October 10th, 2010 by

Fall is here in New England and it’s shaping up to be a very pretty one.  Chris and I decided that since BSparl is now more mobile and fun to take places (i.e. she only poops every other day, so we know we have one full day of "safety" while traveling), we’d give a go at her first apple picking adventure.

We sampled an apple or two before picking some, just to make sure we liked the ones that were on tap.  (Once, Chris and I went to a berry picking farm and ate way more than we had picked and then we had stomach aches for the rest of the day but we were happy.  /pointless story about berry theft)

There were golden delicious, red delicious, macoun, and smooshed apples everywhere.  BSparl hung out with me in the Baby Bjorn, and I spent most of the afternoon making sure she wasn’t being poked in the face by any branches. But she was amazed every time her dad climbed up into a tree to retrieve apples, because he would just shimmy up there.  (I was impressed, too.  Can’t lie.)

BSparl is getting bigger, and walking around with her in the baby carrier is actually a bit of a workout.  My blood sugars edged towards the lower end of the 90’s all day long (I sound like a diabetes meteorologist – "Partly low with a chance of highs.") and I grabbed bites from an apple here and there to keep my blood sugars from crashing. 

But now I’m faced with bags of apples on my kitchen counter and this increasing desire (but lack of knowledge) to make a pie …

Source: Six Until Me.

October 8th, 2010 by

Last night, I went to the gym later in the day – around 7:30 pm.  Chris was home with BSparl and I couldn’t wait to have an hour to myself and to watch Project Runway on the gym televisions.  (Yes, a month of hospital bedrest will indeed make you addicted to weird reality tv shows that make you talk about what an obnoxious sasshole Gretchen is, as though you know her.  /digression)

I’m on the elliptical and plugged in, watching tv while I work out.  About four minutes in, I see this weird spot in the bottom right hand corner of my right eye.  Nothing too dramatic, but just this nagging little floaty thing that makes my eye feel like it has a filmy cotton ball covered the bottom portion of it. 

I continue my workout, and at the seven minute mark, my sneakers feel like cement blocks and that eye thing is still foggy.  And this thought actually goes through my head – "Should I test?" – but because I am a stubborn fool, I don’t quite yet.

I reach for the Dexcom receiver, only to realize it’s at home on the coffee table.  So I walk for a few more minutes, not realizing I’m listing to one side and hanging on to the hand rail.  (But once my brain starts musing about how I’d maybe wear some of those Project Runway outfits, it dawns on me that I should probably test like right now.)

A bright, shiny 43 mg/dl smiles back up at me from my meter.  The eye thing, the cement feet, and the headache suddenly magnify.  But I am a stubborn fool.  And for some stupid, stupid reason, I decide to keep going.  I bring the treadmill back to a 0% incline and reduce the speed to 2.0 miles per hour.  The sports bottle I brought with me, filled with juice, is drained in a millisecond, and then I just plod along.  Plod, plod, plod.

Internal Motivational Speaker pipes up in my ear.

"Kerri.  Get off the treadmill, you stubborn fool.  You are going to hurt yourself.  Your blood sugar is way too low for you to be physically exerting yourself."

I keep plodding.

"Are you ignoring me on purpose?  Because I can go all night, lady.  You’d better listen up and get yourself off the treadmill and sitting tight until your blood sugar comes up."

I furrow my brow.  "I don’t want to.  This is the only time I get to myself all day long and I am determined to banish this abdominal fluff and seriously?  This low is making me so mad at diabetes crap that I want to throw something.  So no, I’m not stopping.  I’ll go slow.  I already drank the juice.  And I’ll test again in a few minutes.  But I’m not stopping."

I know I should have quit as soon as I saw that low number, but I didn’t.  I am stubborn.  I walked slowly and unsteadily for a few more minutes, and then my sneakers felt a bit lighter.  And my eye fog was lifting.  It wasn’t until the Project Runway outfits started to look ridiculous again that I felt completely better.  Quick blood sugar check showed me an 81 mg/dl.

"This could have ended badly, you know," said my Internal Motivational Speaker as she filed her nails. 

"I know."

"You’re a stubborn fool, Ms. Kerri.  You need to listen to me sometimes, even when you don’t want to."

"I know that, too."

"Okay.  Next time, you sit out for a few minutes, just to be on the safe side." 

"Fine.  I will."  I glanced up at the tv again.  "Dude, Gretchen looks just like Skeletor."

"She totally does."

Source: Six Until Me.

October 8th, 2010 by

Personally, I feel that mail-order prescription services have saved my life, so I almost choked on my breakfast bar the other morning reading this Philadelphia Inquirer headliner: “Pharmacists Take On Mail Order.” You. Are. Kidding. Me. Now the powers that be are trying to take away the ability for us to have 90-days’ supply of [...]

Source: AmyT

October 7th, 2010 by

Today’s post is an interview with a screenwriter who lives in my house.  He wrote the film Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds and directed by Rodrigo Cortes.  His name is Chris Sparling, and he has some thoughts he’d like to share with our fabulous diabetes community.

*   *   *

Kerri:  Hi, Chris.  Welcome … to our home.

Chris:  Thank you for having me.  (He grins, tolerating my ridiculous questions.)

Kerri:  So Buried came out in limited release on September 24th, and it’s been expanding into more theaters ever since. 

Chris:  Yes, it’s a very expansive film.  (He smiles again.  Ruefully this time.)

Kerri:  The full release is October 8th, right? 

Chris:  Yeah.  It’s going a little wider this weekend, but there are still some theaters that won’t be getting the film until after October 8th. 

Kerri:  How do you feel about the finished product?

Chris:  I couldn’t be happier.  I saw it for the first time back at Sundance and, like everyone in the crowd, I just marveled at what Rodrigo had done with my script, and the incredible performance that Ryan turned in.

Kerri:  So what has the response to the film been like?

Chris:  We couldn’t have asked for much better from the critics.  I think right now it’s at 87% ‘fresh’ on Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert gave it 3 1/2 out of four stars. 

Kerri:  What about "real people."  Like actual people going to the movies?

Chris:  For the most part, they’re enjoying the film, too.  It seems that if people aren’t liking the film, they went into it thinking it’s something that it’s not.

Kerri:  Like a cartoon?

Chris:  No, they definitely knew it wasn’t a cartoon.  But I think some people thought it was a horror film.

Kerri:  Guy in a coffin kind of sounds like that, doesn’t it?

Chris:  In 99 out of a 100 films, that would be the case.  It would be a horror film.  But that’s what makes Buried different.  Even though it’s a horrific situation that the main character is faced with, it’s not a horror film:  it’s a dramatic thriller.  It’s not about torture, and you’re not going to be scared by this movie – unless you’re severely claustrophobic.  Buried is a movie – an intense, movie-going experience – and a lot of people have been surprised by the amount of drama and social commentary in the movie.

Kerri:  Wow.  That’s a serious answer.  Have you been practicing that?

Chris:  No, I think scripts are over-rated.

Kerri:  Hang on, let me get my rimshot.  Okay, so did you know that the whole diabetes community has been rallied behind you and your movie?

Chris:  Yes, I have.  And I’ve been so incredibly grateful for that support.  

Kerri:  Did you know that George and Scott went to see your movie the other day together?

Chris:  Yeah, those guys are awesome.  I’ve had the pleasure of meeting both of them and I can see why they’re such rockstars in the diabetes community.  They’re genuinely kind human beings.

Kerri:  And Scott didn’t even get mad when the baby puked on him at CWD.

Chris:  I still owe him one for that.  

Kerri:  So overall, you’ve had the critics giving high marks to Buried, but you’ve also had a whole pile of people with diabetes who’ve had your back.  We’ve been following and supporting your journey since it was announced last year, and I’m telling you, the theaters that are screening Buried better have plenty of juice on hand because their seats are packed with insulin-pumping PWDs. 

Chris:  All I can say is thank you.  That’s what I’ve always found amazing about the diabetes community, is that it’s not just about the people who are living with diabetes, but the people who love them, too.  And that’s the way it should be, because at the end of the day, we’re all in this together.

Kerri:  (mimes violin playing on her shoulder)

Chris:  Kerri, I’m serious.

Kerri:  I know.  I’m just so proud of you, and I know our daughter, our friends and family, and the whole diabetes community is proud of you, too.

Chris:  Thanks.

Kerri:  And Siah is also proud of you, you know.

Chris:  I can’t stand that cat.

*   *   *

Buried opens nationwide on October 8th.  You can like it on Facebook, or on Rotten Tomatoes, or on IMDB.  If you’d like.  And, as always, thank you guys for all of your support.  It means the world to me and my family.

Source: Six Until Me.

October 7th, 2010 by

Sticking with yesterday’s theme of physical activities that help people cope with diabetes —please meet Chloe Steepe, who like many of us diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as adults (she was 18) didn’t know another single soul with this illness. For Chloe, it wasn’t until several years later, when visiting Australia on an outdoor adventure trip, [...]

Source: admin

October 6th, 2010 by

After BSparl was born, I was overwhelmed with adjusting to life as a mom, and diabetes took a backseat to just about everything.  I was healing from my c-section, attempting to snap up all the snappy things on BSparl’s clothes, and figuring out how all the pieces were coming back together after having been completely blown apart.

I experienced some extreme diabetes burnout, where I stopped exercising, cut way back on testing my blood sugar, and the Dexcom receiver collected dust in my bathroom cabinet.  

But I’ve been really trying to get my act together here.  Now that we’re quasi-settled in our new house, I’m back at the gym, testing with an increased frequency, and tuning back into my diabetes management.  I couldn’t force these issues, though.  I needed to get things rolling again once I was really ready, and not beforehand.  With BSparl a little older (almost six months old!) and her schedule actually resembling something plot-table, I knew it was an okay time to start focusing on myself a little more.

I’m resolved to make exercise part of the equation once again, and I’m doing well with that goal.  And to be filed under "TMI," I’m keeping my glucose meter on the bathroom counter and am testing after every visit.  (Sounds weird, but it helps me remember to test and helps shrink the gap between blood sugar checks.)  And I’m back to Dexcom’ing it 24/7.  

I didn’t realize how much I missed this thing until I took a few weeks off.  

It’s easy for me to slack off when I’m avoiding my glucose meter.  Mostly because my glucose meter doesn’t scream at me every few hours.  But the Dexcom does.  Once it’s on and calibrated, it BEEEEEEEEEP!s every time I’m high, low, or if it needs a blood sugar number.  I am the puppy to its Pavlov, and having this sensor stuck to my body doesn’t feel as cumbersome as it did when my stomach was swollen with BSparl and then recovering from birth.  I feel ready for this information again, instead of overwhelmed by it, and I’m ready to make use of this data.

In the last two weeks, my meter average has come down from 179 mg/dl (ouch) to 148 mg/dl.  And I’m hoping that I can bring it down a little more in the next two weeks, hopefully while avoiding the extremes on either end of the spectrum. 

While I know plenty of people with diabetes wrangle in their numbers without the use of a CGM, I seem to be better off with one.  Something about that constant stream of information keeps me both accountable and tuned in.  Even though I’m not a fan of wearing a second device (hello, skin real estate issues), my health is better for it.  Sometimes it takes coming back from a round of diabetes burnout to remind me why I fought so hard for this device in the first place.

[Dexcom disclosure]

Source: Six Until Me.

October 6th, 2010 by admin

Yoga might seem intimidating to you, with all the bodily twists and turns. But there is a new kind of yoga that doesn’t involve any downward dogs or cobra stances. It’s called Laughter Yoga, and it’s a global movement. I kid you not. It’s based on the idea that laughter allows more oxygen into the [...]

Source: admin