Diabetes is my Leprechaun

Dealing with Leprechauns is deceptively simple, in all the stories: you stare at them and they can't get away, and you end up getting their pot of gold.

For me, keeping good diabetes habits is the same way. I focus on them, integrate them into my life, keeping my eye on the diabetes pot of gold - a future without complications.

Then it seems like I blink and it's all scurrying away. My habits turn into mirror images - snacking on carbs instead of avoiding them, and I wonder if those gold coins are slipping through my fingers.

This is less a frustration rant, and more an acceptance that it's time to reel myself in again, and reach for a plate of cheese instead of a granola bar. Maybe I should cut my cheddar into little circles to remind me why it's so important...

Diabetic Moments at the Stampede

We went to the Calgary Stampede today - if you've never been or heard of it, it's sort of a combination rodeo/agricultural exhibit/carnival/state fair thing that is a huge deal every summer in Calgary. We all wear jeans and cowboy hats to work for a week, all the store windows are painted with cowboy designs and pancake breakfasts are scattered throughout the city.

If you'd asked me as a child I would probably have said it was my favorite 'holiday' after christmas! It was a lot of fun, though we just didn't have the energy to stay for the free mini concert at the end of the night - Hedley was playing, darn it!

Of course, I had a few diabetes moments. It's "Marathon Sunday" in Calgary today too. On our way to the stampede grounds, we passed the finish line for one of the marathons. I saw a couple of ladies with 'Team Diabetes' t-shirts who had completed the race, which was cool.

At the marketplace, admist the knife displays, three kinds of blenders, this amazingly weird water massage booth, and various sellers of cowboy hats, I found these cooling neckbands filled with some kind of polymer that soaks up water and keeps cool for (apparently) days. I bought one, and wondered if it's the same stuff that's in a Frio Wallet. Not that I have any insulin to keep cold, but it was my first thought.

Finally, after avoiding the fresh squeezed lemonade all day - I love lemonade but it's way too much sugar - we finally noticed a tiny line noting they had 'diabetic lemonade'. This turned out to be water, a fresh squeezed lemon and a packet of splenda. I enjoyed it - but I drink lemon water pretty frequently. It wasn't 'lemonde' to me, because it wasn't sweet (perhaps a couple more packets of splenda..), but I really appreciated that someone was making an effort to provide alternatives for those who can't have sugary drinks. And it was a very tasty lemon water.

Of course, it was an 'off plan' day in part - I don't think i found a single veggie in the grounds, though I'll admit to not looking that hard.. but normally I'll at least try to get veggies and dips if I can find them. I did have some okay beignets for breakfast, and half a really tasty smashed potatoe for lunch/supper. The smashed potatoe place is there every year - it's a regular baked potatoe, but they flatten it with a large wooden mallet before you get your toppings!

I'm soo tired now, so it's time for an early bed.

Another use for Lancets

My family is very big into board games. My younger brother collects them - he has over a hundred - , so on game days, we'll alternate between old favorites and something new. I'm not sure how we'd manage to pass an evening without board games, it's such a habit!

One game we played needed counters to keep track of part of the score. We pulled out the old coin bin to sort out pennies, nickels and dimes but needed more. So I went to the closet and pulled out a box of lancets.

Plenty of counters, and it just made me smile to see them in play.

Diabetic Fingerprints and Rainbows

"Are you bleeding?"

My husband shouted this down the hall at me today. I guess I kept bleeding after my last test, and left a few diabetic fingerprints on the fridge door. It's not the first time I've left a smear behind, but usually I notice! I'm glad it wasn't the work fridge - that might have been embarrassing.

I also saw a fabulous rainbow today! We get rain rarely enough that it's more of a treat than anything. But the rainbow was an extra treat. I haven't seen a two side rainbow before - we usually just get a half arch. This one was beautifully complete, amazingly bright, and had a shadow rainbow on one side. Just amazing!

Jugo Juice: I am not a carb hater / carb crazy!

We ordered from Jugo Juice for lunch today. I knew it would be a bit tricky because they're not exactly carb-lite. They do have a low-carb smoothie, but all whey protien and no yogurt is not my kind of smoothie.

So I check out the "grilled fare" section and pick out a club sandwich - 64 grams of carbs on some kind of (I think) white bread. I ate half, a reasonable amount of carbs. The description on the page irked me though. It started out with a line like

Don't let those carb-haters fool you!

or similar. I didn't write down the exact wording so I'll have to post an update with it from work tomorrow.

I'm not a carb hater. I don't tell non-diabetics not to eat carbs. I tell diabetics not to eat carbs that raise their blood sugars out of range.

But I love carbs. I didn't skip the 80 carb smoothies my coworkers were enjoying because I am a carb-hater, I skipped them because I didn't want to have a nasty carb overload reaction.

I did check out their website looking for the same content, but there's no mention of carb-haters there. Perhaps I got an old menu? On the website they simply talk about how their food is full of "healthy carbohydrate" on a page much more politically labeled "carb conscious".

They have a diabetes page that offers the following advice

People with diabetes are often very active in regulating their eating habits and medication – they are free to enjoy Jugo Juice smoothies, beverages and wraps.

Perhaps for some, but for me, 'regulating my eating habits' means not enjoying the smoothies and beverages.

Update!: The actual page reads as follows:

Don't let those carb crazies* steer you away from balanced meals. We've chosen our bread products carefully, with just the right amount of cabohydrates and fiber. Moderate amounts of breads and grains are an important part of a well -balanced diet (and frankly, so satisfying!).

*carb crazies: folks that consider all carbohydrates evil.

I'm still not very impressed. Yes, going no-carb is unhealthly, but there's a lot of debate on what counts as a healthy level.

Plus the wholes thing seems silly - 40-60 carbs for a fast food sandwich isn't so bad, relatively speaking. So why make such a big deal over the fact they are offering no reduced carb offerings? There is no one-size-fits-all 'just the right amount' of carb. I don't like opening a page, looking for something that fits my diet, and seeing 'carb crazies' in the first sentence, no matter how they qualify it.

Ah well, life is full of these annoyances.

Spontaneous Great Number

I hit 4.7 (84.6) today for the first time in months. I was really surprised to see the number - I haven't been able to get past 5.5 (99) since March. I love seeing this number because it's in the non-diabetic range. It's a really, really, normal number.

I'd love to be able to see this number pre-meals all the time. If this was sustainable, repeatable, then I'd feel like I was actually reducing my insulin resistance.

Of course, I've spent some time trying to see if I can figure out what the magic combination was today. No caffeine? Different breakfasts this week? Lack of sleep? I really have no idea.

I'm going to enjoy it for today.

Testing At Work

I decided to start being a little less discrete about testing at work. I'm not making a big statement about it, but I'm not leaving the room to do it. If I'm in the middle of a test and someone comes up, I don't stop. We've got a new part-time staff member sitting right beside me, and he's watched me test a couple times now. I usually do it in my lap but it's pretty obvious to the people on either side of me.

I've gotten a few surprised looks, but no one has said anything. I'll admit that one complaint and I might have gone back to trying to be incredibly discreet about it, but it doesn' t look like it's going to be a problem.

I'm more surprised that I haven't gotten any questions. I think most people in the office know I have diabetes or prediabetes. Some of them hear more about it from me than others, but I'm always willing to talk about it. I think in the long run, being more open will make it easier to manage, because I can just pull out my meter and test when I need to without disrupting my work flow a lot.

Living with a Carbavore

My husband is adopted so we don't know his medical history. We're pretty sure there isn't any diabetes in though - he eats a ton of carb and never has elevated sugars. He's from the south - Georgia, and was raised always having a couple of starches with his meals. Supper is usually not complete without some kind of bread - in addition to potatoes and rice.

It means we have a lot of carbs around the house. Potato chips, bread and buns, ice cream and crackers. Sometimes it is a lot of temptation, but we work it out. We share a lot, so that I can have a little bit of something, and he'll finish it off. That works great for cinnamon buns. Or he'll buy things in flavors I just won't go near, like smoky bbq chips. It's pretty automatic to him now to not give me carbs or to give me a small portion when he's putting together our plates. He knows how many mini potatoes (4), how much rice (1/4 cup) and how much bread (1 slice) to give me on the nights I'm having some.

I'm still in charge of what and how much I eat of course, and we've got a good rhythmn of checking in with each other on that. There are days I wish I could just pass it all on to him of course, but I need to be responsible for my own health.

All in all it works pretty well.

I've got it pretty good

There's an excellent review of Bloodless testing and other treatment advances over at Diabetes Mine. I've got to hope that with all the advances in planning and design, at least one will make it to the market. It'll help with a lot of the little annoyances of life.

I'll admit though, as a pre-diabetic I have it pretty easy. I can -and do- coast along with minor testing. As long as I keep a pretty close eye on my carb intake and remember to take my metformin, I do okay. I don't test enough to get permanent scars and marks on my finger tips. I don't have serious highs or lows.

Somehow these past few days it's been -wonderfully- easy for me. I've not been stressing on choices, being more aware of what I'm eating, and in the mood to do a little exercise.

Don't know how long this mood will last, but I'm enjoying it.

Back on Track

Was much better with food today - didn't do post meal checks, but I was always in the 5's on my pre-meal so I couldn't have been doing bad. Nixed a ton of snacks as well.

Also went walking for the first time in over a week, so I'm back on the exercise wagon. I unfortunately overdid though, so I'm exhaustedly headed for an early bed.

Now I just need to figure out how to get more veggies and I'm really rocking.

I feel good. A few days of not the best control isn't the end of the world. Getting back in saddle is waht matters.

Busy Days and Bad Numbers

We've an imminent deadline at work, and it's been 12 hour days trying to make it. As the week has gone on, I've been eating more and more meals at work. It's great that work orders in lunch and buys groceries for us, but the convenience food that's often at hand is not good for my sugars.

Pizza, granola bars, toast, waffles - all right there and easy to eat one handed without stopping work. Plus I've been tending to reward myself when we hit a big milestone - a cookie here, a cupcake there, dark chocolate now and then.

I didn't realize how mindlessly I've been eating the last couple of days until I hit a blood sugar of 8.5 today - 153. For me, that's really high - I'm usually never over 7 (126) at the most - and I've been seeing that number more than I've wanted to in the last week too. I have a feeling I've been higher than that too - I haven't exactly been testing at an hour and a half after a meal. Sometimes I've been hard pressed to even remember when I last ate.

It's so easy to get into bad habits and ignore what you're eating when you're distracted and busy. Tomorrow I'm going to be trying to pay more attention and get back into a normal eating cycle. Those high numbers are not going to be sticking around.

Caffeine Weirdness

I love my coffee in the mornings. I drink it black for a few weeks, then switch to cream and splenda, then drift back to black. We've got a pod coffee machine at work, so fresh and tasty coffee is always available. I love pod coffee machines - I have one at home as well - because even I cannot screw up coffee when using them.

Since I've been fighting this cold - almost gone, thank goodness - I've had to swear off caffeine. For some reason one cup of coffee makes me jittery for hours right now! I'm used to being the kind of person who can drink a cup of coffee and go to bed an hour later, so this sudden overreaction to caffeine is really annoying.

Hopefully as the cold departs, the caffeine reaction will too. I'll stick to decaf until then.

This has to be the weirdest side affect for a cold I have ever had.

Swedish Nutrional Labels

I'm pretty used to reading Canadian/American nutritional labels. Reading ones from other countries throws me now and then. I ran across these 'My Smoothie' juice boxes from Sweden and did a quick skim of the label - 12.7 carbs! Huzzah! Juice I could enjoy!

I really should have considered how they managed to put in all that fruit with so few carbs, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. When I went to drink it, I did a second check of the label. And noticed a tiny little detail I'd missed on the first round. The label reads "Nutrition per" in three languages, then adds "100 ml". The box was 250 ml, so a serving was less than half a box.

I'm extra careful with liquids because they cause such dramatic spikes. So I dutifully measured out 100 ml, as shown below. The juice isn't bad - it'd be better mixed with some yogurt for a proper (in my eyes) smoothie taste. But I really need to remember to check foreign labels a little more carefully in future. It's small packages that cause me the most trouble - I can't help assuming that entire container is a serving.

And This Bowl is Just Right

One way I keep my portion sizes under control is to have different sized bowls for different foods. Finishing an entire bowl of anything is satisfying, even if it's a small bowl, and it's easier to resist going back for seconds. It also makes it easy if my husband is putting together a snack - he knows if I ask for a 'bowlfull' to go for the small bowl. We've gotten most of our small bowls in Chinatown - the stores often have a selection of small rice and condiment bowls for reasonable prices. I find them a good size for cereal and servings of fruit, as they hold about a cup. I'll fill them to the brim with berries, and half full for cereal.

The tiny 'ice cream' bowls are actually teacups, and hold single small scoop of ice cream or pudding. Having a tiny cup makes me eat it slower and reminds me to savor the flavor. It was a bit of an adjustment - and every so often I'll upgrade to a larger size - but it really does help re-enforce moderation in sweets and carb heavy foods.

The big bowls are regular salad/soup bowls, and I try to make sure I'm not using them for anything but veggies.

I do this with glasses as well. The only time I use a large glass is if I'm drinking water, crystal light or some other sugar free beverage.

Anything carb heavy like milk or juice gets a small glass, usually only half filled. We found the small glasses in a six pack at the dollar store, so they were really inexpensive.

I find it really tedious to pull out the scale or the measuring cups every time we eat, so having our serving dishes in the appropriate sizes really helps.

The only thing I don't use smaller things for is plates: For those I just try to make sure half the plate is covered with veggies, though I'm not always successful.

Offline Diabetes

Sometimes I wish everyone diabetic wore a button. I know there are many diabetics around me, but I rarely meet them offline. Those I have met with diabetes, including my stepmother, aren't really interested in talking about it. It's a closed door. I tend to share it, though I don't (I hope) ram it down people's throats.

Meter comparisons, concerns about doctors, venting about daily stress, any acknowledgment of the day to day frustrations and successes.. these only exist for me online. I read a lot of blogs, soaking up those other experiences.

When I go out, now and then, I watch the people around me. Perhaps someone will pull out a meter or I'll see a pump. I don't know that I'd do anything if I did. I'm far to shy to approach a stranger, and diabetes can be very personal. I think perhaps a great number of people don't want to discuss it. Sharing a disease doesn't make you friends or acquaintances. Given the variability of diabetes, their experience could be far removed from now.

But it would be nice to not be the only diabetic in the room all the time. To have a face to face conversation about it. I'll get there, sooner or later.

Diabetes Made Visible

Diabetes Made Visible is a really fabulous project. Hosted on flickr, it's a repository of photos showing how diabetes affects daily life. The photos are a mix of portraits, graphs and charts, artwork, food and technology shots. It's incredibly evocative to see these images and to read the commentary that accompanies them.

Seeing a tiny hand with blood testing pinpricks, or a bag full of supplies that someone can't leave the house without really enforces the effects this disease has on every day life. Or simply someone sharing a new food they've found they can eat, or those horrible/great numbers.

I feel a great connection to these images too. That person uses the same meter as me! She knows what it's like to prick your finger too! I'm not the only one who misses cookies or distrusts sugar alcohol.

It's also reassuring. Hey. This person has a smile while they test. That person has transformed a wasteland of needles or lancets into beautiful art. Despite it all, Life is good.

My favorite is this piece. What's yours?

Eating Your Meter

I have to admit, every time I read about 'eating your meter', I have this image in my head.

Eating your meter refers to checking your meter after each meal you eat, and removing or reducing the quantities of the foods that run your sugars too high.

It's a good technique for keeping sugars in range - I know from this that a personal size, multigrain crust pizza doesn't do much damage to my sugars, but a serving of fries does.

Sating the Cravings

A post at Ride to Remedy got me thinking today.

Someone very helpfully brought in a bunch of lindt easter bunnies at work. They were on sale after easter and I ate way more than I should have. I've been wondering what happened to all my willpower, and I think he really hit the nail on the head here.

I used to pack a few pieces of chocolate in my lunch every day. Just a few Dark Chocolate Pastilles - a tiny amount of carbs, but I had the taste of chocolate whenever I wanted. I'd go weeks without eating any, but as soon as that craving came back, I could nip it in the bud.

Since I started my new job in January, I've stopped having chocolate on hand. Now, when I do get chocolate, it is so much harder to resist. I think it's time to start a chocolate stash at work again.

It's amazing how easy it is to forget a lesson once you've learned it. Having small amounts of stuff -often- works for me. If I know I can have a couple bites of chocolate every day, then I don't even look at the chocolate bar rack. If I can steal a few fries from my coworkers every few days, then I can walk by New York Fries without a blink.

Today we got cheese bread (one of my personal irresistibles) in the work grocery delivery. I had a slice. Soooooo tasty! But I was able to resist the second. I'll have it tomorrow. It's so much easier to put something off than to deny it altogether. After all, it's not saying "NEVER" it's just saying "Patience".

I must remember this rule!

Guilt, Guilt, Guilt

Am I a bad diabetic? Probably. I've tested once in the past few weeks. I've eaten carbs til I felt sick (admittedly, that doesn't take too much). I haven't checked my weight in a few weeks, so I have no idea if I've been doing any damage to those holiday pounds. I'm thinking about my diabetes, but not deeply. I'm not stressing it, I'm not logging it, I'm not always listening to the little voice saying 'I should' or 'I should not'.

Quite honestly, I put the whole darn thing on the back burner for large amounts of time. I do the basics. I eat something fiber-filled for breakfast (oatmeal/oat bran). I don't drink sugary drinks (including juice!). I do my once a week workout (usually). I try to not binge on the carbs and ask work to stock some low carb snacks.

But I cheat. And I don't test to make sure I'm really making the best choices. And I ignore the nagging little voice that tells me I should be paying more attention and doing a better job. After all, it's my body, my health, my future.

I feel like I'm the only one struggling sometimes. As if there's this great ocean of people who do what I do because they don't know any better. But because I do read up, and I do consider myself educated, I should be able to 'fix' all these bad habits and cravings and avoidances. I can read uncounted blogs about people who handle it just fine, thank you every single day. If they can do it and more, why can't I? Am I just lazy? Stupid? Self Destructive? It's been two and a half years now. I should have the hang of this, shouldn't I?

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

The Holy Grail

Okay, right, a cure is the real holy grail. But a cure is going to take time, and money, and skill, and probably a zillion more mice. They're getting really good at curing mice these days.

But for my day to day life? The holy grail is blood sugar testing without blood. No pricks. No way to skip out of tests because I 'forgot' my meter or I'm nearly out of strips. No stopping what I'm doing to go to the washroom to test - in case someone in the office doesn't like seeing blood. Fingers than don't get sore. Of course, I'd like some consistency and predictability, and an A1C that always matches what my meter's telling me too.

But I'll settle (for now) for losing the blood. There's a new non-invasive blood measuring device I just read about, the Echo meter. Early tests are positive. It's the sort of thing I take with a grain of salt. Early tests new stuff always seems positive, or it would never make the news. And then there's the whole "We need millions more dollar to develop this" gotcha.

If I ever win the lottery, I'm donating to this kind of research. Devices and technology that improve our day to day. Yes, we need a cure. But we also need quality of life.