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Low Carbin It

Chris Stocker

I have been away from blogging and been pretty disconnected from social media as well.  My parents were down here on vacation week and a half ago and I was sure eating like I was on vacation.  I was eating a lot of carbs as well, which means I was going through a lot of insulin.  My daily amount of insulin that I use from basal rates is about 67.5 units currently.  When I was on vacation, my overall daily average was over 200, around 210-215.  That’s a lot of insulin.  My normal daily average when not on vacation is about 175.

I have decided that I am going to go low-er carb than normal to try and decrease my average insulin to less than 140 to start, then try and get it to less than 120.  That means less than 60 units of insulin from boluses a day.  That means about 180 units of carbs  day.  That may seem like a lot to you, but to me, that is nothing.  A normal meal of chicken, rice, and broccoli would be about 50-70 grams of carbs by itself.

Yesterday was my first day trying this and I was starving all day long.  Finally, by night time, I was so hungry that I had to just give in and have a small sandwich, I couldn’t take it.  Today is day two and I skipped breakfast and ate a salad for lunch.  I am now typing up this post and I am already starving.

I am making adjustments to my low-er carb diet still.  I am doing this without growing grocery shopping and buying anything different then what is already in my fridge and cabinets.  I am all out of broccoli though and I can just eat and eat and eat broccoli until I am full.  Sounds like a plan to me.

I’m Over at Accu-Chek Diabetes Link Today!

Chris Stocker

Today I have the honor of having a guest post about Planning for a Vacation with Diabetes in Mind for the Accu-Chek Diabetes Link.  I encourage you to follow the link above and read the post.  Feel free to comment here or there about your vacation planning tidbits as well, we are all different and plan different as well.

I’m sure I can make improvements in my planning habits!

I just want to say thank you for Accu-Chek for giving me the opportunity to write this guest post.

*Disclosure – follow that link to read all about it.  For this post specifically, I was not paid by Accu-Chek in any way to write this post.

Low on Insulin – Thank You for Reaching Out

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

I wanted to write this post yesterday, but I just did not have the time to get to it.  I am going to be in a tough position in the next few days because of a miscommunication between myself, doctor, and mail order pharmacy.  I am going to be running very close to having zero insulin.  I need to re-order my insulin, which the order will be placed tomorrow, but it’s a new prescription, so it usually takes a few extra days for that because the mail order companies don’t speed up new prescriptions very often.  I do have the option of getting a one month supply from the local pharmacy which I will most likely do.

But that’s not the point of this post.  The point of this post is that I tweeted this issue.  Within a few minutes there were two replies from people asking how they can ship me extra insulin that they have.  That is just incredible, totally incredible.  I cannot believe the support that exists in this community.  We have all seen it and said it before, but it needs repeating.  The caring and big hearts of the people in this community just continues to amaze me.

Somebody willing to ship me their insulin that they need to help me get through a tough time.  I appreciate those that did reach out.

Those people were Penny from A Sweet Grace and Scott from Arden’s Day.

Thank you both, really, thank you!

My Life on COBRA for Two Months

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

As some of you may know, I left the “corporate” job that I had at an agency to go back to running my own business full time.  I had awesome, excellent insurance.  Probably the best insurance that I’ve ever had, and from the insurance that I hear family and friends have, better than all of those.  Well, when I left my job, since I’m not married, I had to opt in for the COBRA insurance coverage.  This would be more expensive because I would be responsible for the entire premium, as opposed to when I was only paying 3% because my previous employer was paying nearly 97% of it.

It’s been a little over two months since I have been on COBRA and it’s really not that bad.  The monthly premium payment is a lot higher, but it’s manageable.  This is the second that I have been on COBRA.  The first time that it happened, there were some issues at first with the insurance coverage, and my ID number, and miscommunications on whether the premium was paid or not.  I have United Healthcare, and luckily, they have their own COBRA division so they communicate with each other and all of their systems are on the same page.

I get questions a lot about COBRA and any difficulties that I have with it, but this time around, I have been problem free…..so far.  The insurance coverage is exactly the same, the co-pays for my supplies are the same, and there has been no issue with the suppliers and doctors billing my insurance.

Let’s keep the fingers crossed and hopefully there are no bad experiences to come.

Passion is the Reason I Write – HAWMC

Chris Stocker

There are several reasons why I write about my health. The number one reason why I write about it, is because I am passionate about it. If I wasn’t passionate about diabetes and helping others, and doing what I can to help find a cure, then I would not waste my time writing about it. I have a few other blogs that I write as well, because I am passionate about the things that I write about it.

One of the other reasons that I write about my health is because it is my way to get things off of my chest. I don’t have other people around me constantly that have diabetes, so they don’t know what I am going through. I feel that writing about some of my biggest issues with diabetes can be resolved by those of you out there that are dealing with the same issues.

Another reason that I continue to write about my health is because I have seen that I have been able to help people in the past. I have received e-mails and comments on the blog that tell me how the post helped them get through a certain time or issue with diabetes or anything going on in their life. When I get those e-mails and comments, it makes it all worth while. All the hours that go into writing blog posts, editing pictures, and anything else that goes into this blog, it’s all good once you get those responses.

Talking about why you write about your health is the blog post prompt for the Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge #HAWMC today, so there will be a lot of other posts out there in the DOC today, so I am sure that most of the same reasons are going to be listed.

I am sure that passion is going to be one of the top reasons listed. Without passion, it is tough to do something, unless you are getting paid for it (like a job).

Whatever your reasons are, keep it up. The more you are blogging about diabetes or any health issue, the more awareness it is going to raise, and there can never be enough of that.

Happy 8 Year Diaversary to Myself

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

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.

Inspirational Quote – Day 2 HAWMC

Chris Stocker

The quote that I chose to write about today is, “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”I have heard this quote from different people. The first time that I actually heard it was in a Donald Trump book about success and working hard, “Think Big and Kick Ass,” to be exact. I then looked up who the quote came from and I saw a lot of sources that say Thomas Jefferson was quoted saying this.

I am a firm believer in this quote. I actually have this quote permanently attached to my desk and I see it everyday I sit down and to get ready to work. I can also relate this to my diabetes world and not just the world of running a business. The harder you work at something, the easier it tends to get, or the better you tend to get at it, which makes it seem like your luck is changing.

Let’s take one example. This blog. When I first started blogging, like everybody, I didn’t have any readers or people commenting or sharing my posts. I kept working at my writing skills (which haven’t improved much, but it’s just my own personal style), and worked hard at making my blog easier to read, and began blogging about more topics that I had opinions on. After several years of working hard, staying up late at night, getting up early in the mornings to write posts, I started to get some good luck coming my way. More people began commenting, sharing, tweeting, and even inviting me to attend events. I worked hard and I got lucky!

This can also be related to diabetes management. Working hard at controlling your blood sugars isn’t always going to turn out the way you want it to, because that’s just diabetes. But you can set your self up for more of a success if you are working hard at it, and who knows, you may just get lucky and have a no-hitter!

Hard work pays off, eventually. Don’t rush it, be patient.

16 Successful Dexcom Days Finally Ended

Chris Stocker

My 16 day adventure with Mr. Dexcom has finally ended. Actually it ended last night. It ended on my choice as well, not on Dexcom’s. Last night, the 16th straight day of the same sensor working flawlessly, I decided to go for a swim and get a little workout. My back was beginning to hurt again, so all I wanted to do was just lay in the bath tub and relax for a little bit. I noticed that the Dex was losing its stickiness and with a hot bath, it would most likely come off soon. So, I decided to just remove the Dexcom sensor.

As soon as I did it, I regretted it. I realized that I was only about 3 hours away from my first no-hitter. That really pissed me off. Then, I also realized that I was freaking out because I didn’t know what my blood sugar was just by looking at the Dexcom. My blood sugars were by no means perfect, but overall, in those 16 days, they were a lot better than what they are in a 16 day period without the Dexcom.

When I first got the Dexcom last December, I wore it for 4 days right away and I loved it, but I didn’t put a new sensor in until almost 2-3 weeks later. After that sensor it was almost a month until the next one. Tonight, I realized that I can’t live without it, well, I could technically, but I don’t want to. I want to have a CGM on at all times. First thing I did this morning was put on a new sensor.

I didn’t put a new one on last night because I knew I was having pasta for dinner and that my blood sugar would most likely go high. I didn’t want to insert a sensor with a BG that would be at about 300 when I inserted and would drop to about 120 before bed, too much funkiness for it to handle.

Now, the only difficult part? Downloading all the graphs. Dexcom, can you please just make a Mac compatible software? I have a virtual machine on my Mac, but I use it…maybe once every 6 months, and that’s being nice. And one of the reasons I don’t use a PC anymore, every time I log on to it, there’s about 50 security updates and it takes 3 hours just to load them all and it’s not worth it to me. Why must companies force me to live in a PC world?

One thing is for sure though, I love my Dexcom!

Diabetes Disclosure – DSMA Blog Carnival for March

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

This is the first DSMA Blog Carnival that I have done. My blogging has been slacking recently, so what better way to spark it than with a DSMA related post.

Disclosure of diabetes to me is simple. It tends to come up every time that I speak to somebody, really no matter what. So, let’s first start with the employer. I am my own employer, so yes, I definitely know. It tends to come up in a lot of business conversations as well. I do online marketing for a living, so I am constantly referring to the DOC when I talk about social media and blogging. So, the diabetes comes up just that easily.

Previously, when I was not my own employer, my co-workers knew. I told my closest co-workers that I have diabetes right away in case there was some sort of emergency, I wanted them to have some what of a clue what to do. Other co-workers found out just by conversation or by them asking what the funny thing on my hip was. There were a lot of Diabetes Police at my former co-workers office, so I took as many chances as I could to get some education in.

When I was in college, about 3-4 years ago, not many people knew I was diabetic. In fact, almost zero people knew. The only people that usually knew were the professors. I would make sure that I told the professor on the first night of class and then follow it up with an e-mail, that I had diabetes. If the professor heard a beeping noise, or I suddenly had to get up in a middle of a test because my blood sugar was 50 and dropping, they would know. By the way, if you are in college and have diabetes, I highly recommend not letting your blood sugar go low during a test, teachers are very funny about that kind of stuff.

I was not very talkative while I was in college. My first college that I attended, I talked to everybody. I was on the football team, it was a small school, and I saw the same people everyday. However, I finished school at Florida Atlantic University. I was diagnosed only a year and a half earlier, and I moved to Florida all by myself, not a single friend or family in the area. I was a little shy. I made sure to tell my roommate and my other suite mates, but that was about it. I started working very early in my college career, so I was all about going to class, going to work, studying, wake up and do the same thing all over. College was business to me, and I didn’t take much time to talk to people, so diabetes never came up. Sorry that this went off on a tangent about my social life in college. Moving on.

I don’t think I have a friend that doesn’t know that I’m diabetic. If they are my friend, they know. Just that simple.

I have never been one to hide my diabetes or withhold it on purpose. If it comes up, I tell people. I can remember going on a job interview to be a bartender and the topic never came up, so I didn’t mention it. My first day on the job, I let everybody know because I felt it was important for them to know in case of an emergency, or in case they saw me chugging the OJ! Another interview that I went on, I told them straight out. It was for a digital marketing company, so I figured that my experience with blogging and social media was a positive for me, so I brought diabetes up. Got the job and diabetes was never an issue.

Well, that is my take on diabetes and disclosure of it. I don’t recommend that you tell people or that you shouldn’t tell people. It is a personal decision and I respect it either way. This is your disease. We share characteristics of a disease, but diabetes is different for every single one of us. However you want to deal with it, is totally up to you.

Happy DSMA Blog Carnival.

Diabetes Research Institute and Anti-Rejection Drug Study

Chris Stocker 1 Comment

Last year I took my first visit to the Diabetes Research Institute. I have talked about it before, but after leaving there, I felt more confident that a cure was in the future, not near future, but in the future. I have also voiced my opinions about there never being a cure because of the financial reasons behind finding a cure. But today, I want to talk about another step in the right direction of that cure from the DRI. Please note, I am by no means a scientific kind of guy, nor do I play one on tv. When I talk about diabetes research and stem cells and this and that, I try to make it as simple as possible without big words because that’s the only way that I understand it.

If you want the scientific explanation, you can read the DRI’s press release.

When I visited the DRI facility in Miami, one of the main things that I learned about and thought was the most fascinating was the fact that our body rejects so much stuff and that even if you receive some sort of islet transplant, your body just wants to destroy it as soon as possible. That is where the immunosuppressive therapy comes into play. Basically, they are drugs that you take to keep your body from attacking the new transplant. These drugs also have some serious side effects and can cause some pretty big damages, such as kidney failure.

I remember the DRI researchers talking about how they are looking for better ways to keep the body from attacking it’s new transplant, without the intense drug therapy. In this recent study, the DRI shows that stem-cells can replace those anti-rejection drugs.

I don’t want to do the DRI and the Cure Alliance or you all any injustice, so I recommend that you read the press release from the DRI to learn more about the study and mesenchymal stem cells.

To me, the best part of this study is that it was performed on humans! Not mice, humans! The study was performed on people with end-stage renal disease. I love that mice are cured of diabetes, but I’d rather hear more about studies that are making headway in the fight against diabetes in humans. This is one of those studies.

I am privileged to have the Diabetes Research Institute right here in my backyard, well not literally my backyard, but that would be pretty damn cool. I strongly encourage anybody who visits the south Florida area to make a trip to the DRI. Heck, even if you’re going to Disney to Orlando, plan a day trip. It’s about a 4 hour drive from Disney, but it would be well worth it.

Also, if you do decide, let me know and we can schedule a D-Meetup.

Take care and keep the hope alive.