This article came out in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, but I included a link to the NASDAQ article that way you can read the whole thing. Here is a video about my thoughts on transparency in the medical industry. IF you can’t view the video in the blog then click here to view it.
Guest Post Invitation – Video Blog
Below is a video for an open invitation for guest post for the week of July 24-31. If you can’t view this video, please click here.
Diabetes Book Review: 50 Things You Need to Know about your Diabetes
I find that I don’t do as much reading offline about diabetes as I would like. When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I read close to 5-6 books in less than a week, yes a book a day! There was so much that I wanted to know and so many things that I NEEDED to know about diabetes to live a healthy, long life. I’ve decided to dedicate myself to reading more diabetes books. Most books out there now are for people that are newly diagnosed and are educating them on diabetes. I would like to see more books about living with diabetes, real life stories, not just books from CDE’s and doctors. Enough of all that. I am going to start reviewing these books as well, so here is the first one.
The book that I am reviewing today is, 50 Things You Need to Know about Your Diabetes–Right Now!: Expert Tips for Taking Control
There is an excellent breakdown of the difference between your A1C and your eAG. Whether or not you care to know your eAG is up to you, but there is a formula in the book to figure it out. The other chart / breakdown that Stanley included that I loved was how to choose a glucose meter. Don’t just choose the one that was giving to you for free. Choosing the right meter is one of the most important parts of testing your blood sugar. If you ever needed encouragement on testing, this book will give you several reasons to make sure you remember to test all the time. One reason that I think is a big problem for people is testing at night is helpful in getting over your fear of going low in the middle of the night.
My favorite section of the book is #14, which is, 25 ways to get exercise away from the gym. I never have enough time to go to the gym, so these were some great tips on how to get the exercise you need, no excuses. Another section that caught my eye was her explanation of there not being any “perfect” foods for diabetes. Be a detective and do the research yourself. Create a food journal, eat something, track your blood sugar and then you know whether or not you can eat it again, and also how much of it you can eat. Also, eat something at breakfast. Even if it’s just a banana, at least eat something, don’t skip it. This is a big problem that I have a lot.
My final thoughts on the book were that it had a lot of additional resources, books, magazines, blogs, website, throughout the book at the end of each chapter. There is also a fantastic tip sheet on foot care. I don’t give my feet the attention they need, so that part is well worth the price of the book. Like I said before, this book is perfect for somebody who is newly diagnosed. I think it is also a great book for people that want a refresher on how they should be doing things, such as eating habits, exercising tips, foot care tips, and testing tips. If you have read this book, or read it in the future, let me know what you think about it as well.
Starting a New Job with Diabetes
Well, yesterday I mentioned that I had some exciting news. This probably isn’t exciting news for you, but it is for me. I have put the independent work to the side and decided to get back into the office / team environment and get a “corporate” job. After a good search, I was given word last Thursday that I am now hired. So, that’s the news. I will be starting a new job next Monday as an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Specialist. I am so excited to get back into an office environment and start working again. The hours are long and it is going to be tough at first, but it is doing something that I love, so you can’t go wrong with that. The hardest part of starting a new job with diabetes is introducing diabetes to everybody.
It can be like the first day of starting at a new school. I don’t know what that is like because I never moved and had to change schools in the middle of the year, but I was always nice to the “new kid” in the classroom, because I couldn’t imagine how hard it was to leave your friends and go somewhere near. Anyway, getting off subject, back to diabetes. There are so many things that you have to prepare for when starting a new job with diabetes. I feel that it is my responsibility to let as many people know as possible that I am diabetic and what to do in case something bad happens. I put candy in my desk, I leave a meter and strips at my desk and I usually keep some infusion sets, reservoirs, and an emergency vial of insulin there as well. The office is a 30-40 minute commute, one way, so it’s not like I can just come home at lunch break to change out an infusion site.
This also means more questions I am going to be asked, and I love that. I can educate people on diabetes, what else is better than that. I remember at my old office when people asked me questions when I was refilling a reservoir at work. It felt to educate them and let them know what I was doing, and what that loud priming noise was. I don’t know if there are any other diabetics that work there, but I’m sure I will find out quickly. It is awesome to meet a co-worker with diabetes.
One thing this does mean is that there will be less time I will be spending on Twitter during the day and being able to read blogs. I won’t be getting home until about 7-8 and won’t have much time to do anything else. I will continue to keep up with my blog and try to read as many of yours as possible. I am leaning towards doing more video blogs because it only takes 3-5 minutes to record, about a minute to upload and post, since there is no editing in it.
Well, I hope you are all as excited as I am!
Have a great day.
The Life of a Diabetic Weekend Recap
This weekend recap includes an extra day I guess, today. I didn’t really have anything planned for 4th of July this year, because I just wanted to relax this year. Friday night wasn’t really anything special. Amanda and I went to the Ruby Tuesday and I overate on the salad bar, what a surprise. My blood sugar was about 355 a few hours after eating there. We ate kinda early, which sucked because I knew I would be hungry before I went to bed. We watched a movie, The New Daughter, kind of a weird movie. My suspicions were right and I was hungry again, but we decided to just go with popcorn, which is an amazing snack.
Saturday during the day I did absolutely nothing. I laid around pretty much all day long until it was time to head over to the sports bar to watch the UFC fight. That is pretty much everything there is to recap for Saturday.
Yesterday was not much more fun. In the morning, I headed over to the beach to check out a sand castle contest, but there were only 4 designs in the whole thing, so that was pretty much a dud. Amanda and I had lunch on the beach, which was fun until it started to down pour like crazy. I left my meter in the car, which pissed me off because I went to the bathroom like 3 times in an hour, so I wasn’t sure if it was the iced tea or because my sugar was high, and I didn’t want to run a couple block back to the car to get the meter. That is why I always try to remember and make sure that I have my meter with me!
Well, today is the final day of this holiday weekend, and it is raining again. I am going to enjoy laying around the house doing absolutely nothing. I should use this time to go grocery shopping because there is not a single thing to eat in this condo, but that can wait until tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, I have some big news that I will announcing tomorrow.
Until then, have a great day everybody!
Happy Fourth of July
This is a very quick, simple post.
Happy 4th of July everybody. Happy birthday America!
Social Media Summit Reviews
I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I would like to read everybody’s review of the social media summit, but I’m not sure who wrote a post speaking about it. I think that I have read them all, but I don’t know if everybody had a chance to, so it would be good to have one central location for everybody to read them and discuss them.
Does anybody know if somebody is already doing this? Is Roche?
Isn’t this part of being social?
What is a Normal Life with Diabetes
The other day somebody was talking to me about my blog and I mentioned that it’s a blog about how I live normally with diabetes. They then asked me, what does that mean? What does living normally with diabetes mean? Well, I had never been asked that question before, but I thought about it and here is my answer. This is how I live normally with type 1 diabetes.
I’ve spoken about my life before diabetes on here a few times, but it’s 99.9% about my life now, which obviously includes being a diabetic. When I was diagnosed 6 years ago, I knew my life would change, but I wasn’t sure how, and I didn’t know how much. Living normally with diabetes means to me that I live a normal life, just like anybody else, except that I have diabetes. This means that I have some additional things that I must do. For instance, I go to the gym, well try to, just like anybody else, except I must test my blood sugar before, during, and after. I go out to dinner just like anybody else, except I pull out my insulin pump, count my carbs, and intake some insulin.
Insulin pumps, testing strips, blood glucose meters, IV preps, lancets, lancing devices, reservoirs, infusion sets, this is normal to me. Therefore, I’m living a normal life with diabetes.
July NaBloPoMo
For the month of July, I have decided that I will attempt to complete another NaBloPoMo month. I was able to successfully do it back in November 2009. This created a challenge for me and I love new challenges. It is definitely hard because sometimes you run out of things to blog about. But, since this is something that I am passionate about, subjects or topics will always be there to be discussed.
Today’s post is pretty short because I am trying to read all over the posts about the Roche Social Media Summit.
Tonight’s Main Event Fight – Diabetes vs Diabetes
Well, as I spoke about in yesterday’s post about missing the Roche social media summit, it sucked! Luckily, this was a DOC event so of course our fellow friends were there tweeting everything good going on. There seems to be a lot that was discussed and hopefully it will make an influence on decision makers minds and that things will get done.
The tweet that stuck out the most to me was from @saraknic. I don’t think it was a tweet, and I don’t know how it was said or who it was said to, but Manny put the quote on Twitter, “No other disease fights with itself.” This struck me big time, because it is something that I have been fighting for, to get everyone on the same page with the same goals.
Here is a perfect example, my girlfriend Amanda wanted to buy a bracelet with a charm on it, or a colored bracelet, not the rubber ones, but a regular one, and she was going to buy a red one because the is the “color for diabetes.” Well, red is what the ADA uses, but IDF uses blue. So which one is it? Why is it even a question? When you see the color pink, what is the very first thing you think of? Exactly. You automatically think about breast cancer.
Well, I don’t want to speak too much about things that went on at the event, because I really don’t know and I’ll be waiting to hear from all the people that were there.
But thank you Sara for bringing up such a great point!