Free Stuff!

Around noon-thirty I pulled my son away from fishing to get some food in us.  This was hard for me to do as well because we were really in a groove and pulling them in at a good rate.  Hunger was very high and BG's were on their way down so fish had to wait till after lunch to get a few more holes in their lips.

I knew my boy had to be hungry when he asked me to get him another sandwich.  He eats two things, salt and sugar.  As we sat at the table eating our free lunch at the Family Fun day provided by www.tylertypeone.org.  I started the rounds of visiting with the local sales reps.

My first stop was to the "All Home Infusion" table where I talked about meters, pumps, and tubing.  All Home Infusion is a mail order pharmacy company that specializes in providing flexible products that patients request.  The sales lady tells me she is willing to get the products that my doctor and I want and she deals with the insurance company on what they want you to have.  I really like that philosophy.  One time I had a prescription for testing my BG's and it was written as "test 4 to 6 times a day," well the insurance company read it as only 4 times a day and they only ship out boxes of 100 strips so my order came up as 360 strips and they sent out 300.  I called them and asked where at least my other 60 strips were and they said I can just order 5 times a year for my 90 day prescription.  That was the last time I was fooled on getting a prescription filled out by my doctor.  She now writes them for 10 times a day.  That was a lesson learned the hard way.

Look at all the diabetes supplies.  From pods, infusion sets, to meters and strips.  They gave me a free glucose meter, pen, fridge magnet, and a cool bag to keep them in.  When I got home my wife said "Did you take enough free stuff?"  I told her you can never have enough free diabetes stuff.

Above is Debby Kilby with "lifescan" and she had a table with the "Animas" since they are both Johnson and Johnson companies and the One touch system works with the ping pump.  Debby was trying to push a one touch lancet device that has a smaller needle than my accu check mulitclix lancet device.  I love the multiclix system.  I finally gave in and told her I will do a test and see which device is better.  I think of lancet devices like a bow and arrow.  You want what works for you and diabetics are weird and picky on what device works for them.

It was real neat to see young girls coming up to Debby and asking for different onetouch meters of different colors so they coordinate their outfits with their meters.  It is like diabetes has a trendy accessory line.  I also met Jon Adams with Animas and we kicked the tires on a new Ping meter for myself someday.  He was nice as well and is even willing to mail me a skin for my IR1200 pump until I get my new one.

I am always amazed with people that can create art.  I just throw away all my old needles and strips and someone made beautiful art out of it.  How cool is this.  There even is a web page devoted to diabetes art.

The picture above amazes me about how people put things together to do the real world approach to diabetes rather than the scientific approach.  Tylertypeone puts together these baskets of foods and teaches newly diagnosed type 1's about how to count the carbs and shows them what it is like in the real world.  How many of us have been in the dieticians office and they pull out some rubber chicken, rubber green beans, and a rubber piece of bread and tells us plate ratios and things like that.  I have never had a dinner that looked like what the diatician shows me in her office.  She needs to get out a large pizza and have lunch with me and show me the carbs and how to account for that kind of fat.  Now that is real world vs science.  You teach a diabetic from day one on how to do that and you will see them come in every time with an A1C under 7,5 every time.