In Case of Overdose...

I've been out of the hospital for exactly a month now.

I was admitted around 5 AM on September 30th for an intentional insulin overdose.

 I took my total daily dose in one go, waited 30 minutes, and was about to inject another day's worth when I freaked out and did the only thing that made sense: asked Twitter what to do. I didn't know if it was something I could fix by chugging a lot of juice and monitoring it on my own. When I thought I'd gotten over the worst of it (blood sugar was 90), I got a call from my university's police department. Someone had anonymously reported from my Twitter that I was suicidal and in danger. I talked to the woman on the phone, declined help, and hung up. Five minutes later there were two cars from the city police sitting outside my parents' house at 3:30 in the morning. The police wouldn't go away until I let the paramedics check me over. Their meter read my blood sugar at 30, but the paramedics didn't quite believe it because I was coherent. After a recheck came back at 33, they believed it.

Fast forward half an hour. Three policemen and two paramedics are in my house, and there's a fire truck outside for some reason. The police dispatched to my house have had training in speaking to suicidal individuals, and are going on the word of the paramedics that I should really be going to the Emergency Room. By this point my parents are awake and the police are working to convince my mother to at least get me checked in the ER. So we went to the ER. I was drinking juice the whole way there.

When I checked into the ER around 5 AM, my blood sugar was 73, but quickly plummeted to around 40. I was given a Coke and IV glucose. The orders were written that I Was supposed to have my blood glucose levels checked every hour. Every hour they stuck my finger and gave me a can of coke every time I was below 90. The cans of Coke they give out in the hospital are 7.5 ounces. By my (and my bored caretaker's) best estimate, I had around one liter of Coke.

Finally, about 12 hours after my admission, my BG was >90 for two hours in a row. By this time, though, the nice doctors in the ER had transferred me upstairs and filed a 1013 on me (in the state of Georgia, a 1013 hold is basically a psych hold because I was considered a danger to myself). I was going to be stuck in the hospital for 48 hours to experience one of my worst fears: not having control over my diabetes management.

After ensuring my BG was stable above 90, the doctors did not want to give me any insulin at all, but gave me dinner, which I refused because they wouldn't give me insulin. A few hours after celebrating a BG of 110, they were looking for room in the ICU because they don't do insulin  drips on the main  floor and my BG was >450. Giving IV doses of Regular insulin eventually brought me under 450 (and kept me out of the ICU).

My usual dose of Lantus, when I'm on it, is 60 units. It's fairly large, I know. The doctors on staff did not want to give me more than 5 units that first night, and I fought my way up to 30 the next day. To this day I have no idea what the hell they did for my mealtime doses. They seemed like random numbers to me. In any case, I tried to avoid the carbs and pretend I wasn't hungry. After my initial lows, I didn't drop under 200 until I went home.

For some reason, health care folks seem to think my insulin pump is a problem. I went through this same thing last year when I was being treated or suicidal ideation. It's like they think I'd use my pump to give myself a ton of insulin? It'd be so much easier to use a syringe or a pen, in my opinion. Maybe they think it's a trigger? In any case, the doctors at the hospital (both the general doctor and the psych doctor) did not want me to have my pump back, but wanted me to go back on pens for a while. After discussing it with my parents, we talked to my doctor as a team and convinced him that using my pump is ultimately what's best for my health.

One of the most infuriating things about this whole ordeal is that the entire time I was in the hospital, they would not let me call my endocrinologist. At the same time they wouldn't trust what I said about my own treatment, which is fair given the reason I was in there in the first place. When I went to my endocrinology visit the next week I was told that the hospital I was in was the worst for diabetes care.

 At any rate, please don't worry about me. I'm at home with my supportive family. I have friends to talk to. I have a new therapist and she seems like a good fit. It's going to take some time, but I'm slowly getting over this hurdle and getting ready for the next.

It's taken me a month to get this blog post out because suicide is something that's hard to talk about. My hope is that by talking about it, I can help reduce some of the stigma around talking about it.

D Blog Week Day 1: I can!

It's taken me a while to sit down and really write this post. I've had diabetes for a while now, so it's not that I'm a stranger to doing things while diabetic, or I couldn't think of anything cool I've done. My problem was the exact opposite: I have too many cool stories of things I've done in spite of or because of diabetes. I got to do the coolest summer abroad in Greece during 2011 (seriously, I got to play with bones). I've graduated college. Diabetes has helped me overcome some of my social anxiety. There's so much stuff that I have done with diabetes that would make a really good story, so maybe I'll save them for another time. Perhaps my post will seem mundane in comparison to others, because I decided to write about something so simple.

Despite diabetes, I've managed to fall in love.

Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal, because in the grand scheme of things diabetes isn't that huge. It isn't going to turn me into a raging monster (except when I have high BG). Diabetes is not going to stop people from caring about me. Unfortunately I spent years believing that I would never find love while diabetes was in the picture.

I usually don't bring up things like this, so it's a little difficult to say. When I hit the age where boys were no longer a disgusting alien race, it occurred to me (not for the first time) that not everybody has diabetes, and dealing with diabetes isn't fun. Why would a perfectly good boy want to waste time waiting for me to check my blood sugar when he could be eating already with another girl? Why would a boy want to go out with me when there's a chance that my diabetes will do something stupid and I'll have to cancel when other girls wouldn't? I knew how much of a burden diabetes was to me, but that was the hand I was dealt. Why would another person willingly subject themselves to being around that all the time?

Like most girls, I joked around in high school and had a few boyfriends here and there. It wasn't until I hit my senior year of high school that I realized that diabetes didn't have to be a relationship changer. My best friend in the whole entire universe put up with my diabetes. She understood that sometimes we had to hang out and watch TV for a bit until my BG was in line. A boyfriend is supposed to be like a best friend, just a little bit different, right? If my bestie accepted the diabetes with grace, any good guy should be able to do the same, right? I could even consider myself fortunate that I had a built-in, non-negotiable test that my potential suitors had to pass.

Now I'm going to get mushy and nostalgic.

I met my current boyfriend in 2009 while doing marching band together. We were friendly, and we  talked a little bit here and there. We weren't super close. I started having problems with some depression medications I was taking in 2011 and I posted something vague about it on Facebook. Being the awesome guy he his, he messaged me to talk about it. Eventually he asked me out. He knew I had diabetes before we started dating, but I was still shy about it on the first date.

 At the time of the first date I was drowning in diabetes and trying super duper hard to manage it. Nothing was working, and I had one of the worst endocrinologists on the planet (for real, he was fired by his practice). I was back to manually logging numbers in an effort to make myself check more. So I explained my huge purse and unsightly notebook while I was poking my finger at lunch.

We've been together almost four years now. We live together with a dog and a cat. I can unequivocally say I'm in love with this guy. He makes me happy. The best part is that I have someone outside my family (BFFs are family) that I can bitch to about diabetes. It's taken some training, but he knows the lingo and all of my routines. We can laugh together about the strange places test strips end up living.

For anyone out there left wondering: yes, you absolutely can find someone who will love you, diabetes and all.

Downplaying the D-beastie

"I took insulin. I'll just grab some water to go."

"It's nothing a glass of juice won't fix!"

"Really, it's not a big deal."


I catch myself saying these things all the time. Really, it's understandable. I have things I want to do (plans with friends, a party, whatever), and I really don't want diabetes to get in the way by being its annoying self. The biggest problem is that diabetes just wants to ruin my day sometimes.

I'm going to a beer tasting with my friends, but my BG is really high because my site went bad overnight. Diabetes and I are fighting, and my friends are about to end up in the middle of it. I'd better diffuse this situation. I'm not spilling ketones, so I do an injection, change my set, and head out the door because it's not a big deal

Do you see how easy it is to downplay diabetes like this? The truth is, this beer tasting is outside, during the summer, in Atlanta. The truth is that all I want with a high BG is a tall glass of water instead of beer. The truth is, I'm irritable right now, and I'm feeling dehydrated. The truth is... it is a big deal to me.

I was raised to not use diabetes as an excuse for anything, and I don't. I'm also the person that doesn't want to get in the way; I like to go with the flow. I don't want to be "that diabetic" with the problems, so I never let it show that it bothers me.

I was thinking about my downplaying habits in relation to personal advocacy. What is it saying about the severity and seriousness of diabetes if I'm always saying it's not a big deal? Are people going to take my fundraising and awareness campaigns seriously if I'm able to do things with a high or low blood sugar?

Moving forward, I'd like to change the way I handle it when diabetes acts up. If it's beer time, and I'm high without ketones, I'll likely still go out. I'll explain why I'm holding back on the beers. I'll tell my friends I'm going to be a little cranky for a while, because diabetes is a part of me, and I'm kind of a big deal. 

I Like to Laugh at Diabetes

#bathroomselfie

I've been on Twitter for over a year now under the name Pancreassassin. In that time, I haven't changed my description line at all. It sums up the purpose of my Twitter account nicely: I like to laugh at diabetes. I do. I'm one of those "laughter is the best medicine" type people (obviously insulin is better than laughter for a plate of pasta, but you get my meaning). 

I started off using my Twitter to laugh at diabetes, and as time has gone on I've started using it for more than amusement. I get in touch with my DOC folks. I talk diabetes tips. I give real-life stories and try to help people. That doesn't sound very funny, does it?

Sitting and thinking about it, I thought I had failed my original mission:to find light in the many dark parts of diabetes. But have I? I don't really think so. I think I'm doing a much better job of Twitter than I originally set out to. I set out to be a joke monkey, but I ended up being more. Am I still funny, though? I hope so! Now I know where I stand, and what my mission really is: provide support for anyone who has been touched by diabetes, and hopefully make them laugh along the way. 

All in all, I think I'm going to keep my Twitter description just the way it is, because, well, I like to laugh at diabetes.

(I'm just going to leave this here to close things off. It should be noted that I have never, ever claimed to be an artist!)

50 Shades of Red

Red: the thematic color of the last few days.

The first red in this story was the red of my 6-pack cooler packed for a tubing adventure. For those of you who don't live near a river, this tubing is not related to insulin pumps or being pulled behind a boat. This tubing refers to sitting on an inflatable tube, drinking beer (or Diet Coke) and floating down the Chattahoochee River. I've never done this type of tubing before, but it was my boyfriend's birthday and he wanted to go with our friends. It was an impromptu trip, and I had 30 minutes to get my things together. No time to plan for diabetes, really. I did have time to do this, as my Dexcom sensor was about to fall off.

The second red was the small dry-bag I purchased on the way to the river. I packed it with my meter, hand sanitizer, and my CGM receiver. That's all that would fit, and the store only had one size of dry bag. I was promised I wouldn't get very wet, so I clipped my pump to the very top of my bathing suit. MM says their pumps are water resistant, and I've accidentally gotten a few of them quite wet without effect. I've been thrown in a pool, waded into the ocean, and watched an entire football game in the rain and my pump was fine. I wasn't worried. I had to borrow a raft from my friends because I've never done this before.

The third red was blood. This blood came from my thigh where I hit it on a rock when my borrowed raft broke out from under me. My friends saved me from drowning or being pulled around by the river. All in all. I was submerged for maybe 10 seconds. When I calmed my breathing, I checked my pump. I was shocked to see the screen filled with water. We stopped 30 minutes later to eat, and some of that water had turned to steam. It was difficult to bolus for food, but I managed. The pump was still working, despite being very, very wet. One of my friends rigged my broken float and traded with me. We were off.

The fourth red was caused by blinding pain when I hit my foot on a rock when the second tube I was using sprouted a hole and dumped me out. Another one of my awesome friends again traded tubes with me because, as they put it, they're more water resistant than I am. At this point, I chucked my pump to someone in a more stable tube, who gave it to someone with a larger dry bag.

The fifth red was figurative. I was angry when I realized I had to get a new pump. I called Medtronic as soon as I got back to my phone. I was promised a new pump within two days. I called them at 8 PM on a Sunday, so I figured they wouldn't have time to overnight one. I saw more red when I realized I would have to drive to the far CVS to pick up emergency Lantus. I was more angry when they told me it would take them over an hour to fill my one vial prescription. I'm usually pretty calm an understanding, but I can freak the eff out when it involved my diabetes. My BG at the time was 98, but I knew that wouldn't last, especially because I would be eating pizza before picking up my Lantus. Unfortunately, Henry ended up looking like this:

The sixth red was the marinara sauce I managed to spill while injecting Humalog with a syringe. After a long day in the sun/water, we were all craving carbs. I had a stromboli, and it was delicious.

The seventh red was blood again. This blood came from the site of my 48-unit Lantus injection. It wasn't a dot of blood, either. It was a blood flood.

The eighth red was the unsettling shade of fuschia on my urine ketone strip when I woke up to a BG of 360 the next morning, despite going to sleep at 120.

The tenth red was the giant red bruise on my foot from hitting it on a rock the day before. It hurt so bad I could barely walk. I went to the urgent care doc and spent three hours waiting to hear that I have a bruise. No break, possibly a nasty sprain because I can't walk. I was instructed to take it easy, avoid walking, and stop carrying my heavy backpack (because obviously my books will just magically carry themselves to my classes). I still can't walk well, but I don't want to use crutches (I might use them to get to class so my lab partner isn't so mad at me for missing class on Monday).

I'm no longer seeing red, but my brother missed the delivery of my new pump this morning. I went online this afternoon, and scheduled a self pickup for this evening. Lantus doesn't seem to do much for me, so I haven't seen many numbers below 200 in the past two days. I can't wait to get my baby back!

Wednesday: What Brings Me Down

On this blog, I've already shared the other D in my life, depression. Quite obviously, that brings me down and adds an entirely new dimension to caring for myself.

I think this post is going to be a long one.

There are issues that diabetes bring to me. I hate diabetes for choosing me. Hate it. I hate that my parents had to deal with so much extra garbage while I was growing up. The amount of extra caring I required could not have been easy. There were times when I needed my BG checked every 2 hours, and my mom and dad would get up through the night to check my BG without waking me up. Certainly I have an extra amount of respect for my parents, but I wish they didn't have to have that extra layer of worry. Being a parent is hard enough without constantly worrying about what your child's blood sugar is doing. It brings me down thinking about this.

It brings me down whenever I think about all the things I can't do. With my medical fragility, my options are somewhat limited. I know, I know, anything is possible with diabetes... but it isn't. I'll never be able to take a summer and live out of a van with my friends. I'll never get to go on that dig in Africa. There are so many physical adventures I'll never get to go on. Yes, there are ways to get out and see the world, but there is so much extra planning and considering and hoping that sometimes I wonder if a "fun" trip will really be worth it.

Sometimes I'll be watching a movie or a TV show and I'll have some of those negative diabetes thoughts. Oh, that girl was just kidnapped? I hope she has enough insulin in her-- oh, right. Those people are running through the jungle? I'd get my pump wrapped around a tree or have a low BG. Sometimes it gets to me that diabetes isn't the norm for everyone else. Periodically I'll see people eating on TV without checking their BG first and it hits me again that I have another layer of crap to worry about all the time.

It bums me out when I think about my future. My employment will be dictated by my need to be paid enough to cover my medications. Diabetes isn't cheap. Will my future include complications from diabetes? Will I be just like everyone's grandma, blind and limbless? Will my efforts at management be in vain?

The overarching theme that really depresses me is thinking about how different I am, and how diabetes just isn't normal for everyone. My pump broke a few months ago, and it happened on the weekend, naturally. I had to go back on shots for a few days for the first time since 2002. I was expressing my thanks for having such great technology to someone I know, and she pointed out how not normal it is. I was saying how much I take my technology for granted, how I love my pump because it does so many calculations for me and makes my life a smidge easier. She turned around and said it's weird to her that I'm excited and thankful for something I need to live well, how weird it is that I get as excited for new diabetes technology as most people get about new cell phones.

There is absolutely zero chance I will ever get to be a super villain. Zero. I wouldn't survive the plots of most action movies, especially if there are zombies around. I'm sure vampires would be more tempted by my sweet blood than the regular blood of others.

How do I pull myself out of a diabetes slump? It's not easy. I give myself some time to wallow in it, because I need it. There's a whole part of my body that's just... stupid. Few people really understand how it feels, so I turn to the internet. Really, all my diabetic friends live in my computer. Stop number one on my road to happy is the internet, naturally. I have an entire Twitter dedicated to diabetes (@Pancreassassin, if you're not aware). I share my frustrations and try to tell some jokes. When I'm feeling down, it's hard to tell so many jokes, but I try. Step number two in regaining my happiness is to listen to the Spice Girls. Never Give Up on the Good Times, really. Step three is to get some exercise in. When I got my A1C result of 8.3, I pounded it out on the treadmill. I was gasping and growling... Eight...point....three...gahhhh...eight...point...three...!

Beyond that, I don't have any advice on how to deal with feeling down about diabetes. I look forward to seeing what others have to say on this topic today!

This wasn't as long as I thought it would be.

Putting my Best (or worst) Foot Forward

I went to the podiatrist today for the first time in my life. I'm 24, and I've been having foot problems for a while now, at least since January. I've tried resting, icing, wrapping, and it helps in the short term, but the day I stop doing these things my pain returns. I went to my primary doctor again earlier this week for the pain. The last time I was in, Dr. Dumbass told me to come back if it kept hurting. It did, so I went back. Thankfully, I got to see my regular doctor instead of the idiot I got last time. Anyway, he wanted to send me to physical therapy for my foot to try strengthening muscles and gain support. I asked him how we can treat something if we don't know what, exactly, the problem is. So he referred me to a podiatrist.

Now, being a diabetic, I get a little nervous when I start thinking about my feet. Every time I'm in the endo's office, I get a clean bill of health on my feet. They look good; strong pulse, no nerve damage, etc. It doesn't stop my worry though. We've all heard about the foot problems associated with diabetes. I was nervous going in. To my surprise, he didn't mention my diabetes once. Woo!

I had my foot X-rayed while standing.

Everything is normal, except for my high arches. I was given some orthotic inserts to bake in the oven and shove into my shoes. Done and done. For now, I hate them, but hopefully they'll help. I hope my problem was something this simple and it resolves soon. 

5 Stages of Low Blood Sugar

We've all had that low experience, the one where something goes awry in your brain and you don't treat it quickly and move on with life. The one where things happen so fast and someone else has to get involved. That is the low that this post is about. I just had one of these lows today in the gym, and I am so thankful that my mother happened to be there today. I didn't quite grasp what was going on as it was happening. It hasn't happened like that for a while. It also happened to be my first training session, so I was letting the trainer push me. That's his job. Apparently I let him push me into ignoring my low signals. So, here I present the 5 stages of low blood sugar.

1. Suspicion. Am I low? Am I shaky because I just did a bunch of squats? Maybe I'm low. Give it a few minutes and we'll reevaluate.

2. Denial/ belligerence. No, I'm not low. I don't want glucose tabs. I don't need glucose tabs. No, I don't want juice. No, I won't drink the juice. Get it away from me. I don't want any damn juice!

3. Acceptance. I'm low. Oh man, I'm so low. I'm just going to sit down, put my head down here. Just give me a minute.

4. Black Hole. I drank the juice. I ate the crackers. What else is there? I need to eat more. Now. Everything in my belly. Now.

5. Rebound high. I shouldn't have had so much juice. Crap, now I have to take more insulin. God, I hope I don't overdo it.

I know everyone experiences lows, but this is often how it plays out for me.

...But the Door Handles are Evil

The boyfriend and I have been apartment hunting for the past few weeks. Our current apartment is nice, but very poorly managed. Plus the door knobs are evil. Evil? Yeah, they're the kind that extend out horizontally and then curl on the end. They grab anything passing by- especially pump tubes. The one day  I wasn't wearing my pump, I managed to get my belt loop caught on the stupid door knob. I wish I were kidding. I told my boyfriend very early into our lease that I was never going to live somewhere with those evil door knobs ever again.

With door knobs in mind, we went out hunting. There were a few places we wanted to check out in our area. The area is nice, and we don't want to leave it. On the first Saturday we were out we toured about 6 different properties, including one willing to rent a 2 bed, 2.5 bath town home for $850/month, and give us two free months' rent! (PS, around this area, that is red-flag waving, send in the cavalry suspicious.) At the last complex we checked out that day, the lady giving us our tour kept commenting that I looked really tired. "Awh, you've been doing this all day. You look exhausted, bless your heart." Yes, I looked so tired she needed to bless my heart. In the car I decided it might be a good idea to test my blood sugar, and it was somewhere south of 50. Oh. That's why I was so tired. Okay.

This past weekend we went out again, expanding our search circle to include a little extra geography. Lather, rinse, repeat. We saw some really beautiful homes and some that made our skin crawl. This day I kept telling myself to look alert, stay sharp, keep going. At the end of this day, my blood sugar was also south of 50. I'm lucky my boyfriend does all the driving, or I'd have been sitting in strange parking lots, chomping on glucose tabs.

We have our list down to two apartments now, and depending on the apartment, we will either move next month or the month after that. Let's hope I can keep my BG up while moving. Last time I dropped into the 30's and had to chug some Mountain Dew. 

I Should've Kicked You With My Sprained Foot.

I hurt my foot. I am, without a doubt, one of the clumsiest people on the planet. I hurt myself without even trying. My foot's been bothering myself for a while now, so I went to my Primary Care doctor. When I got there, I was told that I'd be seeing a different doctor because mine was out today. Okay, fine, whatever.

After a general check of my weight, blood pressure, and pulse rate, the doctor came in to see me. I've never met this guy in my life, so I didn't know what to expect. I looked him up on my phone while I was waiting. He is a certified family practitioner, with a specialty in family medicine. Okay. He examined my foot, said I'd be fine, gave me a prescription anti-inflammatory, and told me to get an Ace bandage. He was scrolling through my file on the computer and getting ready to send the Rx to the pharmacy. Then he brought up my diabetes, and that's where things got ugly.

"Oh, I see you're a type 1 diabetic. How's your diabetes?" he sounded conversational, so I told him I was managing. Usually doctors leave it at that. Nope. "What's your A1C?" Eight-point- "that's not managing! That is terrible! You're on a pump, there is absolutely no reason you should have an A1C above 7. What? Are you not checking your sugars? Not bolusing? Sneaking candy?" That's when I used my stern voice to tell him I test a minimum of 6 times per day, correct when needed, and bolus for everything. "Well obviously something is not right. Do you actually see an endocrinologist?" Yes. Every three months. Given my circumstances, she is okay with my progress, and- "any endocrinologist worth their salt is not going to be happy with an A1C that high. What is your BG when you wake up? When is it the highest?" Around 100, usually mid-afternoon, but I have a non-constant schedule, so finding patterns is difficult. "Well, if you're high in the afternoons you need to increase your basal rate. Your carb ratios should remain constant through the day, but if you're higher after lunch, you need to increase your basal rate." Okay, whatever. At that point, I was over it, flustered, and taken aback. So I just listened to him talk, nodded, and left as soon as I could.

I'm still finding my voice when it comes to standing up for myself. I can defend other people all day, but I'm still working on advocating for myself. I didn't want to keep going with this doctor about diabetes, mostly because he seemed to have an overly simplified view of it. He was of the opinion that diabetes is a static, formulaic disease. Input the right number of insulin, and there is ZERO reason you shouldn't get the right numbers.

If I run into this again, I don't know what I'll do. Has anyone else dealt with this? 

Diabetes Art Day 2014

My family moved states three months after my diagnosis. My mother figured I was having a hard time with everything, and took me to see a child therapist. She pulled out a bucket of McDonald's scented markers (really) and told me to draw a picture of how diabetes made me feel. At this point, I just stared at her for a few minutes until she changed tactics. It was a good try with a sound theory, but my primary means of expression has been and probably always will be words. Writing. Emphatic speaking.

I made my entry back in October, but I never really explained it.

I started saving my insulin bottles after I was really getting into DSMA chats, specifically to create this image. The idea is that everyone in the DOC experiences diabetes differently. We are bound by our carb-counting ways, by medication and misunderstandings. In that regard we are the same. To me, diabetes management means one thing. For you, it probably means something a little different. For someone who is not diabetic, but is really trying to understand diabetes, they have to take in each shade of experience and blend them together to get the full picture. My management is red, and yours might be blue, but diabetes is altogether a spectrum that can't really be measured through one experience or one color.

And that, my friends, is the idea behind this image. 

What I learned from the Atlanta Ice Disaster of 2014

In the event you're unaware, Atlanta recently experienced some snow and ice. Long story short, and politics aside, nobody did anything to prepare any of the roads for this mess. It did come down quickly. My professor said we still had class at 12:30 when campus was closing at 1. I normally give myself 45 minutes to get up to school and park, but I was playing it safe and left at 11:30 for class. It started like this:

An hour later, it had progressed into this:

My parents live significantly closer to my school than I do, so I decided to go to their house and ride it out. Normally it takes me maybe 30 minutes to get to their house, depending on traffic. Tuesday it took me 4 and a half hours. I looked like this:

Not my best day, I assure you. I got to my parents' house, where I was not prepared to stay. I didn't bring any clothes or D supplies with me. It is my parents' house, and I usually have a horde of stuff here, just in case. Buuuuut I used my spare insulin when I was staying here over Christmas. I have tons of pump supplies, a few syringes, a spare meter, but I had no insulin. And then my pump started beeping. Fantastic. I dug through a bag that had been in my old room since a week after Christmas, and I came up with an unopened bottle of insulin, still in its box, sitting in a bag I had brought over in the week following Christmas. Great? Okay. That room gets really, really cold when nobody is there to crank up the space heater. The bag was in the sun for about an hour every day. Having no other viable option, I used it. And I ran high for a long time. Then I started increasing my boluses by 20%. Success! Well, success until I overcompensated and dipped to 50 overnight. Oops. But I'm still alive and kicking. 

So, next week when I show up for dinner, I'm bringing some insulin and test strips to restock my supply. Just as the city of Atlanta thought it was prepared, so did I. Fortunately I was only in my car for 4.5 hours, and I came out of it on the other side. Unlike the city of Atlanta, there is a good chance that I will learn from this experience and be better prepared in the event this ever happens again. 

Change of (educational) Plans!

Depending on how well you know me, you might know that I'm quite passionate about anthropology. I have a Bachelor's in anthropology. I completed one semester of grad school for anthropology. I've been to Greece to study bones. My bookshelf is overflowing with anthropology texts. But... I quit. Anthropology no more, well, not as a career goal. What am I doing with myself now? I'm going back to school. For nursing. With any luck, I can eventually become a CDE. Even if  I don't make it that far, I think I will be happy in nursing. 

Don't get me wrong. I still love anthropology. I do. I doubt I'll ever be able to shake it. Why do I want to leave it? It's complicated. I am actually good at writing papers and giving presentations. I love reading. Unfortunately, I don't think I can spend the rest of my life doing it. Papers, teaching college, conferences. Even if I found a job as a career academic, I don't think it would make me as happy as it used to. 

I was hanging out in the grad lounge, waiting for my advising session when all of this hit me like a ton of bricks. I went into my advising session anyway, discussed research and classes to take, and walked out of there feeling numb. Suddenly I didn't care about any of it anymore. 

I don't cry. When I get upset, I get physical. I get deadly quiet and unleash it when I'm alone. I cried the entire walk back to my car. Anthropology was all I wanted to do since I was a junior in high school. I had a degree in the subject, and suddenly I didn't care at all. What was I going to do? As suddenly as it had hit me I didn't care about anthropology, another idea hit me: nursing. Before I wanted to be an anthropologist, I wanted to be a doctor. I don't want to be a doctor anymore, but nursing is something I think I can do. 

For people who know me casually, it seems like something I could do, caring for others. For people who know me pretty well, caring for others doesn't seem like something I'd do. I'm that misanthropic, caustically sarcastic bitch. For people who know me incredibly well, they know that caring for others is something that would fit me perfectly. 

My realizations hit me really fast, but it's taken a LOT of thought to actually go through with this. Dropping out of grad school and re-enrolling in my alma mater as an undergraduate again... it's hard. I'm on waiting lists for the important pre-requisite classes (chemistry and anatomy/physiology). I can (hopefully) apply for nursing school in the fall, to begin nursing school in fall 2015. I'm not sure how in hell I can pay for any of this. I don't have a job. It's going to be a long road ahead, but I think I can do this. Wish me luck. 

"Are you drunk?"

Last weekend I was hanging out with my friends, watching football on TV and just hanging out. Yes, there was alcohol around. There were snacks. I hadn't been drinking, and I knew my blood sugar was dipping. I could feel it. But for some reason I sometimes downplay my symptoms when I'm hanging out with a group, even though they all know I'm diabetic (yeah, I don't know why, either). I thought I was just getting low, right on the edge, not a big deal.

Apparently I was acting off. I've never really thought low blood sugar made me appear drunk. I knew it made me feel sluggish and weak, but I didn't know how drunk it makes me look. One of my friends came up and asked me how much I'd been drinking. Nothing, well, nothing other than Diet Coke. She then politely suggested I might want to do a blood test because I was acting really strange for someone who hadn't had any alcohol. I knew I was dipping a little low, so I did a blood test. 43 mg/dl. Oops. Then I sat down, had a regular Coke, and ate some snacks.

All in all, I was fine. The moral of this story: sometimes it's really important to have friends who know your low blood sugar signals as well as or better than you do.

Back that pump up!

I've been pumping since November 2002. Medtronic and I have been together for almost 11 years now. It has just recently occurred to me that I haven't had a solid backup plan since around that time. Thankfully, I've never needed one.

I didn't have my pump setting written down for quite some time. Let me fill you in on the panic that led to this realization. It was a normal Friday night, and my pump was beeping at me to change my battery. I pulled out my pack of AAA batteries and changed the battery as normal. But nothing happened. My pump never came back to life. I frantically ran through my apartment looking for my backup kit. I pulled fresh batteries from a fresh pack and tried again. Nothing. Panic set in. I realized that I have no backup plan in place. If my pump had truly just died, I didn't know my settings, either! Thankfully, the thing came to life after sitting around for a few minutes as I was panicking.

Fast forward a few weeks. Another Friday night. Time to change my battery again. I changed it and waited the requisite two minutes for its display to come back. Everything was peachy. I went to bed with a low reservoir beeping. I thought I had enough insulin to last through the night. I was tired. My pump ran out of insulin at 4AM. Fine. I got up and filled a reservoir. As I was rewinding the pump, the pump shut off. No battery power. Ack. So I ran around and found another new battery and replaced it immediately. I had to rewind the pump again since it stopped halfway through. Then I finished changing my reservoir, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I called Medtronic in the morning. The rep didn't sound very concerned. My pump had been acting up in a few different ways, and the accumulation was starting to really bother me. In addition to the power failure, it has taken longer and longer for the pump to wake up after a battery change. It's taken longer and longer to register blood sugar results being sent from my meter. When I was scrolling through to set the carbs for a bolus, it would routinely skip numbers. It would scroll... 20,21,22,45,46,47... It was the number skipping which concerned the rep. At any rate, I got a new pump on Monday. They told me they were out of purple pumps, and I was really bummed my replacement pump was going to be blue. When I opened the box on Monday, I was pleasantly surprised. 

I'm a mommy... and other discoveries.

Last week I found an abandoned infant kitten outside my apartment. It was only about a day old. After I realized the mom was not going to come back for it, I took the little thing in. I've never looked after a kitten this young before. I have to wake up every 2-3 hours to feed her. I've taken this opportunity to do a LOT of overnight blood tests. I've made a very pleasant discovery. My blood sugar does nothing overnight. Nothing. 10 PM: 107 1AM: 109 3AM: 107 6AM: 112 9AM: 110. This makes me so super happy. I used to plummet overnight, and then we adjusted my basal rate and continually woke up high. Now I can bolus before I go to bed (if my blood sugar is high) and I don't have to worry about going low overnight.

I think about this kitten almost as much as I think about my diabetes. Almost every time I feed the kitten I do a blood test. Having a kitten is almost as good as having a CGM.

My blog... isn't the bloggiest of blogs.

I've been through this before, where I start a blog and only make a few entries before I give up. I really don't want that to happen again. It's much easier to keep up with Twitter. It's only 140 characters at a time! I started my Twitter so I could have a venue to post about diabetes in a funny way, where people would actually get the jokes. The Pancreassassin was born.

As I mentioned in another post, I had my diabetes rebirth around January 2013. I started taking things more seriously, and I got involved online. I figured humor was the way to go. I'm not saying that diabetes is not serious. I am saying that if you don't have a positive way to look at diabetes, it will destroy you. In order to avoid that, I'm trying to be funny. Yeah, trying. I crack jokes to people who understand diabetes all the time in my offline life. I wear diabetes-themed shirts, and I've had a few good conversations about diabetes with people I'd never speak to before. Also, at 23 years old, I'm finally okay talking to strangers, so go me (I'm the most introverted introvert you'll ever meet).

On and Off the Wagon

So, for several years I have had pretty bad control of my diabetes. There, I said it. I know it was bad, and I know it was wrong, but I was doing it anyway. I feel like most of the people in the diabetes online community have some wicked good control, or at least decent. I feel this is a coming out of sorts. I hope this can help anyone who has had bad control get back on track, or at least let them know they aren't alone.

This time last year, my A1C was about 12. Seriously. I don't know how I did it, but I survived for quite some time with A1C values above 10. Aside from being more thirsty than anyone around, I didn't feel too bad. I could exercise, think clearly, and see very well. I knew what I was supposed to be doing, but I never did it. Why? I'm not sure. It wasn't all laziness. Some of it was just apathy. I was experiencing some serious diabetes burnout. On average, I did between 0 and 1 blood test per day and bolused randomly. I changed my set when the old one fell out, which could be up to 14 days. I was bad news.

Things began to change for me when I got a new endocrinologist. My old endo (OE) was pretty bad. I was not taking care of myself, and he was content to let me continue that way. He put me on Metformin, which is usually described for type 2 diabetics. He said it would decrease the amount of insulin I needed. In reality, it did nothing to my insulin needs and gave me a terrible stomach ache for as long as I took it (over a year). After a while you just get used to feeling like garbage. I never did get a clear reasoning for the Metformin.

One day I called to make an appointment and was told that OE no longer worked there, but I could see the new doctor (NE). When I showed up to the appointment, they had no records of what medication I was on. OE had never made record of what he prescribed me! After sorting out the medication record, NE told me point blank that I had really crappy control and I needed to do better. She asked me why I wasn't taking care of myself. I (obviously) couldn't give her any good reasons. How hard is it to do a blood test? Then she changed a bunch of my basal rates and carb : insulin ratios. She then scheduled me for a follow up two weeks later with her nurse, and made an appointment with me one month later, when my prescriptions were going to expire. She asked me to do four blood tests every day for two weeks: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bed. Okay, I could do that. I started testing and bolusing accurately, and my blood sugars plummeted. It felt strange because NE lowered all of my insulin needs before asking me to start testing. I thought maybe my carb counting was rusty, so I started being super, super vigilant about my carbs. I was still low all the time. When my blood sugar was normal it would bottom out as soon as I did anything active.

When I went to my follow-up appointment with the nurse, we changed a lot of my settings again, and added a few new basal rates. A month after that I kept going high. I had changed more pump settings. I think I'm now on some good rates.

 As a result of all of this, my A1C is now sitting at around 8.5. While it's not perfect, it's much better than my 10.5 A1C. I feel like right now I'm on the right path. I test about 7 times per day, minimum. I bolus regularly.  If I'm not sure about a carb value, I'm more likely to look it up than just guess. I mean, sometimes I do guess, but nobody's perfect.

Now that I have this off my chest, I feel much better. I feel honest. :)

Diagnosis

It took me a while to decide what to write as my first blog post. As my blog name suggests, my immune system assassinated my pancreatic beta cells. Get it? Pancreas-assassin....pancreassassin? Anyway, I've decided to start my blog by telling the story of my diagnosis I don't know why, but I like reading others' diagnosis stories, and if you're like me... pull up a chair and read on.

I was seven years old in 1997 when I started to feel like absolute garbage. Every diabetic knows what I mean. I was losing weight and peeing all the time. I started wetting the bed again. I was so embarrassed that I would not have friends stay over at my house, nor I would I stay at theirs. I remember going on an out-of-town soccer trip with my brother and his friends. I was teased for being  the stupid little sister who still wet the bed at 7. My cousin and my great-uncle both had type 1 diabetes at the time, and my mother was familiar with the signs. She took me to the doctor, had my blood drawn, and took me home, where my (non-diabetic) cousin teased me about never being able to eat sugar again. Not long after, I was on my way to the children's hospital. The ride seemed to take forever, and I slept on and off the entire way there.

In the hospital I learned to test my blood sugar and about the importance of insulin. I got an orange workbook with a clock on the front. It was called "It's Time to Learn About Diabetes!" Awesome. The workbook included letters to give to friends and teachers to tell them about diabetes as well as a list of famous type 1 diabetics. I understand the theory behind it- nobody wants to feel like they're alone, and knowing of successful people with your condition can help. Being 7, I didn't know anyone on the list, except for Mary Tyler Moore (and let's face it, a child doesn't have much in common with an adult).

When I went back to school with my new diagnosis, I wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms. Now, I don't blame my peers for thinking diabetes was contagious. They were children. But it still hurt to be shunned by everyone. I was the only diabetic in school. For the first few weeks my mom had to come to school at lunch time to help me with my blood testing because the nurse would not.

About a month after my diagnosis, I turned 8. My classmates had decided I wasn't contagious, and came to my birthday party. That was the first time I had to do a blood test and shot in front of my friends. I didn't want to. I hid in my closet. Actually, I hid in my parents' closet so they wouldn't find me. Eventually they did, and they got me to test and shoot. I didn't get to have cake during that party, and one of my friends squeezed the cat so hard he pooped. Worst party ever.

Later that year my family moved states, and we landed where we are now. My new classmates accepted me, diabetes and all. Nearly 16 years later, I'm still here, and so is the diabetes. And now here is this blog. Stay tuned for more updates!