Category Archives: diabetes

diabetes, printer, work

Excuses, Excuses, …

5 Comments

Time for me to continue being the bad summer blogger that I have become. If I were the type for confession, I’d have to begin with “Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last blog post…” I actually have been busy for the last week and the blog took the back seat to real life. In the words of that famous aphorism, “Shit happens!”

What have I been doing? Well … on the work side I am trying to keep everything on track for our upcoming 5K Run and Pet Walk. So I have been doing everything from artwork procurement to tee shirt manufacture. And of course still working on all the contracts to get our new facility constructed. And trying to get all the staff through FEMA certification and then CART certified so we can proceed with the plans for our expanding role in emergency preparation (with some of the staff definitely exhibiting a bit of resistance to getting trained). (I would never have believed the number of youngsters that have deep seated fears of web based learning.)

On the personal side, my annual medical tests a few weeks ago indicated that the beta cells in my pancreas finally gave up the ghost. Now, after decades of all sorts of drugs and hormones to trick my liver, pancreas, and muscle cells to make up for the ever decreasing number of beta cells (and thus less insulin production) to keep my blood glucose under control, I am a fully insulin dependent diabetic. The last week has been consumed with the process of adjusting dosages and timings for the daily injections of insulin, working with the fact that walking 6 miles can drop the blood glucose levels radically. Now my walks require a bit of forethought and preparation that was absent before.

The process has been interesting. Modern diabetic injection equipment uses such fine needles that the shots are painless.

It’s hard to convince yourself that it isn’t going to hurt to stick a needle in yourself, but after a few times with no pain, the mind begins to accept it. There are definite advantages to the insulin treatment compared to the oral drugs and hormones. The biggest plus from my point of view is that the chronic muscle pain has faded – which is great. The biggest drawback thus far is the number of finger sticks to test glucose level as we (my internist and I) try to get the base levels of insulin right. I’ll try to put together a post on the whole experience later on if anyone is interested.

I have been so busy that I haven’t had time to even open the box with the new printer that arrived via FedEx. I’ll wait to disclose more until I can do my thank you up right. I’ll leave you with the teaser that I won it on another blog. (Yeah, shocked me too.)

diabetes

Diabetes and Me (part 1)

5 Comments

(The original of this was eaten by the broken Blogger/Chrome interaction. You’d think that two Google products might at least be able to co-exist, wouldn’t you? Not in our lifetime.)

This post is inspired by melanie who commented on my remark about diabetes control in my Super Bowl Sunday post.

I come from a family of diabetics. My dad was one of six kids, five of whom were or are diabetic. The only one that wasn’t a diabetic died rather young so might have been in his later years if he had survived. As a result, I grew up seeing the consequences of both taking care and not taking care of the disease. I watched a beloved aunt die by pieces, losing a toe here, a finger there, a foot, then a leg, an arm, … until finally there were no more pieces that could be removed and she died. All due to the complications of poorly controlled diabetes. And I watched my dad and mom work hard to keep dad’s diabetes under close control. It came as no real surprise to me when I finally failed a glucose tolerance test and joined the diabetic crowd. Given my background, it had always been a matter of time. I decided early on to attempt close control, trying to keep my blood glucose levels as near to non-diabetic levels as I could.

For the uninitiated, blood glucose is measured in two ways today. One is a blood draw test that can determine levels looking back in time for roughly 6 months, called an A1c test. It is the gold standard test since you can’t lie and cheat to make it look good. It is reported in % with 6% being the goal (a non-diabetic will have an A1c between 5.5 and 6.0) The other test is the well known finger prick measurement that is immediate and reflects an estimate of the Mean Plasma Glucose (MPG) at that moment. It is measured in units of mg/dL in the US. An A1c of 6% corresponds roughly to 135 mg/dL MPG. A normal non-diabetic will have MPG readings between 90-105 mg/dL. Both tests are needed because an A1c test will not reflect the transient variations of a “brittle” diabetic but the MPG test will.

Each person reacts individually to high or low blood glucose. One of the hazards of poorly controlled diabetes is that the body stops reacting to highs and lows and a person can be in trouble with no sense of danger. Because I have managed pretty good control over the decades, I still have pretty much the same reactions today as I had when I was first diagnosed. I keep that control by a combination of exercise and drugs. Most diabetics will have to adopt an exercise regimen or they will not be able to control their blood glucose levels. And then over the years they will suffer all the complications.

I go through all of the above to get to this point: people don’t realize how deeply blood glucose levels and emotional state are connected. I learned early on that my emotional state was tied to my glucose level and not in pleasant ways. Each person reacts differently, but in my case:

  • blood glucose 90 to 155 mg/dL – emotions are normal and I feel normal.
  • blood glucose greater than 180 mg/dL – I am in a constant state of anger and diffuse rage. I am mad that the chair is holding me up and that the computer has keys and ….
  • blood glucose less than 70 mg/dL – everything is sad. I cry because there is an ad on TV and I cry because there isn’t an ad on TV, etc.

If my blood glucose drops below 60 mg/dL, things get real interesting real fast. First my body starts shutting down unneeded systems to make sure essential systems like the heart can keep working. For me, color vision processing disappears first. All of a sudden my world is black and white. Then mental acuity goes away as the brain starts shutting down. (The brain is one of the organs that consumes the most energy in a human) Finally, at around 30 mg/dL I pass out. I cannot recommend going through this. Once the mental acuity starts falling off, you cannot act to save yourself even if you dio catch on to what is happening. That is why I always tell people I am a diabetic. If I start acting strangely or if I do have a glucose drop out, the fact that someone knows what is going on may save my life.

Given all of the above, my goal has been to keep the glucose level in the 90-150 range and thus the A1c in the 6% to 6.4% range. I have to admit that I have had my blood glucose drop to the 30mg/dL level only once in my life and that was the result of a drug interaction. On the other hand, when I walk a round at one of the local golf courses and don’t eat a snack before starting, I can pretty much count on my color vision disappearing as I walk up the long hill on the 17th hole. Makes putting interesting. {*grin*}

So that’s the story. Any questions?