Has it been a month already?

Oh boy, oh boy!!! I promise myself every day, correction: almost every day, I'm going to write something here and then ... no I don't find something more interesting to do, but that tricky feeling of laziness finds me and I leave it till next day again or better till Monday. FYI: I still read all my favourite blogs. You know who you are. If you don't, please feel free to march straight to the comments section and demand an explanation from me on how come you missed that memo.

Oh dear heavens, it's been buuuusy lately!!! A trip to France, new job, building up hours at work, still figuring out the pump (most of the time it's figuring out how to make it cooperate with the outfit I'm wearing, similar to Kerri's dilemma, which indeed usually ends with changing into something else), juggling numerous friends staying over on weekends, congratulating other numerous friends with their new borns, and reading the last Harry Potter book, boy that book sucks!

Dear HP friends, please don't be offended, I'm a big fan myself but I can't help it, I tried and I tried and I tried some more but I can't make myself like the last book. I'm sorry but if I had a kid under 12, no actually, make it under 32, which would make me a mum with a kid that is older than I am, but anyway, I wouldn't let him/her read it. It's full of violence and anger and violence. I can imagine the author wanted to make the last book phenomenal, but I think she overdid it. At some points it's way too much and on the other hand, sometimes it's plain boring. Sorry to outburst about a HP book, I was just so disappointed. I even switched to a different book in the middle of reading for some positiveness, because I was feeling like HP was putting me into depression.

Did I mention a new job? Ya, I did. Well I didn't switch companies, just switched jobs within the company. I like the company after all more than I thought I did. Although I have been looking for a job somewhere else but that search is stopped now, as I love my new position!!! Now I'm undergoing lots of trainings and my head is exploding from all the new information but I love it. Sorry can't tell you much about it, all the confidentiality agreements, you know. And no, I don't work for FBI.


Hold on a sec, quick bg check. ....... 4.8 , hmmm ... sensing time for a snack approaching.

So about the trip to France. I have turned 25 a couple of weeks ago, yap, big and round 25. Everyone is talking about a quarter of the life, I don't know, feels more like a half. But anyway, somehow I wanted to celebrate it big and fun and away just me and my boyfriend. We didn't had vacation together this summer so a long weekend together sounded very good to both of us. It has been quite busy and stressful lately with all kind of staff and we wanted something fun and far from every day reality. So first to thought came France waltsing in pretty glamorous lights. I mean you think France, you think Paris, you think romantic, right? Plus France for us is perfect, far from home and at the same time not far to drive (5 hours). Perfect! Then I thought why not add to it a bit of fun and go to Disneyland and voila, we have our perfect relaxing romantic fun detoxing weekend.

We had such a great time! It was amazing! All that time together and in the perfect location for celebrating birthdays. Mmmm ... :) We didn't want to leave. Just look at our happy faces ...

Oh and I tried on every hat and ears they were selling in Disney shops, and cuddle almost every toy, so much fun!!! I'm such a child

So wonderful trip, new exciting job, terrific boyfriend, I love you honey! So far I like the start of my second quarter, of the year number 26.

There are two sides to everything

Was it really a month? A month or a little over a month since I've written here? Oh well, time flies, especially if it's summer time. Lots have happened over such a short period of time that I found it difficult to choose the subject to write about and was postponing my comeback to the blog world :)

From the pleasant days of last month:

My sister came to visit and we spent a wonderful week together in the Hague and another even more marvelous week in Spain enjoying the sun and the sea. almost purring from pleasure spending whole time on the beach. Doing nothing but swimming, laying on the beach, reading, walking, eating, drinking sangria and basically relaxing reflected extremely good on my sugars. For the whole trip my insulin daily totals decreased by at least 40%! I felt terrific! Vacation - goooood!!!

I had a couple of my first funny pump related encounters at the airports. In Schiphol at the customs:

-"Could you please remove your cell phone from your jeans pocket?"

-"Sorry, I can't. It's not a cell phone, it's a direct line with my pancreas, it must stay open at all times."

At the Palma airport in Spain after beeping at the metal detector.

-"Could you please step over here?" a guy with a hand metal detecting thingy ready to make an extra check and then spotting a clip on my jeans pocket reading "Medtronic MiniMed" (I wear my pump inside the pocket so only the clip is visible). The guard's next question:

-"Diabetica?" Me:

-"Yes" The guard gesturing me to go further without checking me:

-"You can go."

I was a bit surprised at such a knowledgeable reaction after countless times explaining to many people that what I have clipped to my pocket is not a mobile or an mp3.

I'm learning more and more about the pump and it's going really good with it. I love my little blue gadget more and more every day. I've just started to get to know the amazing bolus wizard and there's still some negotiations needed in order to convince it to cooperate but apparently life can be so much easier.

From the not so pleasant days of last month:

My vision suddenly decreased enormously without any obvious reason. One day I just started to see less and less and at some point wasn't even able to read anything from anywhere unless the letters were the size of the billboards' ones.

I've had the retinopathy for the last 2 years already (I totally don't believe those people who say they have diabetes for over 30 years and no complications; they should recheck if they have diabetes in the first place). But so far it was not major and some laser treatment twice a year was doing the trick.

But apparently besides the diabetes I have some other factors effecting my vision (I'm not going to bore you with medical details), which in combination with the diabetes make a deadly serious partnership making me see only 20% with my left eye and 40% with my right eye, which is 50% in total against all the mathematical laws.

That would be half the tragedy for a person without diabetes as there is a surgery available for such a condition, which might help to improve the vision by about 30% but, and of course there is a but, the surgery is not allowed for people with diabetes on account that there is a chance of complete blindness. Is this nightmare ever going to end?

I can't help but think if I'm only 25 now, what's going to be when I'm 35? 45? 55? am I even going to live till then?

Sorry to be coming back with rather negative thoughts, although they are not negative at all, it's only human to be scared, right?

Happy pumping

I've been on the pump for almost 3 weeks now. I'm loving it! Where have I been before? Oh, ya, right, I was fighting my doctors to allow me to go on the pump, which took 7 months. But nevertheless, I'm on, I'm happy, I never felt more free with diabetes in my life.

My sugars calmed down and my insulin intake decreased dramatically. When I just started a reservoir of 1.8 (MiniMed Paradigm 522) lasted me only a couple of days, now I can go on it for four full days, in my diabetes experience that's impressive. It all goes so easily, the set changes, the boluses. I'm still figuring out the clothing part in terms of where to attach the pump and at least hide the tubing. I gave up on hiding the pump itself, it just doesn't work, so I wear it proudly clipped to my jeans pocket most of the time. But if I can still manage to wear this
without my pump crushing any lines or the color theme, I'm happy!

However, there was one thing that was of a big surprise and confusion. One of the reasons for me to switch to the pump was my so annoying dawn syndrome. So I was all prepared and ready to set an extra heavy basal rate for the night time, instead I found out that even the day time rate was too much. My dawn syndrome turned into waking-up-low-every-morning syndrome. I wake up with the sugar of 3 (54)! How did that happen? Have any of you experienced anything similar? I'm guessing Lantus really didn't do much for me.

I lowered my night basal yesterday but still woke up low this morning, so I'm going to lower it even more, we'll see. It's a good feeling though to realize that I need less insulin instead of more.

In the other, non-diabetic, news it's summer time! and my sister, whom I love to pieces, is coming next week to start her summer holidays with me! Yey!!! She just finished her first year at university and is a bit of a greenish color according to my mom, and I've been struggling with my health for almost the whole year, so we are both in desperate need of a good vacation. We'll stay in the Hague for a week and then will go somewhere really warm and do nothing but lay on the beach and drink cocktails the whole day long :) and lots of girl talk of course. I can't wait!

And my dear kitten received so many compliments lately that I thought I'd post another picture of this cute face over here :)

Off the CGM but being groovy :)

And I'm off the CGM. Why? I'm afraid to disappoint you Scott but instead of helping me it was confusing me like crazy. I asked many people for advice and I heard from people who are using it more than once that it's all more about the patterns rather than exact numbers, but still somehow my CGM wasn't even catching the patterns correctly most of the time. I just found myself not trusting it even when it was right. And the funny thing I was actually testing more often with the CGM than without it.

So after careful consideration I took it off this morning, and I have to say, I don't miss it AT ALL. Surprise, surprise. Me who was so eager to test it out gave up on the fourth day of trial. May be I'll try it again in the near future but right now I feel tired just from using it. It was nice to see a graph like this one for instance, but, oh my God, was it a big fat lie! ok, not always but most of the time.

And the patterns, well yes sometimes they do indicate the true situation, but I had times when it said I was going high when in reality I was going low. So as I said, I had difficulties trusting that thing.

On the more positive and fun note, I got totally jealous of Caro (wait, it'll get positive, I promise) of her groovy site look that I ordered some groovy patches as well. I'm loving them!

Tet-a-tet with CGM

Had 3 lows over the past 10 hours, THREE. over the past TEN hours. Needless to say I'm falling from exhaustion. Oh, and did I mention I'm using an CGM sensor for the last two days that suppose to alarm me if I go high or low? Well, it did, yah, when I was already 2.5 (45) and treating the low.

- "Beeep" reads: "I'm terribly sorry to interrupt but your blood glucose is low", just kidding, "LOW 4.9 (88)"
- "You don't say. Thank you very much, but I'm 2.5 (45) actualy and I've already taken my juice like 10 minutes ago. Where have YOU been?".

In 15 minutes:
- "Beeep" "LOW 4.6 (82)".
- "Well, you know I am indeed 4.6 (82), but that's actually good, that means my sugars are climbing up, the juice is working."

In 10 minutes:
- "Beeep" "LOW 4.8 (86)"
- "Well, just @#$%, will you!"
- "I'll try my best" - just kidding again.

Weekend

So after changing 3 bad sites in less than 24 hours it became clear that silhouette sets, which my diabetic nurse made me swear I'm going to use, don't cut it for me. After burning pains, bleeding, and sugars of 15 setting their roots what seemed permanently in my daily life I tried the quick set and bam! sugars are back to the 6-land, my stomach doesn't feel like there were hot nails planted into it and I don't want to torn violently the sets out of my body. Those silhouette sets really sucked for me and spoiled the first days of experience with the pump. But now it works perfectly, clean site feeling as it belongs there naturally.

Besides fighting bad sites in the weekend we also had my boyfriend's parents over for a couple of days. We talked a lot, we drove a lot, we saw a lot and I have to admit drank some bit a lot as well. We've been to a very pretty Delft but forgot a camera, been to the SeaLife in Scheveningen, saw Dorry there from "Finding Nemo" and some other awesome sea creatures that made me yet again admire the big artist called nature.

Our own creature back at home was glued to the bed the whole weekend.

And I'm on

It's official - I'm on the pump. For almost two hours now. Does it feel weird? Not as much as I thought it would. It feels quite comfortable actually once I figured out how to calm down the wild tubing jumping all over the place and how to fix the pump on my clothes so it doesn't push into my side while sitting. But that was the easy part I'm guessing.

I was quite nervous today about the whole thing. It somehow just dawned on me only this morning what a big change it's going to be after 15 years of using the pens. It's such a breaking point in my diabetes history. There have been lots of "last ones" and "first ones" yesterday and today, and there are still so many more "first ones" coming. My first bolus still awaits me. I'm pretty sure I'm going to search for the NovoRapid pen after each meal for a couple of days. The most important is to remove my Lantus pen from my bedstand draw because I might take a shot tomorrow morning just out of habit.