Tag: diabetes

I Hate When it Hits Home

I saw a headline this morning that pissed me off and scared the crap out of me, but I haven’t been able to verify it yet (and I almost don’t want to even try, in the spirit of burying my head in the sand). It said that trump mentioned including pharmaceuticals in his tariff bullshit.

That’s scary shit. Where is my step son’s insulin manufactured? Where is the company that manufactures it based? Is the already insultingly high price of insulin about to go up? Is it manufactured in china? Will the price go up 104%?

Like I said, I have not verified this report yet. I tried looking online for about four seconds and then stopped. Think of it as a no-news-is-good-news kinda thing, you know?

Further thoughts on being in the spirit of hiding ones head in the sand, I feel like I have less and less to say on the interwebs these days. I feel like the state of the world is just making me draw more and more inward. The collapse of american democracy is getting me in touch with my inner introvert. That’s my natural state, I think. Despite being a ridiculous online over-sharer over the last 25+ years or so, the real me is someone who clams up and doesn’t speak unless spoken to. I feel that I am losing the fight to not be that way all the time. Social media used to be my personal revolution (this is getting way too dramatic), but facebook and twitter and instagram and threads are all dead to me now. Flickr is a social media site at its core, but I don’t use it in that sense very much. I still use bluesky, but with each passing day I find I have less and less to say. I’ve been using Flashes as an instagram alternative, but that app is literally just bluesky with a filter to only show posts with images.

This isn’t a censorship thing. I’m not afraid to speak out. trump is a fucking fascist who needs to rot in prison for the rest of his miserable, evil life. See? I am not afraid to say what needs to be said. I just don’t feel much of an urge to speak up anymore. It’s not even that… it’s more like I will speak out when I have something to say… I just don’t often feel like I have anything to say. I don’t know. I will say it’s one of the reasons I am considering canning this blog and all of the social media things I still use. If my country doesn’t give a fuck about me anymore, why would I waste the effort acting like I give a fuck about it in return? I do, and I will do what needs to be done… I think I am just tired.

Jen and I have been watching a show that is set in Australia. Maybe I’m just jealous of people who live in countries that aren’t actively eating themselves. I don’t know.

Boy… this is a depressing post, eh? Sorry. There will be cat photos at some point today. I promise.

PS: I am turning comments off. I’m not interested in comments on this one. I’m not sorry.

Blood Sugar

November 13, 2015 was the worst day. It was the day Harry was diagnosed with type one diabetes. He was so sick that it was terrifying. Fortunately he recovered quickly and we went from being utterly terrified for his life to learning all we could about maintaining his health. That included all sorts of information on the signs of both high and low blood sugar. We learned that high blood sugar had few outward symptoms, but at some point it becomes life threatening. Harry’s initial problems were due to a sky high blood sugar levels.

Low blood sugar has more obvious symptoms. In extremes it is just as life threatening, but there are more signs of issues at much lower levels. They include shakiness and light headedness. Not long after my gastric bypass I started having quick moments of light headedness myself. I never got a specific reason why but among the possibilities were low blood pressure and low blood sugar.

This weekend I had a moment where it was clear that I was having a low blood sugar moment. I felt exactly the way the staff at Boston Medical Center told us low blood sugar would make you feel, and exactly the way Harry described when we asked him how he felt during a low. Light headed and shaky and weak. I had something to eat and felt better after a few minutes. Today, just before lunch, it happened again. It wasn’t as bad this time and again, having a bite to eat improved things quickly.

So my question to the universe is: Is this going to be a thing now? It’s just another reason to not forget to eat. I need to keep what’s left of my rewired, bypassed, tiny little stomach pouch from getting too empty. I can handle that. Bring it on, I guess.

Diabetic Solidarity on The CW

I’ve kinda fallen off the wagon on the DC Comics shows on The CW. Supergirl just wrapped up and I still have half of the last season to go (waiting on Netflix). The Flash starts up again soon. Boatwoman, I think, is already back. Is it? I got partway through season two and lost steam.

One show I don’t watch is Stargirl. I watched the premier episode last year and it didn’t do much for me. Now I think I might have to try again for reasons that have nothing to do with comics or television or anything. I heard today that the woman who plays the lead role has type 1 diabetes… just like Harry. It makes me want to watch the show and do business with their sponsors. Solidarity, am I right? If she does half as well at managing her diabetes as Harry does managing his then she is doing awesome.

I don’t know why, but when I read about this today it gave me a bit of a hell yeah feeling. Season one is on HBO. I think I’ll give it another try.

Six Years Ago Today: Diabetes-aversary

Six years ago today was a Friday. Friday November 13, 2015. It was the worst day of my life. No question. There have been other bad days, but none of them can hold a candle to 11/13/15. That was the day we almost lost Harry. I was working from home while he was home sick. All morning he just kept getting worse. I called Jen and she came home and probably saved his life by taking him to Holy Family Hospital. One of the nurses took one look at him and said he had Diabetes. Oh good, we thought, you can treat that. He’s going to be fine. The nurse saw the look of relief and let us know that it wasn’t going to be that simple. He wasn’t just really sick. He was really sick.

They moved him to Boston Medical Center where an ER doctor was straight with us. There was a chance he wasn’t going to make it. There was also a chance that his system was so fucked up it might cause other damage on top of just not being able to produce insulin anymore. We were scared shitless. You may think you know what being scared feels like, but this was so much worse than that. The head of Endocrinology told us that he had never seen a kid that far gone come back, but Harry, being the 12 year old bad ass that he was, pulled through. He was right as rain after a couple of days. You might think you’ve felt relief before, but it’s nothing compared to what we felt that day. Believe me.

The story has a happy ending though. One that has continued unabated for six years now. Harry was not only up to the challenge of managing his diabetes, he thrived on it. I have lost count of the number of doctors I’ve heard say they were impressed with how well he handles it. Sure there are days when his blood sugar spikes and it scares the crap out of everyone, and there are days when his blood sugar takes a nose dive off a cliff and scares the crap out of everyone. There are even days when they both happen. Still, Harry has been amazing. He continues to be amazing. He is amazing.

I just wish he didn’t have to be. I wish he didn’t have to manage things. I wish his pancreas was still holding up it’s end of the bargain and he didn’t have to track his blood sugar and manually inject insulin. That would be great and all, but fortunately Harry was and still remains more than up to the challenge. Again, he’s amazing and I love him and I am so thankful for the way things turned out, and I am thankful that he still lets me be a part of his life.

My holiday wish, year round wish really, for everyone is that they never have an 11/13/15 of their own. Hug your kids.

8:51 AM

I’m up and ready to punch into work. I filled the cat’s food and water bowls. I changed the battery in the door lock. I took out the trash, twice. I woke Harry up to tell him his blood sugar was low (his glucose monitor alarm wasn’t loud enough to wake him). I vacuumed up the latest water in the cellar. I emptied and restarted the dehumidifier. I started a load of laundry. I showered.

Now that it’s time to start work I think I need a nap. Still have to make the bed before my 10:00 meeting.

Happy Thursday, folks.

Diabetes Supplies

We thought we’d stock up on diabetes supplies. Just in case, you know? He has a good stock of everything he needs, but we thought we’d be extra careful and extend his supply.

I guess he’s all set with alcohol wipes then.

Blood Sugar Keeps Me Up

I went to bed at 10:00. Harry’s blood sugar monitor woke me up at 1:00. He was high, but not terrible. I woke him up and told him he needed a correction. I think he over did it a little. I could hear his pump working, which I’ve never really heard before. I don’t know how much insulin is injected each time the pump gives a little click, but I know it’s a tiny amount. Still, with no frame of reference at all it seemed to go on for too long.

I tried going back to sleep but I was too wide awake. At 2:00 the low sugar warnings started. He wasn’t actually low, but he was dropping like a stone. By 3:00 he was definitely low and I got him up again for a snack. At 3:30 the alarm went off again but the numbers were trending up. It’s 3:52 now and his CGM has been silent. Good.

My alarm is going to go off in 68 minutes. I am equal parts exhausted and wired. I can’t fall asleep. Tomorrow is going to be a rough day. We are going back to Galaxy’s Edge though so I’ll tough it out. You’ll see.

On a side note, I typed this post on my iPad, in the dark, without my glasses, while too tired to think straight. I can’t wait to read it tomorrow and see all the typos and incoherent statements. It’ll be good for a laugh.

Lunch Time Post

Hello and welcome to today’s lunch break blog post.  Enjoy!

There is a lot of stuff going on today.

Last weekend I found two scary looking problems in our cellar.  We have a water leak somewhere and it’s ending up underneath the floor tiles.  It doesn’t seem like a lot of water, but it’s damaging the tiles a little.  I think I know where it’s coming from but I need to get a plumber in to look at it.  While I was investigating that I noticed that some of the HVAC duct that runs along the basement ceiling was actually coming apart.  There was one spot where the duct was detached from the ceiling and it looked really, really scary.  It looked like the ceiling wanted to collapse.  That’s not in any way what was going to happen, but that’s how it looked.

So step one is get the scary looking duct checked out and step two is bring the plumber back.  The HVAC folks came this morning just before I punched in to work.  All set.  It was just a couple of brackets that popped lose and there was nothing wrong with duct itself.  Sigh of relief.  The problem was fixed, some extra support was added, and life is good.

While the guy was here working I heard from my step son that he left his insulin pod at home.  Yikes!  I told him I’d bring it to him once the tech left.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find it.  I looked everywhere.  He said maybe it was in his car and he went out to look.  Nope, not in the car.  I ripped the living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and his bedroom apart.  Nothing.  Where the hell is it?  I retraced my steps and looked everywhere again and finally found it.  It seems like he kicked it way under his bed.  All set.  I had to take a little personal time off from work while I drove up to the high school but that was okay.

When I got to the high school it was a little weird.  A police car followed me into the parking lot.  I don’t mean that to sound ominous, we were just driving along and he just happened to be behind me.  No big deal.  I parked in the front parking lot and he parked in the driveway… next to another police car.  Okay, two cops.  I then noticed that across the lot from me there were two more police cars.  Okay, four cops.  Was something going on?

I don’t think so.  The two parked in the driveway walked into the building together and they were super casual.  Just two coworkers hanging out.  I didn’t see the two cops from the parking lot, but no one inside was acting like anything out of the ordinary was going on.  I wonder if there was a D.A.R.E presentation or something.  Still, given the atmosphere in our country these days, seeing a bunch of cops at the high school was a little bit unsettling.

152/365 - Why so many cops at the high school? I saw these two and two others.

Back to the house, I pulled into the driveway and parked as close to the house as I could.  With a snowbank still on the side of the road, we are parking three cars into a driveway that is more or less exactly the length of the three cars end to end.  We need to park as close together as we can.  No wasted space.

I think I could have gotten a little closer today.

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And that’s my day so far. Fascinating, eh? Still need to schedule something with the plumber. It will likely be for next Thursday because telecommuting makes stuff like this easy.

Oh yeah, and I setup a trello board for RPM2020.

Tonight’s plans include making dinner for Jen and Harry, WATCHING PICARD EPISODE TWO (SQUEEEE!!!!!), and practicing the effin’ guitar!

HoHoHo, everyone.  Hope your day is going well.  Happy lunch break!