Living with Diabetes and Lapband

Blood Sugar and Heat?!

Does anyone else have trouble maintaining their blood glucose/insulin levels in heat?

Our chiller isn’t working, so we have no cold air yet (though I swear it was one Friday afternoon late).

Custodian is on it.

FYI: If I do get caught in my classroom with no clothing on, it will be because the room is 95 + degrees and there will not be another teacher there – besides, Spanish and French go together, but what goes with Computer Science?

Dietician – Diabetes Visit

Last week, I saw the TLC Dietician because I’ve been having problems with my blood sugar.  I think it was a combination of not knowing how to estimate carbs and carb stacking.

My blood sugar was in the 300’s just about every evening and between 150 and 200 in the mornings.  Not good.

Good news, she seems to have helped.  She gave me some hints on estimating carbs which is always scared me a bit, because I hate going low.

Since I’ve been to see her, my evening blood sugar as been in the 200-250 range, which is a heck of a lot better.  Morning blood sugar has been better too.

Think the weight is going better if this morning weigh tells me anything.  I also stopped obsessing about my TDD for a while.

Good news and Bad News

Got on the scales this morning and I am back to my lowest weight since the beginning of the lap band process, which means I am 40 pounds down.

Bad news, not sleeping again.  I think it is a function of spring, part of it, is that next year starts feeling uncertain.  Part of it is dealing with the special ed lawsuit.

Sorry but I HATE snow. Seriously HATE IT.

 

I grew up north.  Indiana until 10th grade.  Detroit in 10th grade.

For as long as I could remember, I had to shovel the stuff whenever it snowed.  Especially when the family were managing apartment complexes.  If we had a snow day, we had shovels.  The worse was Detroit when I was in high school.

And seriously the only thing I liked about Mississippi was the no snow thing.  Okay, we might get some once a year.

Dallas was the same way until this year.  I’m perfectly fine with hibernating.  It snows, and I’m back in bed.  Unfortunately though I’m a teacher, at a school district that really takes their responsibility to feed and supervise children seriously and it has to be a big deal for us to have a snow day.  And yes, we used one of ours this year.

That also bums me out.  I hate wasting the weather day on snow.  Can’t go anywhere, and yeah, I spend the day in bed.  I’d rather have the day off Easter weekend when I can go out in the sun and do something.

Yep, hate snow.  And we’ve had what – 5 or 6 snow storms this year?

 

 

Book I am “Reading” on Audible and how it helped me to clean my closet.

If I can figure out how to post this as an Audible book that I get commission on I will.

This book actually helped me – I wanted to purge my closet, but I had something they call “decision paralysis”.  I couldn’t decide what to do about winter clothing.  Did I want to get rid of it?  Because I couldn’t decide, I couldn’t purge the rest of my closet.

Once I realized that the winter clothing was causing me a problem there was a simple solution.  Toss all of it aside and only deal with spring/summer clothing.

As a result, I have one Farmers Branch trash bag full of winter clothing and one Farmers Branch trash bag of clothing that is either stained, too big, or won’t wear.

It’s much easier to figure out what I have.

Spring Break!

On day 3 of my spring break.  The first two days were slightly unsuccessful dog agility days.  Meaning I had a good time, enjoyed playing with my dog and visiting with friends.

Got to sleep out completely all three days of spring break.  “Sleeping out” means going to bed when I am absolutely exhausted so that I know that I won’t wake up through the night and won’t have trouble sleeping, and waking up when I can’t stand to be in bed anymore.

Very nice!

Tomorrow is about taking care of myself.  Seeing the TLC Dietician about diabetes management and going to McKinney to get my hair done.  If I had had a schedule this weekend, I could have done the hair thing, but I also like knowing I can go to McKinney, hang out and come back when I want to.

This break is about cleaning things up and purging yet again.  I need to go through my closet, etc and get rid of all the clothing I don’t see myself wearing.

I need to go through my office, scan any paper I think I should keep and throw everything else away.

One hint – don’t keep your printed manuals unless it is a piece of ham radio equipment.  Download them off the internet and keep them in one place.  I have my bluetooth stuff on my Mesh folder.

Getting Caught Up

The last few weeks have been hectic:

• I’m doing much better with the lapband.  I am not losing weight right now, but I am also not throwing everything up.
• Clothing is smaller.
• Furniture got installed at school.
• Parent is suing school and me in particular.  I have to meet with someone on March 30th over that.

Today, I’m hanging out on the internet waiting my turn for dog agility.  Got here about 4 hours earlier, but that’s okay.  I’m in “my office” and will go check on progress in a few minutes.

It is spring break, and it feels like spring in Texas, so all is good.

Lapband got tigher

I finally broke down and got a slight unfill on Monday.

It's been a gradual process and as a result, have been miserable, but my lapband has gotten tighter.  I'm guessing from stress.

We have some things going on that I can't share, but my world isn't very stable.  Plus discovered we owe $2800 to the IRS, and I am still not sure how that happened.

So I am a little tightly wound. 

Friday was almost the last straw, just as soon as I started eating lunch, it came back up, it was something I'd eaten several times before and just couldn't believe it came up. 

I called TLC Edge where I got my fill, and the fill tech was out, but suggested if it was really bad to see my surgeon.  I talked with him, talked with his fill tech but decided to tough it out over the weekend, by the end of the day.

The good news, is that I haven't tossed my cookies in days, since the unfill.  The bad news is that I'm on a mostly liquid diet -- I try, but, and I was ravenous last night.  Tonight should be better as Macy and I have agility for at least an hour.

Pump problems and way behind

Ever press the buttons on your pump and nothing happen?  Well that was happening for me.  I'd have to press three or four times before it woke up and I finally broke down and complained about that last Tuesday.

Animas said they were sending a new pump right now, and then I started stressing out how to get it.  If I have them ship to school, I've had to hang around and wait as long as 5:00 pm and since we don't have a school secretary right now, I probably wouldn't get notify.  If it gets sent to the house, they deliver real early and then I have to pick it up at the UPS depot, usually not a problem, but had agility class that night.

So the Animas person suggested it would be a good time to take a day off and relax.  She was right.

I made sub arrangements and stayed home.  And just messed around.  Came around 11:00 am, took about 2 hours to reprogram it and I made two "mistakes".  Forgot that the reminder has to be done independently and some how in the last few days my pump ended up at am instead of pm and vice versa.  All is good now.

I still need to work out new basal rates.  Some how my insulin sensitivity is high again.  More on that on a seperate post as I still haven't worked all that out.

Really glad I have a pump that wakes up when I push it buttons.