Up and up and up!

I've been exercising regularly. I've been trying (please not the word trying) to eat less sweets. And I have been checking my basal rate like a mad woman. But the dawn phenomenon seems to have attacked with a vengeance.

For the past week my morning blood sugars, and now my morning basal rate, have just gone up and up and up. This is one of the first times that this has happened and I haven't gotten angry about it. Angry hasn't helped before and I'm tired of getting angry every time my blood sugar goes through either an up swing (and then back down) or has just gone up and I've had to adjust my rates for the long term.

I just don't want to worry about eating a bowl of Kashi Go Lean Crunch in the morning. I want to just say "hey, I'm hungry. I'm going to eat a very healthy breakfast and bolus correctly and in two hours I'll be in range!" Currently it's more like "well, I'll have a little piece of toast and over bolus and in two hours I may still be over 140..."

So I'm working on fixing that. But I'm not angry about it this time. I just want to "fix" it!

On a different note, I talked to my diabetes educator about the different reservoirs for my minimed pump. We decided to stick with the current infusion set/reservoir through minimed since I have such good luck with them and to save money I'm canceling the automatic delivery through minimed. It was set up automatically when I got the pump and since then I've just been getting more and more, since I only switch every 4 days. So now I have about 10 months of supplies just sitting at my house, waiting. So I can save some money this way.

Saving Money!

Thanks to Tiffany at Candid Diabetes, I've discovered something that may save me some money. I'm currently using the Paradigm pump and infusion sets. Currently my infusion sets are the most expensive part of my diabetes care. My insurance covers a percentage, after hitting my deductible.

With these new, CHEAPER, reservoirs and infusion sets, I could save hundreds of dollars a year. I've put a call into my doctor to see what he thinks and then I'm set to switch!

Thank goodness for the OC!

And I'm back. Thanks for all the good wishes on Friday! They seemed to work as I had a wonderful time. Fondue at the Melting Pot on Friday night. Museum and dinner/drinks with friends on Saturday. Brokeback Mountain on Sunday (have you seen it?! Fabulous!) and then a very early flight home yesterday. I went straight to work after arriving at the Midway airport at 8am. Needless to say I wasn't terribly productive yesterday at work. Ah well. It was well worth it.

I had my endocrinologist appointment yesterday after work. A1c of 6.0 (a little higher than my previous blood test a1c of 5.7). My doctor was very happy with the number so that's fine by me. I'm probably just slowly creeping out of the honeymoon so bit by bit it will become harder to keep my a1c as low as it is. I also got a few new (free!) toys including a back up meter and the software/cable to download my meter to my computer. Why I haven't had this before I have no idea. My doctor also informed me that Chicago is one of the 7 cities that Minimed is testing their new Guardian Continuous Glucose Monitoring System. He *whispered* to me that the next time I visit he might be able to let me test it for a week or so. I might just have to do that.

Minneapolis Bound

Chicago and Minneapolis. So close, yet so freaking far away.

I'm headed to Minneapolis this afternoon to visit the boy. The new boy. Sort of new anyway. We met way back in October at a wedding that I attended as a guest of my roommate. Seriously, who meets at a wedding?! I never thought that actually happened in real life. I noticed him at first because of his height (6'4", which is giant compared to my 5'5" stance). Then he kept my attention with his charming yet snarky personality. He visited Chicago. Three times now since the beginning of December. Our phone conversations make me feel like I'm back in high school due to the length of just one call. I truly spend as little time on the phone as possible, but then I met him and talking on the phone was the closest thing we had to actually being together. It's a measly runner up.

So this weekend is my first Minneapolis visit (besides the wedding). I'll see his apartment, meet his friends and get to spend sometime with him. I'm delighted. He was here last weekend and meet my friends (and my brother, who is also my roommate). Everyone seems to like him, and he them.

Tonight he's taking me out to dinner. Fondue. I want to laugh but he's so terribly excited, as all of his couple friends have gone and really enjoyed it. So I'm preparing for a stomach full of cheese, oily meat, and chocolate. It will be an experience I'm sure.

My bag is packed and I get to leave work early at 2:00. I'm trying to hold in the excitement but I just can't wipe this silly smile off my face.

Oh, and the best part: When I told him I have type 1 diabetes he had no idea about what that meant (nor did I when I was diagnosed). Now he seems to know about as much as I do. He told me the other day that he jumped on the computer after I told him and researched a bunch of information on it. It's a little silly, but it made me feel really good about him. :)

Drink of water anyone?

I left work around 11 last night, call my boy and headed home. We chatted while I walked the two blocks home and a bit more while I prepared for bed. I crawled into my nice warm bed at midnight and fell asleep almost instantaneously.

Around 2:30 am I woke up. I woke because I felt water splashing on me. Here is the situation I woke up to:

Me, kneeling in my bed (face towards my pillow), water glass in hand pouring water onto my mattress.

Let me just say I was very shocked and confused as to what the hell I was doing. I grabbed a ton of kleenexes and soaked up as much water as I could, threw a towel over the water drenched spot and went back to sleep (after checking to make sure my bs was okay at 102).

Now, this has never happened to me before. There were some instances in college of sleep walking, and I have had some very vivid dreams before, but who hasn't? Unfortunately I can't remember anything from any sort of dream I MUST have been having.

What a strange way to wake yourself up. I can only imagine what the scene would have been like if my boy were there and he woke to me pouring water on him. :)

Back to work

I'm back to work today. The past two weeks have been full of traveling, days off, great food, guests, and absolutely no routine. While I am NOT a happy camper to be back to work today, since almost everyone else I know has the day off, I am somewhat happy to get a little routine and normalness back into my life.

The 'betes has been tolerable during all the craziness though. Not Fabulous, but not horrible either. Good enough for me.

I have my next endocrinologist appointment in a few weeks. I'll be interested to see what my A1c is. I always think it's going to go up...

So, back to work for me. Back to normalcy. I think I'm really going to enjoy 2006. It's certainly starting out well... :)