Post surgery and I meet a diabetic bear.

 Last Thursday was my nose job and frontal lobotomy surgery.  Since I am a diabetic the doc wanted me to do one of those EKG thingies and let me tell you this, if I ran a hospital (or at least the one I went to) it would make at least twice as much profit just from cutting extreme amounts of waste.  First, I had to wait an hour just to go to the EKG people and they give you a pager.  I was 20 feet from the counter and one of about 15 people waiting, like they couldn't just say in a loud voice: Dave Hennesey we are ready to see you.  No they had to spend thousands of dollars to give me a pager, waste, then I get to do the EKG and it takes less than 30 seconds.  Oh yea the bracelets above have to be worn for this 30 second EKG thing, more waste.

 Here I am post surgery like six hours or so.  They gave me some pain meds when I got out of surgery and a prescription for that hydrocodine stuff and nausea pills but I had little to no pain.  I haven't had a single pain med since the one at the hospital and not sure why I would need nausea pills.  The only thing that was bothering me was the crap they put in your eyes and my throat was tore up from the breathing tube.  Do you like the gauze pads up the nose?  This is where those feminine napkins would have  been great, I had to change out my plugs every 30 minutes because they were completely soaked with blood.  The nose bleed ended Thursday night and Friday I was feeling pretty diabetes rock star good just blood going down the back of my throat which wasn't that bad.  Friday I was feeling so good I was wishing I was at work because daytime TV stinks.

Saturday I was in a quandary about what to do.  I had three things that I could do just I needed to know how this surgery was going to be.  I first wanted to participate in an orienteering event but figured that was way too much for post surgery, then I could have joined Hustle-N-Heel and participate in the yoga/dog obedience/ circuit training but had my calendar all mixed up and at the same time was the JDRF walk to cure diabetes where I wanted to put out some flyer's for my next "Dawn Phenom" event on October 20th.  I thought the walk was at eight and could make it over to Hustle-N-Heel but silly sugar diabetic me did not realize they were both at 9am.  The JDRF walk was well attended even for the light rain and it was fun to peruse the vendor tents promoting my free diabetes event while learning about new technologies and getting freebies.  While at the walk I saw this diabetic bear and just had to get my picture taken with him.  Looking at this picture makes me realize how much of a dork I am.  Why do I wear loafers with shorts?

My last day

 Monday was my final day of being scoutmaster and it was full of emotions.  We had our quarterly court of honor where we give the boys all their badges, ranks and awards for the past three months.  After the regular ceremony we even had an eagle court of honor.  The last part of business was my final bit and being scoutmaster for four and a half years has been so good for me and the ol diabetes.  One family in the troop that joined about the same time I did with my son was so nice to collect stories from everyone and what I meant to each of them.  It was this awesome 30 page book of things even I forgot about or didn't even know it affected the other person so much but it was extremely humbling to receive.  Then they said some nice things about me and gave me a lithograph picture of Norman Rockwell's "The Scoutmaster."  That was the cherry on top.

As a boy my first scout handbook (and only handbook) was the ninth edition with the most awesome Norman Rockwell picture on it of what in my head was the perfect day out camping.  Boys cooking, adults overseeing and advising, and others playing around.  When the tenth edition of the scout handbook came out it had these pictures of scouts rappelling and camping but it was not this nostalgic rendition of what camp was like.  So to get the awesome picture of "The Scoutmaster" was amazing and I stayed up till12:30am reading all the stories (OK yes I shed a few tears).  I remember as a kid my best friend and I sitting on my couch thumbing through the pages of our scout handbooks, looking at the pictures of snares, fishing nets, camp gadgets and with all the instructions on how to build them.  This was the true dangerous book for boys in my mind and will always be my favorite scout handbook.

 



 One of the boys mother made me a book bag with my name on it and sewed this 100 aniversary of the eagle rank patch on it.  How do all these people know me so well?  One thing that has always bugged me was using those re-usable grocery bags, because they are all made with girlie looks and colors.  I have two Texas Rangers bags but the rest are flowery and stuff.  Now I can add this to my re-usable grocery tote stockpile and get groceries like a real man with one less girly bag.

Last thing I have to say is these CGM things are awesome, I totally love this sucker just there are a couple of non-related related issues.  The first is just before I was aware I was a diabetic like all the time but, I only knew what my BG's were ten times a day.  Now, I always know my BG's, everyone at work knows my BG's, and it stresses me out with those freakin arrows.  Last is now that I am not just aware of my diabetes all the time, know my BG's all the time, everyone around me knows my BG's and trending it creates this non-eating thing inside of me or if I do want to eat I want to be very pro-active with the insulin just so I don't have to go over another hill on the roller coaster of BG charts, just to watch it fall fast to the sea level marker.  How do the rest of you do this?  I guess after a while I will get used to it, just for right now I am aware of anything that is near me that might even be considered a carb.

Ouch my Butt.

 Saturday the whole family went for a bike ride.  We did the "Autumn in Bonham" bike rally and all three of us did the 65 mile course.  I need to figure out a way to carry a camera on bike rides.  I always have my cell phone on me but it is sealed in a zip lock bag and tucked away in my emergency belt thing and is impossible to get into while riding.

 The ride was alot of fun and had nice rolling hills, good rest stops, and great people along the course.  Above you can see a picture of my bike seat.  Now if you are not familiar with bikes and their seats, mine is of the larger and wider side.  These kind of seats are considered the basic seat for someone who has no callus on their bums and need the cush on their toosh.  I could move to a more aggressive seat but for now it feels great.  I really like the shape of how the front part I can use for aggressive pedaling, then the rear part I can use to crank it up hills in the sitting position then when I get tired the middle section has a nice dip in it so to give me a relaxing spot during the long boring parts of a ride.  Put the three parts together and I have a great multi-position seat.

Back in 04 or so a friend of ours gave me a seat he had that was what he considered as old (like two seasons) and had no use for it any longer so he gave it to me.  This was a very expensive seat in its day and probably should still be considered expensive now.  This seat though is an extremely aggressive seat that I call "The Battle Axe" because it feels like you are sitting on an axe after about two hours on it.  My son loves this seat because it is Italian and done up in all sorts of cool stuff.  The thing is on a 65 mile bike ride his bum was worn out in about two hours for several reasons.  First was he trained a bit too much during the week, then he was having an allergy cold, and last it is a freakin axe between your legs.  So the nice father that I am switched seats for the rest of the ride and my son completed his first 65 (technically it was like 64.7 miles but who is counting) and lived to see another day.  I was real proud of him for pushing through the pain of his back, butt, and cold to see it through and I was walking afterwards like I wiped my but with a cactus.  Man that seat is a killer.