By now, everyone’s heard about diabetes. This is a tough disease to deal with sometimes. There are some folks who think this is pretty easy to do; just change how you eat. Well, it turns out it’s not quite that easy to do permanently, and when you change up, sometimes bad things happen.

At least I know about it. I was reading a story a couple of days ago where a basketball player on the Georgetown team was just diagnosed with it. He was having stomach problems and finally went to the doctor about it, and there you go. Now they’re saying he might miss some games; how bad can it be if he has to miss some games?

This kid is in great physical condition and got it; how the heck is someone like me, out of shape and on insulin, supposed to control it all of the time?

Well, I could, and I do well from time to time. I’ve written about my eating plans and when I can stick to them they do work. When I don’t, though, things can start messing up in different ways.

One thing I go through here and there is something called diabetic depression. I seem to get it when my glucose levels are high for at least a couple of weeks. I don’t always know it immediately when it’s coming on, but probably should know that if my glucose level is high for at least a week it’s time to go back to the drastic eating plan.

What does high mean? Truthfully, though there are mandated highs or standards by the government, each person has their range where they feel good or bad. The U.S. has a standard between 80 and 120; I feel good between 110 and 150. When I start getting under 110, I feel like I’m borderline dizzy, and when it gets below 100, I’m no good at all. Hitting 44 after a walk one day, when I couldn’t even drive home, was probably my scariest moment. By the way, as Sire once mentioned here, other countries have different numbers they use, and I guess if they stay under a 4 they’re considered as doing well; I don’t fully get it, but I just wanted to be somewhat clear.

This obviously means anything over 150 is high, no matter how you look at it. If I’m around 170 or so, I don’t panic at all. But when my readings get around 200 and stay there, or higher for awhile, there’s trouble a-brewin’. In the last two weeks, since that’s the average a glucose monitor will give you, I’ve been averaging 219; no, that’s not good. Three days ago I awoke to a reading of 320, and that was after being awake 2 hours without eating anything. The day I wrote my post on possibly giving up blogging, it was 244 after a couple of hours; nope, not good. I’ve had only two readings under 200 in the past two weeks, and both were afternoon readings, not morning readings. I’ve come close to 300 a few times; that’s not good either.

I tend to get depressed. When I get depressed, I want to quit some things, and overdo others. I’m a dessert hound; I admit that. But it’s not just desserts that drives up the numbers. Carbs is the monster. I’ve had pizza a few times. My wife made spaghetti on Sunday and I had some, then had some on both Monday and Tuesday. I’ve eaten a lot of McDonald’s fish sandwiches over the last week or so; yeah, that commercial got to me. I’ve had cake, cookies, and hot chocolate also, and I can’t say in moderation either. Once the numbers get high, you stop caring, and you go hog wild.

Luckily, my life has always been about coming to grips with something at a certain moment and deciding it’s time to get back on the straight and narrow. My wife is out of town this weekend, yet I’m working hard on being good. I can’t claim perfection, because I acknowledge that I do need her help, but I’ve gained a little bit of control, and hopefully by the middle of next week I’ll be back into the 150’s or lower.

I was talking to a friend of mine Wednesday night at a networking event. He was telling me his mother was diabetic, and he never realized how hard it was to plan meals and try to stick to an eating plan. I’m not going to say this is harder than giving up cigarettes, but it’s different. You stop smoking, at least you have other things you can go to that you enjoy. Sure, you might overeat for awhile, but you’ll get used to that. With diabetes, supposedly you can never go back to eating what you like, or at least how you like, and there’s nothing to replace it. Well, there’s poker, but when I play poker I don’t tend to eat, and my wife wouldn’t like that any better than me playing poker every day. She’s like that. lol

Anyway, just thought I’d share that, so if every once in awhile you see an odd post or two, you might have an idea of where it might be coming from. Doesn’t mean I might not be thinking about something here and there, but at that moment the thought process might be influenced by something else. And, just for clarification, not everyone gets depressed. There are so many different symptoms people will exhibit. I’m lucky that my vision hasn’t been affected this time around.

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Today is World Diabetes Day, the day when diabetics and those who treat them hope to spread the word as to just how bad this thing is. It’s the fastest growing disease in the world, and it’s not just because people are eating badly, eating too much sugar, or overweight. Well, a part of it might be eating badly, but those aren’t the only reasons.

Since last year’s post on World Diabetes Day, when I told my story of how I learned I was diabetic, I have written a number of posts highlighting some of the issues diabetics have to deal with. Truthfully, when it comes to eating plans, it’s not about being diabetic so much as it is about starting to watch what you’re eating most of the time, and controlling your diet so you’ll feel healthier all around. In the three weeks since I went on my new eating plan, my glucose is way under control, with medication of course, and I’ve lost 5 pounds. Yeah, I’ve done some exercise, but not as much as you’d think I should be doing.

I wrote two other articles dealing with diabetes, although one of them might have applied to others who hadn’t thought much about it. That one was about sugar alcohols, and how many people have a resistance to them, and thus explains why they have problems eating many foods that say they’re sugar free. The other one was telling you about my worst day of the year as a diabetic, when it seemed like my world was ready to crash. Okay, that’s pretty dramatic, but suffice it to say it was a scary day.

So, what would I wish for on this day? The reality is that there are a lot of people walking around with diabetic symptoms who haven’t gone to get tested. Often, if you’re not paying attention to the signs, by the time you do get yourself checked out you might end up in the hospital for a few days. I have known way too many people who say they weren’t feeling well, or were having problems with their vision for weeks on end, then finally went to see a doctor, only to discover they glucose was in the 400’s or 500’s. One person I knew had his glucose at 679; it’s a wonder he was still walking around.

The higher numbers will get you admitted quickly, because at those levels you’re a walking time bomb. It could take a lot of work to get their glucose levels down to at least close to normal, where you can put someone on regular medication and start talking about changing one’s diet. I know there’s a lot of you reading this blog who aren’t feeling great, or might be a little bit overweight, or possibly even more. We, as I have to include myself in this one, are predisposed towards diabetes. It also ran in my family, which means I should have known better.

The wish, therefore, is to go get your blood tested for this. It’s a simple test, and most cities or communities every once in awhile have a blood glucose drive, where they’ll test it for you. It’s free, easy, and it’s better to know early than late. If you don’t have such a thing, go to your doctor and ask for the test. It’s inexpensive and fast, and at least you’ll know and can do something about it.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post titled Starting A New Eating Plan. I knew it was time to do it because I had lost control over my diabetes numbers. The problem with diabetes isn’t one bad day; it’s many bad days in a row, because that’s when bad things start happening to your body.

Something I didn’t talk about in that previous post was where my numbers had been, compared to what I needed to shoot for. Here’s some figures for you. The American Diabetes Association says one’s glucose level should be between 80 – 120 mg/dl, or milligrams in a deciliter, which is 1/10th of a liter. Too much information? Well, let’s just stick with the numbers then. Anyway, the high figure used to be 140, and I like to try to shoot for between 110 and 140 because I just feel better in that range. When I start getting too close to 100, or lower than that, I start shaking or getting light headed; that’s never fun.

Anyway, the day I started on this new plan, which was two days after my diabetes clinic, the Joslin Center, had told me to increase the amount of insulin I needed to inject twice a day from 30 units to 40 units of 100 milliliters. That’s a bunch, because when I was first injecting, I was only at 15 units. My glucose figure had a 2-week average of 225. Just a few nights earlier, I had recorded a reading of 365; that kind of thing is scary, and it was after I’d eaten pasta earlier in the evening.

The eating and exercise plan started Monday the 26th. By the 29th, my afternoon reading was 110; 30th, my morning glucose reading was 130. I even lost two pounds. I felt pretty good going into the weekend, as my wife and I decided I get Friday nights and all day Saturdays off. After all, it’s hard to stick to a tight eating plan without a break here and there. I ate whatever I wanted last weekend, but I didn’t overeat, and I didn’t do much damage to myself, which was nice.

That Sunday, I went back on the plan, but I changed up some. Instead of straight chicken and mixed vegetables I added hamburger and salmon and spinach into the mix. I also added some ham slices for a sandwich instead of a full meal, and also allowed myself a quick snack, if I needed it, of a piece of wheat bread with peanut butter on it, and a much thinner layer than I would have had before the eating plan.

Last week my glucose numbers continued to fall, to the point where I had to cut back on my medication. One morning my reading was 110; phenomenal for me. Two days, though, my readings were under 100, once at 87, the other time at 97. Remember those shakes I mentioned earlier? I knew on those days that I needed to cut back on my medication, but I also had to eat sooner than 3 hours, and mix in some of the snacking I’d talked about. I didn’t lose any weight during the week, but as I said in my initial post, the goal really was about reducing my glucose levels. My average for the last two weeks had come down to 151, and I’m happy with that since my readings were a little higher over the weekend. But during the week, I only had one number over 140; wow!

So, this does prove that, when all the chips are down, one can modify their diet and bring down glucose levels. It also says that people can probably find some of their own maladies and, by changing their diets somewhat, modify some of their issues. Kind of like how, by changing my mother’s diet a few weeks ago, we were able to reduce her high blood pressure to almost normal.

Of course, I’m still not off the hook here. All I’ve done is given the medication a chance to work with me. But being able to reduce how much of the medication I’ve had to take, it means that my program is working, and probably if I decided to give up my fun nights, I could probably reduce it further. But I’ll never eliminate the medication completely, and if I gave up my one night, I’d probably have problems sticking to the plan as well. For now, I’m a happy guy.

By the way, notice I call it an eating plan rather than a diet? I think the terminology is important as well. People have problems sticking to diets, but having an eating plan, which includes some “free” days, makes it quite tolerable indeed. It may only be semantics to some, but I see dieting as something much different than what I’m trying to do. I may be crazy, but I’m getting the results I want, so it’s working for me.

On Friday night, while my wife and I were having a general conversation, and I asked her if I could tell her something without her going too far one way or the other in her reaction. She said yes, knowing that, because it’s me, it wasn’t going to be anything overly dramatic, but that I was serious about something.

I told her that I hadn’t been feeling all that well lately. As a matter of fact, it’s probably been since just after my birthday in early September. I’m diabetic, and over the past couple of months I’ve struggled with my glucose. I had been okay, not great, but okay, until my mother got kind of ill, and I had to go take care of that. I’ll admit that I’m also under a lot of stress, and that certainly didn’t help things any.

So, no, I haven’t been feeling all that well. And I know why I haven’t been feeling well. See, there’s two things I have to do to feel well, and if I’m not doing both of them, then I don’t feel well at all. One is I have to eat right. The other is I have to exercise. Oddly enough, I can actually eat well and feel pretty good, but I don’t lose any weight. However, exercising doesn’t overcome feeling bad because I’m eating badly; that’s not fair, but that’s life.

We agreed that, starting today, I would go back to an eating plan, with caveats. Breakfast will be some kind of eggs. After that, every meal I eat, when I’m home, will be chicken and vegetables. And the amount of chicken has been measured. I know because I cooked everything Sunday and put it in containers. The plan is to eat every 3 hours or so, hoping I’ll be able to hold out at least that long before eating again. I’ve done this twice before in my life. Once, I lost a lot of weight. The last time, my glucose came down, but I didn’t lose any weight, even though I exercised twice a day. I’m thinking I can track it to the alfredo sauce, which is what I mixed the chicken with when I did this same eating plan in March of 2008.

One thing that hasn’t happened is that I haven’t gained any weight. But things are shifting, and I don’t feel good. What that means, from a diabetic, is that I feel my blood coursing through my body. You’re not supposed to feel that. You’re not supposed to feel the pounding of your blood when you try to go to sleep. That means your heart is working too hard to pump the blood through your body. When your glucose is up, your blood thickens, and thus it’s harder to push through. Also, if it’s high for a long time, that will start messing with other areas of your body. One day, back in July, my eyesight was affected when my glucose shot way up; that was scary.

So, here’s the eating plan. Sunday through Friday afternoon I stick to my eating plan. Friday night, since we usually do something, I get to come off it, but not to overdo anything. Same goes for Saturday; controlled behavior, but I can eat foods outside the norm. Then on Sunday, back to eggs for breakfast, and chicken and vegetables the rest of the day. That’s mixed veggies now; I don’t eat weird veggies now. And, at some point, I might have to mix some rice in there, for a little bit of carbs. We’re not supposed to totally take carbs out of our diet, though some of those mixed vegetables should count.

As for the exercise, the guarantee is to exercise at least once a day for at least 15 minutes. I have a trampoline, and if I watch one of my documentary DVDs, I can get it done. I put on the timer to make sure I get there. And, as I get used to it again, I should be able to do a bit longer after awhile. Actually, for me, it’s usually mental; just can’t wait to get back to work. But I’m going to follow my 4- week work plan, where I’ve given myself a special permission to take care of my health. It’s part of the Get Clients Now program by C. J. Hayden, but I’ve modified it to help me get other things done.

So, there you go. By the time you see this I’ll hopefully have eaten some breakfast, and I’ll be ready to start my trek towards feeling better. If the past is any indication, I should start feeling better by Thursday, and my glucose should start responding in a positive manner. I can do this; anyone want to join me?

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I am a Type II diabetic. Every once in awhile, I write about things on this blog related to diabetes. That’s not necessarily because I feel I need to tell people about my struggles and successes, but because I don’t think that people who aren’t diabetic know what we can go through sometimes.

When I talk about it, I don’t only talk about things that affect diabetics. I have talked about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and sugar alcohols. But I did talk about the day I was diagnosed as being diabetic, and I have given some diabetes information here and there.

Now I’m going to tell you a quick little story about my day, just to give you an example of why it’s important for me to try to pay attention to what I do, and what I go through here and there.

During the week, I’ve been sticking to a recent eating plan. My glucose was out of control for maybe three weeks, and I know stress brought some of that on. One thing that helps me overcome stress is putting myself on plans and schedules. In this way, since I set it up, I tend to follow it closely enough to get things done, no matter what they are.

Some quick numbers, since I’ll be talking numbers in this tale. A good glucose range is supposed to be 80 – 120. Some people don’t necessarily do well in that range, and I’m one of them. For me, I should be between 100 and 140. When I’m lower than 100, I get lightheaded and just don’t feel well. That doesn’t happen often, but once last summer I got down to 44 after a very strenuous walk in a lot of heat, and in late spring the same thing happened again, only I didn’t have anything to check the level, but I remembered the feeling after recovering some.

Anyway, during the week, I was averaging around 155, which isn’t bad; slightly high, but way better than the 244 I had averaged during that 3 week period, and better than the 223 I had last Sunday. I give myself the weekend to kind of be worse than perfect, but I might have to rethink that strategy a little bit.

This morning, after a day where, I’ll admit, my wife and I weren’t quite perfect, my reading was 238. My wife gave me breakfast, which was grilled cheese sandwiches, which is good and bad at the same time. I had it on wheat bread, but it does have a touch of HFCS and enriched white flour, another thing not quite as healthy. Then she gave me a cookie she’d bought at the farmer’s market yesterday. I took my medication, which includes my injection, and I figured I would be fine.

After about 90 minutes, I got overly tired. It can come on quickly, and so I went to lay down. My wife said she was leaving to go to do some shopping, and it’s Sunday so I figured it was a great day to take a nap. I went to sleep and slept for about an hour. I woke, but I was extremely groggy. The phone rang, and I barely grabbed it; it was my wife asking if I wanted anything while she was out. I hung up the phone, felt like I just couldn’t move, and went back to sleep. I slept for another hour, awoke, and still felt just as bad. I knew this wasn’t good.

Timing is everything; my wife came home within a couple of minutes, and once she made it back to the bedroom I asked her to bring me some water. Cold water sometimes helps me snap out of it, and with the cold water, I at least felt like I could move again. I came to the computer, ready to do some work, and I noticed problem number two; I couldn’t read the screen. With the browser, I can make the letters bigger, but for TweetDeck or Mailwasher, which I use to check my email before downloading it to my computer, you can’t increase the size. I couldn’t read either, and that was a warning sign.

I knew I had to check my glucose, which I did, and it was 311; ouch! That doesn’t usually happen if I inject when I eat, but today it did. I knew that the water had probably brought it down a little bit, which allowed me to get out of bed in the first place, but that was scary.

I knew I had to eat again, as it had been 5 hours, so I got something to eat, then gave myself a second injection, a smaller dose, which isn’t part of my plan, but I had to get this under control. My wife and I also went out for a walk, to try to stimulate the blood flow. At least I was fully awake at this point, and the walk went smoothly enough.

We got home, and I came to the computer; I could see again. Whew! Now, the thing is that I’m supposed to wait at least 2 hours until after I’ve eaten to check glucose again, and I’ve just checked after 2 1/2 hours; my glucose is at 91; ouch! I’ve brought my glucose down 240 points in 2 1/2 hours, which might be a bit extreme. It’s easier lower than where I want it to be, so now I have to eat something again. That’s not a bad thing because during the week, when I’m doing well, I eat every 2 1/2 hours to 3 hours anyway, smaller meals to stimulate the metabolism, which also helps me lose some weight, along with the exercise. But I hadn’t thought that, even with the exercise, I would see a number like that.

For more information, when someone has high diabetic numbers, the blood thickens, and doesn’t run through the body all that well. That can make one sluggish, but it can do a host of other things to people as well. For me, it makes me logie, but if it gets too high it can also affect my eyesight. I don’t need to be doing that sort of thing all that often, as it’s not good for me, or any diabetic, long term.

However, it’s better lower than higher, so I’m not all that upset right now. At least I can see, and I can eat something and bring it back into a normal level. Still, this is what some diabetics go through, which is why I wanted to mention it here. This isn’t a joke, folks; sometimes, it’s pretty scary. And another scary thing is that there are a lot of you walking around right now, suffering some of the same things, meaning you might be diabetic, and you don’t know it yet, or aren’t paying attention to the signs. I know many people who found themselves in the emergency room with numbers in the 500’s because they kept ignoring signs until they finally crashed.

That’s a terrible thing to have happen to you; read my story of how I learned I was diabetic, which is one of those links above. Please pay attention to what’s going on with you, because the sooner you find out, the sooner you have a chance to take care of it.

Oh yeah, it sometimes brings on depression also; I need to keep a check on that as well.

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Here’s a short story for you. As you know by an earlier tale, I’m diabetic, coming up on 12 years in September. It’s not always easy to know what to do if you’re a diabetic, and I have to admit that I’m not the best diabetic in the world.

I have a sweet tooth, and these cravings are hard to overcome. There are times when I don’t even know I’ve left the house to get something sweet until I’ve started eating it. That may sound crazy to some, but it’s the truth. Every once in awhile I get my mind just before I leave the house, and look to call someone to talk to, which usually helps me get past the craving. That’s the thing about a craving; if you can get past the time period when it’s really strong, then you won’t succumb to it.

However, sometimes you try to do something that’s not going to supposedly hurt you as much; I say it that way because things like pasta and bread are actually worse for diabetics that pure sugar, contrary to the beliefs of people who aren’t diabetic. With sugar, I get a big bounce, then it goes away relatively fast. With pasta, bread and the like, it’s considered a complex carbohydrate, and it stays with you for a much longer time. I can eat some dessert every single day and have it not affect me all that much, but one serving of paste every day for even three days drastically shoots my glucose numbers.

Anyway, here’s the story. About seven years ago, I was at the casino playing something (this was in the days before I was playing poker), and before leaving, I decided to stop by the dessert counter. They have some of the best desserts in the world there, and my eyes happened upon these giant peanut butter cups. Lo and behold they were also sugar free; I was in my glory! So, I bought 3 of them, as my wife wasn’t with me, and I knew I would be just fine because there was no sugar in them. I felt so confident that I ate all three of them on the drive home; just under 40 minutes.

Pretty much within the first ten minutes of being home, I was in the bathroom, and let me just say that it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I kept visiting the bathroom for the rest of the night and into the next day; it was painful to say the least. Thing is, as I thought about it, I realized that there were other times when I’d had something that said sugar free on it, and my stomach didn’t react quite properly with it, and I had no idea why.

As serendipity happens, my wife and I were going to a diabetic nutrition class that Monday, two days away, and I resolved to ask them about it. I did, and they told me that most people who make sugar free items add what’s known as “sugar alcohols” to them.

Sugar alcohols are carbohydrates themselves, and they come from plants, which manufacture them naturally. They’re supposed to be like sugar in taste, although they have different degrees of sweetness, and they’re not completely absorbed by the body. This means the blood sugar impact is less and they provide fewer calories per gram. Sugar alcohols also don’t promote tooth decay.

Sounds good, right? Well, the problem is that they aren’t totally absorbed in the body, and for some people, actually many people, they can ferment in the intestines and cause bloating, gas, or diarrhea. Some people aren’t affected at all; folks like me,… well, you get the drift.

How do you know if something has a sugar alcohol in it? Check the ingredients, and if you see anything ending in “ol”, it’s a sugar alcohol. The strange thing to me is that they put this stuff in a lot of things specifically for diabetics, almost like someone didn’t read this information beforehand. By the way, it’s not only diabetics who are affected by this, so if you’ve eaten something you know is supposed to be sugar free and have problems, you probably can’t handle sugar alcohols. And, if you’re lactose intolerant, you probably will have problems with sugar alcohols, and vice versa.

And there you go; a non-marketing post for once, but still part of my mission of diabetes education. I hope you stuck around for the teaching part.

Today, November 14th, 2008, is World Diabetes Day, something I initially mentioned when talking about National Diabetes Month. Each year, millions of adults and children learn that they’re diabetic; some don’t learn it until they’ve done serious damage to themselves in some fashion. Being aware of changes in your body that you can’t explain and not being afraid to find out what might be going on could help you avert major problems later in life. I am a diabetic, and I’ve been diagnosed for 11 years. I’d like to tell you my story.

Eleven years ago, I was having the best and the worst year of my life. I got married in May of 1997, my first and only marriage, and I’ve had nothing but a great time ever since. In 1997, I took the very first vacation of my life, which was the week after I got married; man, that was a long time before taking a vacation, but my dad never took a vacation until he was in his 50’s; guess I’m a slacker.

Eleven years ago I also had breast surgery to remove a lump that was causing me pain. It wasn’t cancerous, and I have no idea where it came from, and I’d never even thought about the possibility of it being cancerous, but it was my first surgery ever. And I got it approved and paid for by the insurance company; talk about how knowledge will help you achieve things that others might not know about.

Eleven years ago, a few days after my 38th birthday, I was driving back to work from lunch in another town about 10 minutes from the hospital I was working in at the time. I had a co-worker with me, and we were going through a construction zone. In a couple of minutes, I was pulled over by a police car. The officer came to the car and said I was speeding through a work zone. I said that I knew what the speed limit was and wasn’t speeding, but he said the speed limit was reduced in that area. I said I never saw a sign, and my co-worker said there was a sign that I must have missed. I took the ticket and continued driving back to work, but I did notice that I could barely read any of the signs.

That wasn’t the first day, however. I’d noticed it most of the time for a few weeks while driving home from work. I lived over an hour away from where I worked, and it wasn’t a major highway that I drove on, so there weren’t a bunch of signs, and rarely much traffic. Yet, I noticed that I was having vision problems. I’d mentioned it to my wife, and said that it was only when driving home in the evenings; I never had the problem in the morning. So, on the day I drove home after getting the ticket and mentioning it to her again, she said we should head over to the ophthalmologist to have him take a look.

Talk about serendipity. I had gone to the same place, Sterling Optical, for about 18 or 19 years, and I’d had this same guy looking at my eyes for at least 13 of those years. My prescription hadn’t changed in at least 10 years, and I’d just had an eye exam a month before I got married. So, it was easy for me to walk in and have him take a quick look. He didn’t like what he saw, and said my vision had changed drastically from the last time I was there, and his conclusion immediately was that I might be diabetic.

The breath caught in my throat at his words. Not that I was overly surprised, because it ran in my family, but because out of all my relatives who’d gotten it, I possibly was now the youngest to get it. I figured I had at least six or seven more years before I had to think about it; now it didn’t look that way.

He recommended that I see my primary care physician, which was slightly problematic. I had never selected one because I hadn’t been to the doctors in many years. The last time I’d seen a doctor was 11 years earlier; typical American male in that regard, even though I’d had some issues that I probably should have seen a doctor for. But I was raised in a different time; you only went to doctors when your mother took you, when you broke something, or when you were on death’s bed; that was the rule at the time. My wife wanted me to go to a doctor, but I took a detour step first. Since I worked in a hospital and the emergency room was right behind my office, I went in there the next morning and talked with the physician assistant about it. He took a quick glucose test, saw that my number was just under 300, and told me I had to see a doctor; if it had been 50 points higher he’d have had to admit me.

That was that. I called this one doctor with whom I had a cordial relationship with, he took me in, diagnosed me, and started me on the first round of what would become regular check ups and visits with someone about diabetes, including education. Though I’m not the best patient in the world, I do know how to take care of myself and how I’m supposed to eat, and I follow it more often than I don’t follow it, which is a good thing. But within a week my glucose came down, which was a good thing otherwise I couldn’t have had my surgery, and over the course of the last eleven years I’ve been pretty good for the most part. If they hadn’t changed the high limit from what it was when I was diagnosed I’d be considered as almost perfect for nine of of the eleven years.

As time has progressed, I have had to go on medication, and presently take two different pills a day and two shots of insulin, which I started a year ago on November 2nd. I’m not considered dependent, as it turns out there are different variations of insulin, but it’s helped me boost what the pills can’t do on their own. If I can drop some weight, I could probably get off insulin; but, as some of you know, that’s not quite as easy as I wish it was.

Anyway, the main point of this story is that everyone needs to pay attention to symptoms that may not necessarily be what you might think are diabetic symptoms. My mother noticed my dad’s diabetes because he started losing a lot of weight, which he himself didn’t notice. I’ve met people who noticed it because they were having numbness in their limbs, and many people notice something wrong when they’re going to the bathroom all the time, or constantly thirsty. Here’s a link to many of the symptoms of diabetes, things you should be looking at if you notice any of them occurring with you or your friends and family members. Caught early, at least you have some kind of fighting chance.

There, my contribution to World Diabetes Day. If you get a chance, check out this interesting post on the day, with videos no less.

November is National Diabetes Month, and it’s something I care about wholeheartedly. If you’ve gone back into my blog, you know that I’m diabetic, and I’ve written on diabetes a couple of times, including my battles every once in awhile. Luckily, since I’ve been home, I’ve gotten my glucose numbers back under control.

Unfortunately, though I’m not considered an insulin dependent person, I am on insulin, and though it’s not as bad as I’d thought it would be, having to give myself injections twice a day isn’t much fun. I don’t have to start spouting numbers of new diabetics every day. It’s not always something you can easily control, as it runs in my family, but it’s something that we can keep from getting way out of control with knowledge, exercise, and communication.

To that end, I’d like to direct everyone in America to this link of activities taking place across the country this month highlighting this terrible disease. For everyone else, there’s this link talking about World Diabetes Day, which is November 14th.

Can diabetes be solved? Honestly, I don’t know. But I’ll never give up my fight, and I’m sure someone will eventually figure something out, with the help and funds of others.

I did say it was video day, right? On Diabetesaliciousness blog, she wrote a post that I’m not going to link back to because, well, some of the initial language is pretty bad and I don’t roll that way. Anyway, it’s a rant that I approve of against a new series of commercials popping up on TV trying to convince the American public that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is actually good for us.

Trust me, nothing can be further from the truth. I can’t even believe I would have to begin telling a lot of people about this stuff, but it’s basically taking a lot of heat for many of the health issues most of us have, especially diabetes. I’m not going to start posting a lot of statistics here; instead, here’s some links you can check out if you’re really interested:

That should be enough for now. And, oddly enough, I didn’t copy the same link each time; all the articles have the same title, and there’s plenty more. So much for originality. Anyway, on the first blog I mentioned, along with her rant was this very sarcastic video, which I present to you now:

And there you go. The biggest problem we have is that it’s in almost everything processed, so you really have to check closely to see what the ingredients are in your foods. I’ve pretty much gotten most of it out of my diet at home, but who knows what I’m eating when I’m on the road. Do the best you can; I’m going to try.

It’s been awhile since I’ve given an update on my diabetes control. When we last left, I was so under control that I was able to reduce my intake of insulin, and all was great with the world.

Well, I can’t say that now, and it’s mostly my fault, though I have my excuse for it. In June, I went on the road for 3 months on a consulting assignment for my main business. The problem with working a long term consulting assignment is that you can’t eat properly because, well, circumstances just get in the way. While I was still working from home, I was able to eat every 3 hours, the meals were measured and planned way in advance, and I felt great. When you’re working at someone else’s location, and they’re paying for the hotel, you suddenly don’t have the same kind of control over yourself that you do at home.

Mornings were a quick sandwich of some kind from McDonalds. Lunch was almost always Subway, every once in awhile KFC, but lunch sometimes was within 3 hours, sometimes 5. Dinner was wherever and whatever I was in the mood for, easily not measured, and sometimes ordered and delivered to my hotel room. Since I was in a smaller town, if I ordered it was usually Chinese or pizza; that’s not great, is it? I was able to keep away from pasta while I was on the road, but rice was another matter. If I’d been in something like a suite with a kitchen then I might have been able to take better care of my meals, but in a hotel with only a microwave,… nope.

If I’d been able to go in the Sunday before every single week I might have been able to take a few meals with me that I could microwave, but hotel refrigerators are small, so it would have only held a couple of meals; that wasn’t going to get it done. One week I tried taking lunch meat, bread and Miracle Whip with me to make my own sandwiches, and I tried to keep to my 3 hour schedule, and it was my best week, though nothing close to the numbers I really need to maintain.

Most of the 3 months I was there I just didn’t feel well. It’s not that I ate too much every night, though it happened, but I wasn’t as good as I should have been. I did have dessert every night, though I kept away from it during the day as much as possible. I forgot what it could be like in an office where people are bringing snacks and desserts into the office all the time; it’s hard to stay totally away from it all when you’re like me, who craves sweets and finds it difficult to stay away from on my own. I didn’t sleep well on the road, even worse than I sleep at home, but I’ve slept better in the past, so I believe. I had some pretty bad morning numbers, averaging in the 220’s, and one morning I actually awoke with my worst number ever, 331, and I just felt like I could barely get out of bed on that day, and it was a day I was driving home; that’s not good at all.

So, now the assignment is over, and I’ve had a little bit of a relaxation week, highlighted by a birthday where my wife had someone make me a special cake, but at this point it’s all gone, and as far as I know, all the other desserts are gone also. Starting tomorrow, I go back on the full plan, which will include working out on the trampoline. Of all things, though, since my consulting assignment ended, I have lost 2 pounds by pretty much doing nothing except letting my wife help keep me under control. Oh yeah, I gained 10 pounds while I was on the road also, so I now have to get that, and more, back off my body, as my back has started hurting again.

I’m ready to get it on, to do the right thing; anyone here want to join me on the journey, even if it’s only to try to lose some weight?

Bowflex 5-Series Treadmill

You might find this interesting. I just did a six day eating experiment, as it relates to my diabetes, and it seems that it’s all tied in with my diet, unfortunately for me because I was ready to talk some serious smack with my wife.

I had been averaging around 205; not good. I’ve owned up to having kind of a sugar addiction; it’s more chocolate than anything else, but it’s all sweet stuff. I decided to give up sweets for six days, which also included eliminating a bunch of carbs for that time period because carbs promote the cravings, as I’d been on a bad roll, and wasn’t feeling all that well physically because of it. I decided to do Sunday through Friday, so I’d be starting the first day while my wife was still home with me.

Sunday through Tuesday my numbers started coming down slightly. By Wednesday afternoon, I was in the 130’s, and Thursday morning I was at 117; I’d never had a morning number that low in all the years I’d been diagnosed. Friday morning it was 107; stunned! Meanwhile, Tuesday was the only day where I had some serious cravings, and I barely made it through that day. Seems many folks who talk about other addictions say the third day is the worst; well, it was for me.

This was all through diet. We purchased some chicken breasts, some alfredo sauce, and vegetables. I ate that for most of my meals after breakfast (breakfast was eggs with ham or Spam; yeah, I like Spam), with my treats, so to speak, either being popcorn, carrots and dip, or oatmeal. The decrease in my glucose level was amazing, so amazing I had to decrease the amount of insulin I was using.

This morning it was back up to 168. That’s because last night, for dinner, we went to a fish fry place, where I had fried shrimp and french fries, and the meal was much more in one sitting than I’d been eating lately, not to mention the fried part; lots of carbs (and I forgot to take last night’s pill; oops). And that’s before having any dessert today, as today is my free day; heck!

So, it proves that it really is all about diet; that’s depressing, but enlightening, because now I know what to do and how to act. I didn’t lose any weight this week, mainly because I hurt my back so I didn’t work out. But I’ll get back to that next week. Anyway, I say depressing because I thought my glucose wouldn’t come down much at all, and I’d be able to say “see, it’s not me, it’s the diabetes taking over”. Now I know I’ll really have to watch the diet, which means my wife wins, Mom wins, and, well, I guess I win in the end also; heck!

Unfortunately, I have to put diabetes at the top of my illness list. Actually, it’s the only thing on my illness list, so I guess I can be happy about that. However, I’m also now on insulin, and I’m nowhere close to happy about that.

Often, we get these diseases, and we get some information, but it’s never all the information we’re looking for, or need. So, I’m going to share a couple of things here, just in case you happen to have the same malady.

First, your glucose numbers can be affected by not getting enough sleep. Over my ten years, I’ve noticed that if I get little or no sleep, which happens often for me, my morning fasting number is going to be high. I learned that those with sleep apnea will have high numbers, and I have a little bit of that.

Second, there’s more than one type of insulin. I’ll admit that I’m not really sure why, but I do know that my first insulin, Levemir, had additives in it that gave me a rash. It also had this scent of bandages, of all the odd things, and I was told that was so you knew whether you’d injected yourself properly or not. I’m unsure of that one also, as I seemed to have that scent whether I did it right or not.

That’s number three. You can inject yourself incorrectly. I’ve made two mistakes to warn you of. One, you have to try to make sure you push straight in, not at an angle. The second, if you even slightly touch yourself with the needle, either change the needle or get ready for some pain. I don’t know why I do it, but every once in awhile it’s like I’m doing a test puncture, will pull it out, then push it back in. The needles are very fine so they don’t hurt, per se, but that also means they’re delicate, so if you push a second time, they’ve already been damaged.

Number four, there are many places one can inject themselves. Some of them my mind is trying to think of how you could still do it and inject yourself, which of course means you’d have to have help, and that’s just not happening with me. Others may be fine, but it turns out there’s a reason for knowing this. I developed a rash from the Levemir, so I was changed to something called Lantus. No additives, no scent. However, my rash never went away, so I first talked to my nurse educator, who recommended I try another area. Then I did some research online, especially on the Lantus, and there I learned that they recommend that you not inject in specifically the same area for a couple of days. For instance, one recommendation as it concerns the stomach is to view it as a clock and rotate around it, so that it gives the injected areas time to heal. Same with the legs and arms if you go that route. I know now that’s where I made my mistake, as I picked pretty much two areas and kept injecting only in those places. Now I’m going to set up a routine where I move it around to at least six different spots, to help me overcome some of the swelling and lumps I’ve got now.

So, there you go. I may drop more hints as to what’s going on with me as time goes, or just general information as I learn it. After all, we need to try to make sure we share information as possible, right?