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Caring Diabetic Online Community

Chris Stocker 8 Comments

Over the last few days, even months if we go back a little further, it has really dawned on me how caring and how awesome the diabetic online community is.  I have been dealing with an issue with CVS pharmacy this past week and so many of you on Twitter and commenting on my blog were really helpful and gave some great advice.  The advice was great, but what was even more awesome was how willing everybody was to send me strips because I was in a bad situation with not having any.  Several people sent me e-mails and asked if I needed them to send me strips.  You know who are you for those that did.

I am part of a few other online communities and we help each other with information about how to do something in WordPress or some new social media tips or affiliate tax information, but I haven’t had anybody ever ask me if I needed them to send me testing strips or something else to help me manage my diabetes or my business, anything.

I just want to take this time quickly and say thank you.  Thank you to all of you.  And that is it.

Thanks.

CVS – You Are a Failure Part 2

Chris Stocker 6 Comments

I don’t want to sound like I am trying to take CVS out of business or anything, but they need to be held accountable.  For so many years, companies could do whatever they wanted and pretty much get away with it.  Now with blogs and Twitter and Facebook, companies are held responsible for mistakes that they make.  You can read about what happened last week at CVS and their misleading ads.

On Friday, I was supposed to pick up the test strips that were ordered for me.  Well when I got there, there were not any boxes of 50 strips on the shelf, so I’m thinking, here we go again.  I asked the lady behind the counter for 2 boxes of 50 and explained to her that they had ordered them for me on Tuesday.  I was told to come in after 12:00, so I strolled in around 2:00 p.m.  The shipment still was not unpacked so the lady said she would just go into the shipment and pull them out.  Well the head pharmacist said no, she could not do that and told me to come back after 5:00 p.m. tonight.  That really irritated me that the head pharmacist, who should know the importance of strips, told me I still had to wait.

I was not able to make it back to CVS that night, so I decided to go the next morning.  When I walked in on Saturday morning, once again I didn’t see any boxes of 50 counts on the wall.  It was all new people working that day, so I had to explain the whole thing over.  They told me that none were ordered so I would have to wait until Friday.  I nicely explained to them, that no I am not waiting until Friday and they were selling me the 2 boxes of 25 for $9.99, since the box of 50 was $9.99.  She said no.  I kind of disagreed.  When I asked for the store manager, luckily he was extremely busy and just said ok do it, without even really listening, she finally rang them up.

They wanted to give me a rain check for Friday again, but I just told them to keep it because I would rather pay an extra $20 then to step foot into that store again.  I am done with CVS; they no longer exist in my life.  This was an example of some of the worst customer service that I have ever seen.  Do people understand that they are messing with people’s lives?  If you work in a pharmacy, should you not be required to understand diabetes in the most simple forms?  Understand what testing strips are for and how important they are and that it’s not a game of oops sorry.

CVS – you are a failure!

Fired Up Friday – CVS Pharmacy Misleading Ads

Chris Stocker 6 Comments

I am picking back up Fired Up Friday again.  I did not post anything last week because I decided to take a few days off from blogging and being on the computer constantly.  This week, my post was brought on from something that I tweeted about Sunday afternoon, if you didn’t see it, this is what I said:

Basically, this is what happened.  At about 3-4 a.m. I woke up and had to go to the bathroom for the second time in the middle of the night.  I had Taco Bell for dinner that night, so I thought that maybe my sugar could be pretty high, so I decided to test, which I never do at that time because I hate waking p and testing my sugar.  When I pulled out a strip, the vial slipped out of my hands and the strips fell out, normally I would just pick them up.  However, this time they decided they wanted to take a swim in the glass of water I had sitting right next to me.

That was my last vial of testing strips until my Freestyle Lite ones came in on either Tuesday or Wednesday.  Sunday morning I decided that I would look through the ads in the paper to see who had a better sale that weekend, CVS, Walgreens, Target or Wal-Mart.  CVS was the winner with having boxes of 50 strips of the TrueTest (which are the exact ones I was looking for) for $9.99.  I went out to the CVS right across the street to buy about 3-4 boxes because you can’t beat that price for back up strips.

The pharmacy only had 2 boxes of 25 and 1 box of 100.  So I said, well can you sell me the 2 boxes of 25 for $10, or the box of 100 for $20?  I knew that they couldn’t do this, but it was worth a shot, so I wasn’t upset about that.  I was a little concerned how they could have sold out that quickly, since that sales price was valid that day.  The next closest CVS was a few miles away, so I decided to call and they were out of stock also.  So I called the 2nd closest, and they were out of stock of the 50’s as well.  By this time, I am really irritated, so just for fun, I decide to call 10 of the closest CVS pharmacies to see if they had them in stock, to my surprise, not a single one had a box of 50 in stock.

So, what does that tell you?  Tells me a couple of things are possible.  First, maybe all 10 of those stores sold out so quickly that by the time I went there at 1:00 p.m. they were all sold out already.  Second option is that it was a simple oversight by an inventory manager for not having a sales product in stock.  The third and final option is that they had a special like that, a “too good to be true” special and did not stock their stores properly on purpose in order to drive traffic into their stores.  It wouldn’t be the first time I have seen this done by these type of stores.  That’s why milk is always so cheap in CVS and Walgreen’s just to get you into the store and by other stuff that’s overpriced.

This irritates the heck out of me.  I am in marketing, so I know the whole marketing side of this, but it’s not good marketing.  You are preying on people with a disease that need these testing strips to help manage their diabetes to get them into your store and then not have any of the product in that they came in for.  This is just unacceptable to me.  This is also the second time this year that I have had a bad experience with CVS Pharmacy, the other was their walk-in “clinic” where I had to teach the nurse about stuff instead of her helping me.

If you are going to advertise a product, please have it in stock.  You may think that you are creating this great marketing plan, but in reality, you are losing customers.  You have lost me, maybe nobody else, but I won’t ever walk into the store again.  Sometimes diabetics need some extra strips for emergencies that their insurance isn’t going to cover.  We all know how over-priced testing strips are already, so when you have a sale or deal like that, you are about to make the life of a diabetic a lot happier.  However, you used my illness to draw me into your store, congratulations.

Am I just over reacting?

All Out of Strips, Mystery BG’s

Chris Stocker 2 Comments

Today is going to be a busy day. It is the last day of the quarter, so I have a lot of paperwork and reporting that I have to prepare for reports that are due on the desk tomorrow. So, this post is going to be very short. Basically, all I wanted to talk about was that I have no more strips, completely out. I found about 5 boxes of OT Ultra strips laying around, but I can’t find my OT meter anywhere, and I didn’t see any on sale at the store. I think I will just have to call my doctor and see if I can get a free meter from them in the mean time.

So, I have no idea what my blood sugar is at all today, and that absolutely sucks.

Well have a good day ya’ll.

Contour USB Review

Chris Stocker 8 Comments

Before I start this review, let’s get to the disclosure.  Back in November I wrote a post about how I want a Contour USB meter.  Bayer’s PR or marketing team, must do a great job with social media and monitoring blogs because I was e-mailed within 24 hours asking for my address so they could send me one.  They did not ask me to do a review for this product, they just sent me a sample.  This review is my own personal review, not influenced by anything at all, but my own thoughts, so here we go:

Initial Thoughts

As soon as I saw the packaging I thought, “Wow, this things is freaking awesome.”  The black box it comes in is really sharp.  Upon opening it, I couldn’t use it right away because it had to charge for a while.  That was one thing that I did not like that I had to wait about 4-5 hours to use it for the first time.  Most meters, you just flop in the battery and it is ready to go.

The next thing that I saw and noticed inside the box was the multi-color lancets.  I don’t change my lancet very often, so I think this influenced me to change it more often because they were cool colors.  Finally, I got to the meter and liked the design of it.  It was thin and small, very large colored screen.

Usability

The meter was very simple to use.  I will admit that I did not use all of the features that I could have (I was restricted to the 20 sample strips that came with it).  One end of the meter is a USB that has a cap over it that you just pull off.  On the other end, it has a slot to put the test strip in.  It was self-explanatory what to do, put the strip in the machine and then it turned on.  Prick your finger, get the blood and let the meter show you your BG on a colored screen.  Once the reading comes up, you are able to categorize it by time of day, for instance, breakfast lunch or dinner.  I must say that I am not a big fan of the Microlet 2, at all.  I guess that I love the Freestyle lancing device so much, that there is nothing else out there that can compare.

Data Usage

Before I received the meter I had heard about it and heard about the great graph and data features that came along with the meter. The first time I plugged it into my computer, it took at least 20 minutes for the software to load up.  I know it wasn’t my computer because I run a lot of high powered software and applications on my computer and there’s never an issue.  Once it did finally load up, then it was still slow to click from graph to graph.  Once everything was up and running properly, I loved it.

Like I said before, I only had 20 test strips, and I tried to space it out as far as possible to test at different random times.  Here are a few snapshots from the photos below (click for full size):

As you can see from the first picture, the readings were color coded, would like to see more greens, but that’s the way it is.  I like this breakdown.  The second picture is easier on the eyes and see on a percentage basis where your numbers are based upon the ranges.  I really like the data summary on the left side of the image.  The last photo is a line graph which is useful to see visually how much your blood sugar is varying.

Overall I like the meter.  I would use it as my full time meter, but I have already put in a 3 month supply of Freestyle Lite strips, so I can’t afford to pay out of pocket for the Contour strips.  After this go-round, I may switch my strips and use the Contour ones instead.

If you have used this meter, please leave any additional feedback or comments that you have about it

What New Healthcare Bill Means to Me

Chris Stocker 3 Comments

Yesterday I came across a really good article on Yahoo Finance on the 10 ways the new healthcare bill may affect you.  I really liked the article because it breaks all the BS or politics down into 10 easy, simple descriptions of the bill.  There are some things that I love about the new bill and some things that I think are stupid.  Let’s start with what I like.

Bye-Bye Pre-Existing

By 2014, I will no longer have to call an insurance company wondering if I will get coverage or not.  This is something that I have been waiting for, for a long time and never thought I would see it.  Now that I own my own company, I have no way to get health insurance.  I am still covered through Cobra right now, but once that runs out, I have to go get another corporate job in order to get health insurance, unless I am married by the time that happens, which isn’t going to happen.  I will then be able to continue to run my own company and pay for my own insurance.

Along with that is the waiting period.  I haven’t been in this situation before, but there may come a day that I am.  I still need a little more clarity on the maximum benefits part of this bill, so I’ll do a little more research before I make a decision on that.  I am not sure if it is a yearly or life-long maximums.

Now, let me discuss the number one thing that I don’t like about this bill.

You Must Be Insured

From my memory of history classes and research projects that I’ve done, I could have sworn that this country was not built on the government telling you that you MUST do things.  The government already takes taxes from me and puts it towards things that I don’t want it going to, now they are going to tell me that I must pay for insurance as well?  Obviously with me being diabetic, I need health insurance, but I know people that haven’t coughed or sneezed in 10 years (obviously a little exaggeration). But if that person wants to take the risks, isn’t that their right as an United State citizens?

Overall, I think that the benefits outweigh the negatives.  That one negative that I discussed above, I do think is a huge negative and is 100% completely against what this country was built on.

How do you feel about it?  What do you like and dislike?

Results of My Endo Appointment

Chris Stocker

I had my endo appointment earlier today, so I wanted to share the results from it.

Going into the appointment I knew that my A1C was going to be bad and that my weight was too much and that my blood sugars were all over the map and that my doctor was not going to be very happy with me.  Luckily my doctor is diabetic herself, so she knows what it is like to live with diabetes.  I explained to her different things that were going on with my life that may be affecting my blood sugars and them being high too frequently.  Losing a job, starting my own company, working 80 hours a week and not eating or exercising properly, were all the reasons that I gave her, which I know are not excuses.

She told me that my A1C was 7.9 which we were both surprised at after looking at the blood sugars from my graphs.  We adjusted by basal rates again, which now total 66.6 units of insulin a day.  I do not like that number, but that’s what I am going to try my new basal rates at.  I use so much insulin, it’s ridiculous.  Almost 70 units from basal and about another 100 units a day from carbs.  That is why I am changing my reservoir every 1.5 – 2 days.

My blood pressure was a little high again, which has been 3 out of my last 4 visits.  I explained that I drink a lot of coffee, I mean a lot of coffee and that can be affecting the blood pressure.  I schedule my appointments early in the morning, so everytime I have an appointment, I have usually just finished a large iced coffee.  So my blood pressure could be high from that.  Next visit she wants me to come in and not drink any coffee before hand so that we can get a better reading on my blood pressure.

That was really about it.  She wanted me to exercise more, but not too much was discussed.  She also though that I should take more breaks from my work by taking a quick 10 minute walk which will give me my exercise needed and also reduce my stress levels.  Next visit, 6 weeks.

Start to a Good BG Roll?

Chris Stocker

I have my first endo appointment in almost 6 months on Thursday.  I have to get my blood work done tomorrow, so I am a little nervous.  I already know that my A1C is going to be high, probably around 8.  I haven’t had one that high since I was first diagnosed.  Yesterday was my best full day of blood sugars and I am going to try and copy it as much as I can for as long as I can.

First, to start the day, I actually ate breakfast.  It wasn’t a very healthy breakfast, a donut, but it was something in my stomach.  For lunch I had a chicken sandwich, not fried, grilled, so it was healthy.  For dinner I controlled my portion size and that was very tough for me later on at night.  I had one beef slider, a salad, and some brown rice.  Very small portion for me, I would normally eat about 3 sliders, 2 bowls of salad and 2 servings of rice.

For a snack at night, which I didn’t even want to eat, but my blood sugar was going down I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Why was my blood sugar going down finally?  Because I did this weird thing called exercising for 45 minutes.  First time that I had an intense exercise in months, seriously, months.  I went for a nice, fast 2 mile walk to start it off then came back to do some crunches, push-ups, leg raises and then did some curls.

I think that I have found the fix to always saying that I don’t have time to exercise.  Here it is.  I am backed up on some of my favorite podcasts all the way back to January because I never have time to listen to them, because when I do work, I don’t fully concentrate on the podcast or my work.  So, if I don’t have time to listen and don’t have time to exercise, why don’t I just do them together?  My new goal is to exercise my way through 2 separate podcasts, which are anywhere from 20-30 minutes each.  Last night I made it through two episodes of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

Let’s hope that this keeps up and I can start to lose some weight again before I head back up north to New York and home to visit family.

Life of a Diabetic Weekend Recap Vol 4

Chris Stocker

Man did this weekend fly by or what!  I don’t think that I got a single thing accomplished at all.  Friday started out with some high blood sugars during the day and some stress.  That’s why there was no Fired Up Friday last week.  I test drove a Ford Edge on Thursday night and fell in love with it.  I have wanted one of those cars for a long time and finally found the perfect one I was looking for.  It didn’t go so well on Friday when I tried to get the financing for it.  Since I have had a credit score, I guess dating back 7-8 years ago, I have had almost perfect credit, about 730 score ( I don’t mind sharing it when it was that high, ha).  Unfortunately, back in November when I lost my job, my credit score took a little dip.  So, ultimately, I was not able to get the financing needed for the car.

That was very stressful, so my blood sugar spiked like crazy.  I finally got it back under control around 5 o’clock or so when Amanda and I headed out for dinner and to a different casino then last week.  I had a turkey club with some coleslaw and my sugars went high by the end of the night again.  I’m not sure what caused the spike, maybe my diabetes?  I won money at the casino, so that was good.  And if you have been reading my last few weekend recaps, I’m not addicted to gambling, I’ve just been feeling lucky.

Saturday morning was just lying around doing nothing.  My girlfriend’s older brother and I played a little wiffle ball golf in the morning.  Basically we took a basketball and just threw it in the air and wherever it landed, that was the whole and first one to hit their wiffle golf ball into the basketball one the hole.  We played 9-holes and unfortunately, I pulled a Phil Mickelson and choked on the last hole.  We all then went down to the Panthers game last night against the Buffalo Sabres.  Now, let me just say this, if you are from Buffalo, oh well.  I come from Philadelphia, so I know all about being an obnoxious fan, Philly fans are the best in the world, HOWEVER, Buffalo Sabre fans are just annoying!  I can’t stand people that have an excuse for everything, like the refs made that call to keep the game close, that was a lucky shot, but when you’re team scores it was an amazing shot and when the other team gets a penalty it was a great call.  Just shut up ok?

Moving on.  Sunday was another Panthers game, back to backs are rough.  I also wanted to watch the race and some of the Michigan St basketball game as well.  I had so much laundry to do and work to catch up on as well from the weekend and not doing anything.  Sunday is usually my planning day.  I get out my calendar and pen and start outlining the whole week.  Client projects, blog ideas for a few of the blogs I write, to dos, etc.

Well, happy Monday to everybody and have a great day.