When I arrived at the hospital, I saw a woman looking for the group. I asked if she was looking for the diabetes support group. She said, “yes” and off we went in search of the meeting. The private dinning rooms, where the meetings are typically held, were empty. Next, I used the house phone to call the reception person and she said the meeting was canceled. I was really bummed since I’d driven 30 minutes to get there and wanted to meet with other diabetics to share our experience with each other.

So, the one other diabetic and I sat down and had a brief meeting while we ate our supper. After a while, two others arrived and were also surprised that the meeting was canceled. They joined us and we had a 45 minute impromptu meeting.

I thoroughly enjoy hearing from fellow diabetics. As I’ve said in other posts, I learn more from people who are living with diabetes than I do from medical people. That’s because they’re living diabetes rather than knowing about it from medical books and classes. I learned that some go into panic when their sugar is low. We talked about how to overcome panic since we can change our thinking, thus reducing the panicky feeling. We talked a lot about nutrition and I learned how important it is to not skip meals. These diabetics were able to report about their diabetes self-care and their experience was stimulating.

I wonder why most diabetics don’t attend our support groups. We talked about that and the consensus was that meetings are not promoted and several ideas were suggested to let others know about meeting times and places.

Please comment below about how your support group attracts diabetics. Also, let us know how your group is run and by whom.

Thanks.

My process involves doing a weekly review of the metrics associated with my diabetes self-care. I use a OneTouch UltraLink blood sugar meter that connects with my Medtronic Paradigm insulin pump. Every time I test my sugar, the meter sends a message to my pump so that it contains my BG levels and insulin I’ve taken. Each week, I upload all the data from my pump to Medtronic Carelink. Next, I download a Trends Summary report that tells me in graphic and tabular form my BG status, insulin pumped and carbohydrates consumed (assuming I entered them in my pump after testing and before pumping). I like the graphic presentation since it gives me a picture of my week’s work with blood sugar management. I also make note of my average glucose reading and average insulin taken. Next, I compare these averages to what they were the prior week. Now I’m ready to take action to improve my results. All of this takes about 20 minutes per week to read, analyze and formulate plans for the next week.

Some see these tasks as problems. I view them as my chance to improve. My investigation looks at trends like BG reading when I wake up and before going to bed. For example, I note that my after-dinner reading has been running high and that leads to high morning sugar readings. My action for the week coming up is to reduce the number of carbs in my evening meal and then I’ll see the result at the end of the week.

When I’m conscientious, I stay focused on my plan for the week and the improvements normally happen. I get great joy from understanding my BG management metrics, formulating a plan, executing the plan and then rejoicing in the result. I am confident my actions for the upcoming week will produce a reduction of bedtime readings.

Are you choosing to improve your BG management? If so, what’s your process? Please enter a comment below this post to share your process and results with others. Thanks.

This commitment to myself will surely come into play next Sunday when I’ll be watching the super bowl. I’ve already begun to plan what to eat during the game and although I love chips and salsa, these are not on the menu. I try to avoid mindless eating that happens for me when my focus is on the game and not on my health. I’ve learned that proper eating begins in the supermarket. I’m thinking about buying shrimp and mixed salads like chicken and tuna. For me the key is to really limit the carbs I’m planning. I know that if I don’t purchase high-carb foods I’ll be able to enjoy the game without negative impact to my body.

I used to be fearful of buffet tables since I was drawn to all the wrong foods. Now, I’ve learned to stay clear of bread, pasta and deserts. Again, my focus is on selecting the “right” foods for me. Several years ago I would ask my wife to make a plate for me from the buffet. I’m very pleased that I can now select for myself as I keep my food objectives in focus.

Ask yourself what you plan to eat on Sunday. If you’ll be going to a Super Bowl party, you’ll no doubt have the buffet challenge I mentioned. Please know that you can eat foods that will not jack up your blood sugar. And of course, a plan will enable you to enjoy the game without anxiety. Good luck!

On the other hand, I was shocked by a restaurant manager confronting me in the men’s room. He loudly proclaimed that another customer had told him I was doing drugs. Although somewhat embarrassing, I agreed that I was doing drugs that are about staying alive. Indeed, I went on, I’m injecting insulin. Now it was his term to be embarrassed and to apologize for his intrusion.

Let’s back up and look at what drove me to the men’s room to take insulin. If you are on insulin injections, there will be people who observe you doing an injection and have an adverse reaction. After several dining guests turned away from my injection activity and some even openly complaining, I decided privacy was called for. I found that men’s rooms were typically dirty and not a sanitary place to do insulin injections. So, after a year or so of injecting insulin in a men’s room, I reverted back to taking my meds at the table. My process was to tell others at our table what I was about to do and they could look away as needed. This may seem anti-social; however, I need to take care of myself as well as looking out for others.

Now for the good news! For the past 12 years or so I’ve been using a Medtronic insulin pump. Over this period of time, not one person has complained about my diabetes management. Some think I’m wearing a beeper and just ignore me. This amazing device has given me peace of mind while helping me to tightly manage my blood sugar. As I look back, I wonder why I was so resistant to going on the pump when my endocrinologist repeatedly suggested it. I may be a slow learner, but I’m grateful for my pump as it brings me joy.

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Jack’s message to me:

Will – A short note to tell you how much I am enjoying your Joyful Diabetic videos. I’ve just watched three of them and intend to review them again as my knowledge of diabetes grows. In addition, I look forward to viewing the other videos in the series as a great means of information for the non-diabetic.

The videos are very professional in their presentation and content. Your pace is great, you’re easy to understand and the brief give and take with the audience offers a nice break in the format. I’m not surprised at your presentation skills, having witnessed them many times during our days with IBM and I can see how you have developed them even further.

The videos are wonderful to see and are a great learning tool for your viewers. I look forward to seeing the rest of your videos but wanted to get this note off to you with my congratulations for a very impressive

product. J.

Symptom: After changing my set last Saturday my BG went way up and stayed there; however, a couple of readings were 100 and 61, so what’s going on here?

Analysis/Diagnosis:

• I must be getting insulin as evidenced by one normal and one low reading, but then consistently high. If I’m getting insulin, why are my readings high?
• Maybe there’s a crimp in my pump tubing (I’ve had that before), but nope, that’s not it.
• Maybe the insulin has gone bad? Again, I doubted it since it’s a relatively new bottle of Novolog and the weather is not hot—a fact that can destroy insulin.
• My BG was at 422 at bedtime on Saturday, so I pumped 10 units; however, at 5 AM it was 259 and it went up as Sunday progressed. Thus, the bedtime insulin was not effective nor were the additional units I took on Sunday.
• I checked the connection of the pump tubing with the infusion set and discovered that it wasn’t locked in place. I was sure that was the problem; however, over the next few hours high BG continued although appearing to slowly come down.
• I wondered what I’d eaten on Saturday evening since I know that a carb pigout can cause longer-term high BG readings. I checked my log book and found that this was not the cause.
• Finally, very frustrated by now, I changed the infusion set and that produced desired normal blood sugar. This means that the infusion set was defective and it has since been replaced by Medtronic.

The take away for me is to carefully consider all possibilities for a situation like this. I do pat myself on the back for staying calm and methodically checking possible causes. My regular readers may recall how I emphasize maintaining a positive attitude and how this episode yields evidence that my attitude helped.

My recommendations for problem diagnosis are:

• Stay calm
• Carefully consider possible causes
• Don’t go it alone. Rather, contact others in your diabetes support group, your medical team and your diabetes product manufacturers. I’m grateful to Medtronic who is always there for me 24×7!

Last September I was the guest speaker at an Adult Diabetes Boot Camp and we spent a wonderful hour together discussing diabetes. As a volunteer for our local Community TV station, CTSB, I have access to video equipment which I took to the event. The Boot Camp was an event conducted by the Hungerford Diabetes Center in Torrington, CT. The leader of the program is Dr. Engils Bogdanovics, Endocrinologist. Given his technical expertise, he volunteered to operate the video camera. Dr. Bogdanovics did a superb job and the resulting video recording has been played by all the major Community TV stations in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.

Given everyone’s short attention span and time pressure, I decided to edit the 55 minute video into several more digestible chunks. My YouTube Channel now contains all 16 of the segments derived from the full event video, that can be found on Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/30083339.

Please invest time to view and comment on these video segments.

Thank you.

Recently, there was an informative exchange of information at Diabetes Daily. Please click the following link to read and comment as appropriate http://www.diabetesdaily.com/edelman/2012/01/marrying-into-diabetes-a-husbands-perspective/comment-page-1/#comments. This extensive communication is worth reading if for no other reason than for education.

I had a roller coaster ride with my diabetes yesterday and I know that my wife, Susanna was impacted. I gave myself permission to have a crumb bun with my coffee around 9:30 AM and that began my sugar saga. My day began with a reading of 115 at 5 AM and my blood glucose was again good (108) at 7:15 before breakfast. I took 12 units of Novolog to compensate for the crumb bun, thinking this amount of insulin would work as it had in the past. This time, my blood sugar went to 350 at 11:30 AM, so I took more insulin. By 1:55 PM, my BG was at 83 and I felt relieved; however, at 3 PM it was at 54 and I felt very shaky. I ate crackers and peanut butter and by 5:45 my sugar was at 136, so I took 3.85 units to handle the 35 grams of carbohydrates in my dinner. At 7:40 PM, my sugar was 276 as the ups and downs continued and my bedtime reading was 338. What a ride…not!

My wife and I had planned to catch a movie last night, but I felt as though I’d been run over by a truck. In short I felt terrible and Susanna missed the movie too—the price she pays for living with a diabetic. I’ve been on insulin for over 15 years and my Type 3 partner has always been supportive. She read the information found at the link above and this gave her a new insight. The ghastly stories shared by those commenting at the referenced site gave her a renewed sense of how lucky she is to have a husband who is in good control. She also now knows the results that can happen to we diabetics, even those of us in good control. I am so grateful to have Susanna as my partner—she’s the wind beneath my wings and I honor her.

My recommendation to readers is to build strong, supportive relationships with those who share some elements of your diabetes. My daily life would not be as joyful without my wife. Thanks, Susanna. I love you.

If this were the only lost item, I could learn to live with the loss; however, there’s more. One of my favorite blue wool shirts is also missing and I like wearing it when the temperature is low. For example today’s temperature when I got up about 5 AM was -2.2 f. I know the shirt would feel good today. Again, we’ve searched, but no shirt.

I’ve been working on creating shorter segments of my appearance at a Diabetes Camp for adults last September. I’ve been working at the studios of CTSB-TV in South Lee, MA. I’m a volunteer with this community cable station and I used their equipment to record the event. To view the complete video (55 minutes), please visit http://vimeo.com/30083339. Given the length of this video, I’m nearly complete on breaking it into 2-4 minute segments by topic and will let my readers know when these shorter segments are available. As you might expect, I had a folder with many notes relating to my video editing experience and that’s the third item that I’ve lost. I backtracked on my travels on the day after I’d been to the studio, but no folder. Where can it be?

Finally, I did misplace one of my good leather gloves and in frustration gave up my search after looking in many places and making phone calls to places I’d been on the day the glove disappeared. Later that day, I came home from the studio and to my great surprise, the glove was on the shelf by our front door. I immediately knew that my wife had found the glove. Later she told me it had become mixed up in a basket of slippers we keep near our front door for use by our guests. So, I’ve got 1 of the 4 missing items back.

I’m upset by all of this and know that being upset raises my sugar level, so I need to let these items go. I wonder if I’m just getting old and forgetful? Is this related to my diabetes in any way? As I ponder reasons for loss, I’m surmising that I’m probably not paying attention to the details of my day to day activities.

Please comment on your experience with losing things.

How do we know we’re depressed? Symptoms of depression vary greatly, thus it’s challenging to generalize. My simple explanation is: I’m depressed when I remain stuck in negative feelings and it’s affecting most aspects of my life. I have had very brief episodes of depression and am thankful that I’ve never had what medical people call clinical depression.

According to information I found on the web, approximately 14 million adults are depressed. For some, they don’t get enough sleep while for others they get too much sleep and can’t get out of bed. There are many characteristics found in people with depression; however, the bottom line is depression can be very debilitating for us with diabetes.

Today’s medical literature talks about MDD (Major Depressive Disorder). I read that MDD can be diagnosed by a healthcare professional when a patient demonstrates at least 2 weeks of depressed mood or loss of interest accompanied by at least four additional symptoms of depression. This is a serious health issue, thus action needs to be taken by those who are depressed.

Since I’m not a medical person, I offer the following general suggestions based on my life experience:

• When you think you’re depressed, take action and meet with an appropriate professional.
• Remember to evaluate your thinking and if you find your thoughts are chronically negative, work on changing your thinking.
• Use antidepressant medications only under a doctor’s supervision. In our society we are too reliant on drugs to “fix” our mental state and there are other therapies that should be tried before opting for drugs.
• Just talking to someone can help to overcome the negative thinking. A trained or certified psychotherapist appointment is a good place to start.

Diabetes self-care is of course very challenging and adding depression just makes it worse. My advice is to stay connected with friends and family and stay active. Life is hardly ever as bad as negative thinking makes it seem. Depression is very serious for us diabetics and your support group can be helpful, but first you have to be honest as you share your situation. Help is available and it begins with recognition of a problem followed by action aimed at proper diagnosis and appropriate therapy.