Skip to main content

So Tired from Moving

Chris Stocker

Damn am I tired or what!  My roommate and I started to move last night and we just finished it today.  I have never packed and moved that fast in my life.  We packed everything and moved within 48 hours.  I am so tired and drained of energy.  I can’t even believe that I am typing this right now because I just want to shower and go to bed.  Anyway.

I got good news today.  I found out that my insurance coverage is still good until the end of the month so that means that I can re-order my insulin before the coverage actually runs out.  This was such great news to me, especially when every bit of news that I have been getting has been bad.  My blood sugars have been good the past few days though which is a surprise because I have been so stressed that it’s not even funny.  Sunday is a relaxation day.  No moving, nothing but watching football and catching back up.  I used to be on my laptop for about 5-8 hours a day, I am now on it for about 20-30 minutes a day.

Well, I am slowly getting back into my blogging mode.

Take care.

I Almost Forgot How to Blog

Chris Stocker

Today was my first Monday working in over a month, what a long day it was.  I started working again last Thursday, so with all the talking going back and forth I didn’t have much time to continue to blog.  I had a lot of things going on with worrying about insurance and bills and being unemployed that I had to just take time off from blogging for a while.  Now I am back.  There has not been too much going on in my life, so there’s not much even to talk about.

I still haven’t even gotten around to downloading the USB Contour data onto my computer.  Did I mention that I have to move this week and weekend, so that doesn’t help things that much either.  The main reason that I am blogging today is because I received an e-mail from somebody telling me that they were sad to see that I haven’t blogged in a while because they read it everyday and they looked forward to seeing my blogs everyday because it made them feel comfortable with managing their diabetes.

That to me made me realize that I need to continue to blog.  If my blog has influenced only one person, then that is more than I have ever thought that I would.

With that, it is pizza and Wii night at the future in-laws tonight.

I’m finally back to blogging

Chris Stocker

Wow, I haven’t even really been on my computer since last week, let alone had a chance to blog.  Things have been hectic, well not really.  My day’s have been filled with a lot of lazy / relaxing things.  I start my new job tomorrow with introductions and meetings to get started.  So, basically for the last week I was enjoying my last days before starting a new job again.  The weather hasn’t been great for me, but I have been trying to spend as much time outside as possible and as little time in front of a computer.  I guess I just needed this break to recharge myself and now I am ready to get back into things and get back to blogging and tweeting and Facebooking and Linking In, etc.

I am kind of scared about how little I now know about what has been going on in everybody’s life in the d community.  I have a lot of reading to do to catch up on.  So, enough with my blog I want to read about all your lives, mine is boring.  More from me later.

I’m Tired of Diabetes Right Now

Chris Stocker

You may have noticed that lately, the past 2 weeks, my posts have been a lot shorter and not really that interesting.  I am aware of this and I do believe there is a reason.  It’s because I’m just tired of diabetes right now.  I haven’t had a job so there is a lot more time to think about diabetes and all of the things that go along with it, and I’m just tired of it.  At times I don’t really feel like talking about it.  I just want a break from it.  I can’t take a break from managing it, so I am just taking a break from constantly talking about it and typing 500-1000  words a day about it.

So, for this, you may see some different things come up in my blog that I totally not related to diabetes, things that will let you see the other side of me, the parts of me that have nothing to do with diabetes.  More of Chris and less of the diabetic kid.  If you don’t want to read about that stuff, then fine with me, send me an email and I will let you know when I write a post about diabetes if you want.  Or don’t, either way.

Obviously everything in my life will be diabetes related because diabetes is a part of me and I live with it and must manage it on a daily basis.  But I don’t have to talk about it every single day though.  So for today, this is enough about diabetes.  I will be over this very shortly, I get over everything quickly.  So there will be some good interesting posts that come up again soon, I promise.

Until then, have a great day and weekend.

Do the People Around Me Have Diabetes?

Chris Stocker

There is so much on tv tonight, I’m not going to know what to watch.  The Panthers game is on at 7, Oregon – Oregon St, the Bill-Jets, college basketball game, just too much to manage all in one night.  I wonder how many people in those games are affected by diabetes.  Have you ever thought about that while watching tv or people watching while out?  Since I’ve been unemployed I go to a lot of coffee shops, primarily Barnes and Noble and when I need a quick little break I just do a little people watching and I always wonder if they have diabetes or know somebody with diabetes.

It affects so many people in this world, but how many directly around me.  As I am typing this, I am at Barnes and Noble now and watching some guy count carbs on a calculator.  I wonder if he is doing this because he has diabetes, or he is just a healthy eater and wants to know how many carbs he is eating.  I think about a lot of weird different things now, and that makes me think also, I think I’m just weirding myself out with all this thinking stuff.

Well, I need to go think about more things, like where I’m going to get the money to pay my bills before I get back to the 9-5.

Take care.

Finally A Beach Day

Chris Stocker

Finally it was a nice day and I didn’t have anything to do and was able to go to the beach.  It wasn’t very sunny, but it was nice out and wasn’t too hott, in the 70’s.  But what would a beach day be without some sort of problem.  Last night I put in a new set on my backside so you couldn’t see it if I took my shirt off at the beach.  I went to breakfast and even used sugar-free syrup, but for some reason when I tested as soon as I got to the beach my sugar was 460!  How the hell did that happen?

I have no idea what went wrong, but I did know that when I have a high, it takes a long time, sometimes never for the sugar to come down when my site is in that area.  I went into the car because I knew I had another set in there, but didn’t think that I had my injector or iv prep pads.  When I went into my car I noticed my golf bag in there that I never took out, so this time it paid to not have cleaned my car out.  I went to the bathroom, which is disgusting because its a public bathroom at the beach, I’ve never seen a clean one, or one that at least smelled clean.

Once I left the beach about 2 hours later my sugar was down to 215, so I knew that everything was getting back to normal, but I’m still confused on why it went up so damn high.

Well, have a good day ya’ll.

December 1 Already, Seriously?

Chris Stocker

I can’t believe that today is already the first day of December.  How crazy is that?  I am so glad that NaBloPoMo is over!  Like I said, I’m still going to try and do it, but at least there isn’t any pressure to get a post done.  Well, my diabetes has been talked about a lot lately, so I am going to get back into that starting today.  I have put on a lot of weight since I have been laid-off, probably a good 10-15 pounds.  It hasn’t affected my sugars that much, but I know it isn’t helping them at all.  I have been getting no exercise at all, just walking from parking lots to stores and walking from my car to the entrance of the Bank Atlantic Center for the hockey games, that’s about it.

I am going home for the holidays, well the day after Christmas, and my goal is to lose 10 pounds before I go up there.  That gives me 26 days to do so, and 10 pounds may seem like a lot, but it’s not.  One full week of exercise and I can guarantee this weight will be gone.  Although I have been posting blogs, I have not logged into my Twitter account in almost 2 weeks.  So I don’t really know what is going on in everybody’s world.  I am going to spend some time this weekend catching back up on all the blogs that I have missed in that time period.

As of today my insurance has ran out. I was not able to get blood work done before the insurance ran out because of some scheduling conflicts on my own part.  My own fault.  I am awaiting to receive paperwork on my Cobra insurance.  I need to get that as soon as possible so I can fill it out and get it submitted as soon as possible, that way I don’t some how go beyond that almighty 63 days of continuing coverage.  If that happens then the insurance companies will send out a rep and put a big red stamp on my forehead that says “Pre-Existing Condition”.  All insurance execs should have to go through what the guy in Saw VI went through, that’s how I feel.

Well, until tomorrow, have a good one.

Last Day of NaBloPoMo

Chris Stocker

Well, this has been the hardest month of my life, but damn does it sure feel good.  It always feels great when you set a goal and you accomplish it. Think about how many times you set goals and never accomplish them.  For me, at least, I know it happens all the time where I don’t meet them.  Especially when it comes to losing weight.  Those are the goals that I set most often and the ones that I most often don’t meet.  I will continue to try and post every single day, but the weekends is when it is the most difficult, but I can schedule posts for then.  Also, I will be going back to work this week, so I won’t have as much time during the day to post and have fun on Twitter all day like I was.

But that is not an excuse because there is still plenty of time that I can get things done.  I wrote a post earlier in the month about how NaBloPoMo was kinda like managing your diabetes.  I still feel that way, and I feel that I accomplished this, I can continue to accomplish managing my diabetes.  If posting once a day is all it takes, than managing my diabetes one day at a time will lower my A1C.  I can set a goal to lower my A1C to a manageable level, then I can win.  My goal is to lower my A1C one tenth (at least) every 3 months.  It does me no good to go from a 7.1 now to a 5.5 in 3 months and back up to 7.2 three months after that.  It will do me good however to go from 7.1, 6.9, 6.7, 6.6, and continue this path every 3 months until I am consistently under 6.0, which is what my ultimate goal for 2010 is.

I have taken about a week off in being on Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, sort of what you may call slacking.  I haven’t answered many e-mails in the past few days, so I am taking today to catch up on all of that.  So if you are one of the ones I haven’t answered back to, sorry.  I am also going to work on my Contour USB review.  I went through all 25 strips, but haven’t hooked it up to the computer yet.  It sucks that I am out of strips already, and I still have like 20 boxes of Freestyle Lite, so I’m not going to buy more Contour’s until my Freestyle’s are used up.

Have a great Monday everybody.

Time to Rest Up and Watch Football

Chris Stocker

Ahhh, finally it is finally Sunday.  I can finally sit down, actually lay down, relax and watch football.  I won’t really be able to relax until after the Eagles game because we all know how I react during Eagles games. They are playing a divisional team as well, so it will not be an easy victory, as it never is.  But after that I am going to lay down, watch the Vikings game and probably fall asleep.

I have not really slept much at all this holiday weekend, as my last few posts have talked about.  A lot of shopping and hanging out and no sleep involved in that situation anywhere.  I have not talked about my diabetes a lot lately in my blog, and there is a reason for that.  I am trying to go as long as possible not talking about my diabetes.  I just want to see how little it can be discussed.  I am not trying to hide it any way, it is simply just a little experiment if you will.

On Thanksgiving a few of the in-laws were talking to me about it and I love talking to them when they are asking intelligent questions.  Some of the older ones had some funny questions about not eating sugar at all and not being able to eat the ham because it had brown sugar on it.  Oh well, it tasted good.  It gave me the opportunity to talk about what an insulin pump is and how it works and how the insulin will break down the brown sugar in the ham.  It turned into about a 30 minute diabetes education 101 class, I should have charged.

Well, tomorrow is the last day of NaBloPoMo, the hardest month of my life.

Sugar-Free Saturday

Chris Stocker

Today I am starting something new.  Every Saturday I am going to try and go sugar-free, or as close to it as possible.  That means not allow myself to have any sweets that day.  No desserts, nothing with a lot of sugar or carbs in it.  This is going to be a day where I relax with the food on the weekends.  Saturday and Sunday is when my diet always goes straight down the toilet, so if I just dedicate this day to not allowing myself to eat this stuff, then I think it may be a little better.

I don’t know how long it will last, or how well it work, but it is always worth the shot.

Well it is off to start my first sugar free Saturday.