe it is priced at less than $7 which is awesome.

Hope you enjoy!

My Backup Plan When My Insulin Pump Fails

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

The other night I was up late working and needed to rewind my pump and fill up a new reservoir. I knew the battery was low, but I was hoping I could just make it to the morning because I was in my office where I didn’t have any spare batteries.

While in the middle of rewinding the pump alerted me that the battery was dead and the pump needed to be restarted. Once I restarted, I tried to rewind the pump again, but I could tell that it already finished rewinding.

I attempted to rewind and it would get another area and need to be restarted.

This just kept happening over and over and over.

At that time, I knew the pump was having some sort of motor issue and was done.

This was at about 1:45 AM.

The back up plan was needed.

Luckily, I always try and keep some form of long-acting insulin at home. I usually get this from my endo as samples that haven’t been used and she needs to get rid of.

I took a lower dose of what I would normally take for basal insulin because I knew I had a lot of insulin on board at the time.

First thing in the morning, I called Medtronic and went through the troubleshooting and determined that indeed the pump was not going to work. Since the pump is under warranty a new one would be sent out to me overnight and I would receive it by noon the next day. That’s almost a 24 hour turnaround time.

Replacement MiniMed 630G Insulin PumpPretty amazing.

The point of the story here is that we all must have a backup plan if using an insulin pump.

Do you have one?

Do you have any long-acting insulin? Do you have your pump settings saved? Do you know how much basal insulin you need?

If you don’t have a plan yet, then I highly recommend speaking with your doctor or healthcare professional in order to create an insulin pump failure backup plan.

As I was finishing this up, I heard the horn.

There was the big brown truck with my replacement pump.

Time to get connected again.

Here’s a link to the first unboxing of the MiniMed 630G, this should bring back memories.

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Weekend Reading – July 15th, 2017

Chris Stocker

I catch up on a lot of reading on Saturday’s so I decided to just start sharing some of the posts that I’m reading from the week before.

I’ll be doing this every Saturday in my weekly email newsletter.

So, if you would like to see what I’m reading and get weekly updates from the DOC then sign up below:

Subscribe to The Life of a Diabetic

 

Here is a little taste of what you will see every Saturday.

New in Diabetes Drugs: Healthier Hearts, Improved Glucose Management – DiaTribe

Flashes of Diabetes Inspiration from Friends For Life 2017 – DiabetesMine

Could Gene Editing Be Used to Cure Diabetes? – DiabetesMine

Why People With Type 1 Diabetes Shouldn’t Compare Themselves With Others – Diabetes Daily

COLLEGE DIABETES NETWORK ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH AGAMATRIX – College Diabetes Network

WHAT I WANT MY DAUGHTER TO KNOW ABOUT MY DIABETES – Medtronic The LOOP

Recipe for FFL – Six Until Me

I’ve Been Nominated for a WEGO Health Award

Chris Stocker

I’ve been nominated for a 2017 WEGO Health Award. I have been nominated in the Healthcare Collaborator – Patient category. I am honored to have been nominated.

This aware is for people who speak at conferences, consult with healthcare companies to try and make change in the healthcare industry.

This is something that I am passionate about, and one reason I receive a lot of negative feedback from some.

As someone with diabetes, I know that I have to rely on products that are manufactured by businesses in order to survive. So, I can just constantly battle with these businesses or I can work with them to find common ground and help them make advancements with the community as whole.

I have to live with them, so why not live peacefully with them.

You can click on the badge on the right hand side of the screen for desktop or scroll down to the bottom if you’re on mobile to vote.

You can also just click here:

Vote Chris Stocker – The Life of a Diabetic for Healthcare Collaborator: Patient

I greatly appreciate your vote.

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Why I Took a Long Break and What You Can Expect from Me in the Future

Chris Stocker 4 Comments

Over the last year, especially the last 6 months, I have not been updating this blog as frequently as I did in the past. There are several reasons for it, but the main one is simply for the fact that I just didn’t feel like it.

Why didn’t I feel like it?

Because I am just tired of the constant bickering within the diabetes community.

Just like anything in life, you can never please everyone. I don’t ever even try to please everyone, because it’s impossible.

But I felt like the blog just wasn’t getting as much feedback as it once did, but I was continuing with great engagements on Facebook and Twitter and felt like I was helping people there.

I also stepped back from the amount of interaction I did on Twitter as well because that’s just the worst place in the world right now.

I love Twitter and hate it at the same time.

Twitter has given every one a much louder voice, which in my opinion is a blessing and a curse.

It’s great because it allows people to voice their opinions and be heard.

But it sucks because those same people turn into internet trolls and bullies towards people that do not support them or do not agree with their views.

An opinion is an opinion, it’s personal, it’s not a fact. So, your opinion may not actually be right. To you, it is. But to me, it may not be. Or maybe I agree with you, but I have higher priorities.

That’s what the diabetes community has become.

There are many initiatives involving insulin pricing and helping people get insulin, healthcare laws, partnerships between companies and more. I’ve seen some of these groups attack others because they don’t work directly with their group and support another group instead.

This is just absurd in my mind.

I have written about this idea in the past.

We all have different passions. We all have different things we can advocate for. I am going to advocate for what I feel like I can do the best at. It may not align with you. It doesn’t mean I don’t agree with your advocacy, it just simply means, I can’t advocate for everything because nothing will ever get accomplished.



If you don’t respect what others are advocating for, how do you expect someone to respect you and your cause?

So, what can you expect from me in the future?

I’m going to be here. I’m going to be writing (and Vlogging, which you will see more of my life in general, not just diabetes).

I’m going to be writing about what peaks my interests. What I’m advocating for. What I’m having issues with or troubles with during my life.

You can read, or you can just block me. I’d appreciate the reading choice, but if you don’t like it here, the back button is located in the corner of your browser and you are more than welcome to hit it at any time.

If not, I’ll see you around the DOC some more.

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The Feeling of Guilt at 3:00 AM

Chris Stocker

Last week I posted a VLOG episode that started out with a 3:00 AM low blood sugar that required my wife to go downstairs to get some apple juice for me. Unfortunately, the same thing happened last night. I woke up around 3:15 AM to use the bathroom and I instantly started to feel lightheaded, sweating a lot and just discombobulated (first time I ever typed that word).

I instantly staggered out to my work desk where I keep a bag of Starburst Jelly Beans (thanks after Easter sales). But they just weren’t doing the job.

As I sit on the edge of the bed trying to not make a lot of noise with the bag of jelly beans because I don’t want to wake up my wife, I hear her say, “Do you need some juice?” My initial thought in my head was, “absolutely I need some because this is a bad low.” But, then that feeling of guilt sets in. The feeling that I don’t want my wife to have to get out of bed, go all the way down the stairs to the kitchen, fill up a glass of juice, bring it back upstairs and then have to try and fall back asleep. I’d much rather her just lay there and sleep.

So, I first answered her with a, “no, I’ll be fine. The jelly beans should do the job.” But I ate 1/3 of the bag already and I’m not feeling any better. I need something to react quick! Juice is what’s going to do it. But, I still don’t want her to have to wake up and get out of bed, this is my low blood sugar, not hers.

starburst jelly beans for low blood sugarsThen I somehow started to do some basic math in my head. I had my pump off for dinner because I needed to do a site change and didn’t feel like doing it until after I took a shower. So, I took an injection for dinner, then took an injection for a snack and a correction and then put my pump back on and didn’t adjust my temp basal at all. So, I realized I had a lot of insulin in my body and I needed to feed it some sugar.

So I finally gave in, “actually, I’m going to need some juice, I’m sorry. Can you please get me some? Sorry”

If you could see the speed of which my wife jumps out of bed to get downstairs to get my juice, you would think she’s starring in the new Wonder Woman movie.

As she came in with the juice, Kool-Aid last night, I said thank you and sorry again. Her response is always, “stop saying sorry, it’s fine.”

But it’s not.

I always have the same feeling of guilt every time this happens in the middle of the night. If I can make it downstairs myself, I will, but some times these lows have me extremely light headed, it’s extremely dark, 2 baby gates to step over, it can be tricky for someone fighting with a low.

I feel a sense of guilt every time I wake my wife up bc of middle of the night low blood sugars Click To Tweet

Even after I’m starting to feel better (which usually means I’m going to go high soon because I over-corrected, which I always do in the middle of the night), she doesn’t fall back asleep until she knows that I’m good to go.

This is what it’s like to have a life partner that’s with you through thick and thin and there for you for every low and also my short-tempered highs as well (we’re still working on those situations).

I’m not sure the guilt will ever go away, but the guilt quickly turns into thankfulness and appreciation.

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Switch It Up Book Review

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

This book was sent to me for free in exchange for writing a review. See my disclosure page here. Links included in article may include affiliate links.

Also, read until the end to find out about a giveaway for this book!

As you may remember, my wife and I have been trying to eat a lot healthier. Not so much a diet, but more of a lifestyle change. I have been trying to cut out as many carbs as possible in order to lower my insulin usage and hopefully increase my insulin sensitivity levels.

So, when I was asked to review a copy of Switch It Up: A Fresh Take On Quick and Easy Diabetes-Friendly Recipes for a Balanced Life by Corinne Trang I thought it was a no brainer because I really need some new recipes.

This book is one of the American Diabetes Association books.

One of the main issues that my wife and I always have is repetitiveness. We find something that we like that is healthy, but then we overdo it and then we start to get bored with it. Once I get bored with something, then it just makes me want to go and eat unhealthy food that may be quick to fix for dinner.

The pictures in this cookbook are unbelievable. A lot of the times my wife may find a recipe online but it’s filled with ads all over the page, confusing cooking instructions or you have to sign up for something in order to read the full recipe. That’s why I like good ole’ fashioned cookbooks and recipe books.
So far, some of my favorites have been the Curry Spiced Chicken Breast, Avocado Corn and Tomato Salad, and Pork Lettuce Wrap with Prune Relish.

Curry Spiced Chickren Breast, Avocado Corn and Tomato Salad and more great recipes Click To Tweet

We’re just getting started with this book though, so I’m sure we will have a lot more favorites soon.

Finally, I am going to be giving away one FREE copy of Switch It Up to one lucky winner. Here’s how to enter in order to win:

1. Comment below or on Facebook (you can use the Facebook comments below)

2. Like this post on Facebook

3. Share this post on Facebook and/or Twitter (You can simply click to tweet below)

Once doing all three you will automatically be entered to win a FREE copy of this book.

Winner will be selected on May 10, 2017.

I'm entering to win a free copy of Switch It Up by Corinne Trang from The Life of a Diabetic Click To Tweet

All images in this post are credited to: ©2017 by Corinne Trang. Reprinted with permission from The American Diabetes Association. Switch It Up is available at ShopDiabetes.org, in bookstores nationwide, or by calling 1-800-232-6733. Food Photography: Corinne Trang