Diabetes Hypothetical Question.

 I have a question for you diabetics out there in the great inter-web.  Today I was waiting for my doctor in the waiting room and my BG's had a quick drop from 150 to 40 in no time at all.  I recognized the signs instantly and got some glucose tablets.  Then when I opened the tube up I saw the water damaged, mildew looking tablets in the container and wondered to myself, are these safe to eat?

The tube has been in my truck for like a couple of years and probably got wet or something but, if this was all you had to raise your BG's would you eat them?  I did have like three other tubes of glucose tabs, quick sticks, and other random candy to eat in the truck so I did not eat these.  The thing is though I have kept them because I am kind of thinking about doing a non-scientific experiment on my body and eating these and seeing if I come down with some sort of issues from eating these.  So my answer to the question is, Yes I would definitely eat anything to raise my BG's.  What would you do?

Saturday Night Diabetes Fever!

The answer to your question is yes, I am a dork and stay in most Saturday nights and I also enjoy watching "Saturday Night Live."  A couple of weeks ago the show had Arcade Fire which is a band I am not exactly too familiar with and when they came on to perform I was mesmerized by the awesome sound they had.  Then when they played their second song I was even more hooked into doing a little research into this band and adding them to my play list.  Once I thought I had seen it all and thought the night was ending and time for bed with the end of Saturday Night live, they had an encore video show with Arcade fire playing their new songs to be released on Oct 29th.  The video above is what they showed and it is so awesome with all sorts of guest appearances like Bono from U2, Michael Cera from "Super Bad," James Franco, Aziz Ansari, and just when you thought it was the most awesome thing ever about halfway through they have this fake space shuttle video conference which was Zack Galifianakis and the actor from the T-Mobile phone commercials as the "astronauts."  The video above is 22 minutes long but in my cute little slightly working diabetes heart it is an instant classic and I have listened to it like 10 times in the past couple of days.  Enjoy!

Diabetes Hands

 I have some good news and also some bad news about me.  First the bad news, when I go out for a run on the weekends I sometimes have to "go to the bathroom" but, lucky for me I choose a trail with water fountains and bathrooms along the route. 

The bathrooms along my route don't have soap so I have learned my lesson the hard way and now bring with me something to "wash" my hands with.  Hand sanitizer is good at killing germs but it does not "wash" your hands as I once learned.  A friend of mine told me to always think about if you would want your heart surgeon to do your quadruple bypass with just hand sanitizer?  So I take along with me something that is a wash like the monkey wipes above.  They are awesome and come in a handy singles pack that I can use over and over and over.  OK, I sometimes use the restroom alot while running.  These are also great to keep in your diabetes supplies man or woman's purse.

It's always fun in the land of Diabetesville!

 

OK, before I go any further I wanted to put out a couple of warnings before you read this post.  There is a descent amount of unsightly diabetes nudity below and also alot of whining and complaining.  You have been warned and proceed with caution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I started having a bit of stiffness in my shoulder.  I had rotator cuff surgery about 11 years ago and there is always a little pain doing this or that but nothing I couldn't fake my way through.  Then I was trying to run about three weeks ago on a Saturday and the pain became unbearable and I had to end my run and the next day I sat on my couch not doing anything but trying to get my shoulder into a comfortable state, at this point I knew it was past time to see the ol doctor.  The doctor said the sack that surrounds my shoulder was inflamed and when I moved my arm it was pinching parts of the sack.  To add onto that he said I had some descent arthritis in the shoulder as well from my surgery.  He ordered me some prescription strength bengay and also a few sessions of physical therapy.

I started physical therapy that Friday and the ladies took one look at my shoulder and that I was a diabetic and told me I definitely had "frozen shoulder" as well.  They informed me that frozen shoulder happens in alot of diabetics and it just takes alot of working out the right muscles to get everything back to diabetes half falling apart shape.  Then once we did some exercises they ended my session with a "taping" of my shoulder.  I have seen lots of people wear this stuff but I have never understood what it did.  So you can see in the picture the last piece of tape I had on and what it does I guess is pull everything out so that nothing is pinching or something.  The taping worked really good and the physical therapy (I am in week three of four now) has done miracles for helping out.  I am just going to put this in the category of the daily life of living with diabetes.  Remember if we just don't eat sweets the disease is under control!

Diabetes Comedy

Sorry everyone I fell behind on posts, got busy at work, and am of course lazy.  My buddy Jeff sent me this picture and I don't know where he got it from but this has to be the pinnacle of all diabetes comedy.  I showed it to my coworkers and they didn't get it and that is what rocks even more about it that non-diabetics can't see the awesome humor in this picture.  So enjoy your weekend and when you test your BG's and it is a little elevated just refer back to this picture and everything will be OK.

How to avoid the noise!

 Do you ever want to just eat something that is not healthy and contains what normal people call bad for diabetics stuff called sugar?  I must tell you, half the teeth in my head are sweet so I don't just have a sweet tooth, I have half a mouth full of sweet loving teeth.  So my worst holiday is Halloween, I loved this holiday until the age of 13, then it became a curse and the beginning of depression season.  Halloween is followed by Thanksgiving, another great diabetes day of defeat, then Christmas, which is awesome for the BG's and A1c's, then New Years and by the end of it all you feel like the world is against you.

Now, I am not embarrassed of diabetes there are just times when you don't want the 70 something year old smoker at your work harassing you because your bg's are 68 and you are drinking a glass of OJ and they are telling you that you shouldn't be drinking that.  Like anyone cheats with OJ?  Get real, we do bad with lots of other crap but never OJ.  So I was playing around with a buddy at work and he came to my desk and asked, "you got a cold because of the Advil?"  I responded to him that no, it was my way of muling illegal candy around and to stay under the radar of the diabetes police.  Then I opened the box to show him the caramel's inside and he asked, why would you do that?  I told him to stay off the radar of the diabetes police.  Just having fun like I always do but sometimes it is just easier to hide your candy obsession than to answer a million questions like "are you low because of all the candy you are eating?" or the "you shouldn't be eating that?"  Like anyone on the planet should eat any part of this, I just sometimes enjoy a simple freakin piece of caramel, or two, or three, heck maybe the whole freakin bag.

Because I was high!

 Last week I was humming along at work one day when all of the sudden I felt cotton mouth, irritable, and like I had to pee the entire Mississippi river out of me.  I looked at my handy dandy CGM and sure enough from the last time I checked and till I opened up the CGM my BG's were in mid take off into outer space.  Now I don't eat much of a breakfast, mainly protein and about 10 carbs and I felt about an hour ago that everything was fine, then I had tested an hour before that and I was 158 so what was the deal with the bad diabetic?

I looked down at my shirt and noticed this small spot of wetness right around the area of my pump site.  Quickly I dropped my droors and lifted my shirt to see my pump site had popped out and I was just dumping perfectly good insulin all over the top of my skin, shirt, and site.  This is where hanging out with other diabetics really help you out when in a bind.  My buddy Steve had showed me in Montana a trick that only other diabetics will tell you or show you because it is against all rules and regulations for diabetes management.  The thing is half of our lives are spent in the grey zones of proper diabetes care.  The trick my friend Steve showed me was to take out a new infusion set, pluck that sucker right on your alcohol cleaned site, then take off the tubing and plug in the tubing connector from your old sight that is still in your pump without being rewound or anything.  Then prime the insertion tip which is like one unit depending on your infusion set.  Then you have an emergency quick site change that did not require your bottle of insulin out, a rewind on your pump, or any of the "usual" things in a full site change.  I went about the rest of my day and within two hours I was back down to normal and I drank lots of water to flush out any possibilities of keytones.  Now here is a disclaimer so you don't sue me for my six bottles of insulin and six months worth of supplies I have to my name.  This is highly diabetes illegal and if the diabetes police catch you doing this they will arrest you and put you into some sort of sugar prison cell or something.  Like I said this was an emergency site swap so don't do it.  I love learning the in's and outs from my friends

How do you milk a coconut?

 I normally drink almond milk because my god friend Dr. Mark told me about how milk from a cow can easily carry bacteria and bad stuff that can give you 24 hour colds and other sick stuff.  Also almond milk has less calories and more good protein.  That sounded good to me so I made the switch.  Then I have been reading about how putting more coconut stuff in your diet is good as well like cooking with coconut oil instead of vegetable or olive oil.  I haven't made the switch from olive oil to coconut oil but I will give it a try someday.  I did notice in the paper one day that there was this coconut milk and wanted to give it a try just they don't cary it at WalMart yet.

The other day I was at Kroger instead of my normal WalMart or Aldi because I had a craving for pineapple sherbet (don't judge me!) and I had to get some fast so I went to the closest store.  While I was there I wanted to pick up any other random supplies I needed and came across this coconut milk at the store so I splurged and bought a half gallon.  This stuff is OK tasting, definitely better than coconut water but not as good as almond milk.  I drank it more as a change up of water more than drinking it as my breakfast fluid and protein.  The results are that this stuff is a good coconut water replacement (don't ask me if it has the same health benefits) but I still like my almond milk better as an alternative to cow udder milk.  Send me a note and let me know if either you have tried it or if you like it better than almond milk.