Update & Random Stuff

Hello everyone!

I really appreciate all of your support to my last post. I can’t tell you how meaningful it is to me. I think the OC is the best thing I’ve found since my insulin pump. You all are the best. I wish I could find words that better expressed how much you all mean to me. Thank you.

My brain meds finally arrived last night. Thank the Lord above. While my irritability, emotional instability, and general mood have been feeling better, I have not been sleeping well at all. What is it about depression that makes you not able to sleep at night, and makes you want to sleep the day away instead? I also fight with restless legs at night – but only when my meds are out of whack. Does this happen to anyone else? It’s so disruptive and it really drives me crazy. But since I know that I’m back on my meds, it’s not worth going to any doc about just that alone. It will take a couple of weeks I think for the meds to kick in, but hopefully the restless legs at night will go away sooner than that (please).

To hopefully prevent my running out of meds again, I’m using a suggestion that Bernard made, and am entering those “eligible to reorder” dates into my calendar. It was a big mistake that I made, not remembering to re-order in time, and I feel that I paid dearly for it. Whatever I can do to prevent that from happening again, I’m all for it.

I’m using this down time to do a lot of reading. I don’t have a very good understanding of general nutrition and healthy eating practices, and I’m working to build that up a little bit. I feel it’s a real weak area in my self-care, and it impacts the entire package, not just my diabetes management. Improving this area of my life will benefit not only my diabetes, but my overall health. Sounds like a good deal to me.

I have been reading a couple of books by Dr. Diana Schwarzbein, and I think I like what she has to say. It’s all about balance – and I like the idea of balance. For the most part it is not any crazy diet, just balance. Sticking with natural stuff where possible (very hard in today’s world). Have any of you read work by her? What are your thoughts on it?

I know that I eat a very unbalanced diet, heavy on the carbs, no meat at all, and before you ask if I’m a vegetarian, I don’t eat many veggies (yet) either. So, learning more about what’s out there, things to try, I’m bound to find some things that I like. It’s all about building my food repertoire.

I had been, up until the last few weeks, trying one new food thing every week. Finding a few things here and there that I like, others that I can tolerate, and many things that will not make its way between my lips ever again. But – I did find new things! Each new thing I find adds many options to my diet. If I can keep on trying new things, and keep building that menu up, I’ll be in better dietary shape all the time.

And you want to know why I picked these books out of the sea of stuff that’s out there on health & weight loss? The bullet items on the cover caught my attention, then I flipped the book over to check out the price. $12.95 – and I thought that was really cheap. Maybe I’m just used to buying computery books at $50 a pop, but that low price made me feel that she was not out to rob people blind with some expensive fad thing. Who knows if it’s justified or not. Either way, it’s at least worth a read. What’s the worst thing that will happen? I might waste some time reading the books. Big. Flippin. Deal.

In other news, I participated in a big kayaking event a couple of weeks ago. It was a fundraising event, raising money to clean up the Mississippi River (which starts here in Minnesota). I have been interested in kayaking on the Mississippi for a long time, but it intimidated the heck out of me (you know, big river, moving water…). This fundraising event had 200 – 300 other boaters (canoes & kayaks), and a whole slew of safety and support boats. So, what better time to become more familiar with the river?

This picture (don’t laugh at my hat – the sun was cooking me…) was at the finish line – which was at, of all places, a big gravel pit. Let me tell you, I have never been happier to see a gravel pit in my life!!

The trip was two days long, and covered a total distance of 44 MILES! We covered 22 miles each day – all of it right through the Minneapolis & St. Paul area. The trip was well-organized with rest stops every few hours along the way. Sponsors donated great food and there was a lot of support from gracious volunteers all along the way. Let me tell you though, the end of the first day, I was beat. The trip was all downstream (going with the current), but there was such a strong headwind on the first day that if you stopped paddling to take a drink or take a picture, you started going upstream – backwards!! And the only way to get to the end was to paddle paddle paddle! Day 2 was great – wind at our backs, great weather. A wonderful experience all around.

I ran a very aggressive temp rate on both days, and didn’t have any low BG’s (a good thing when you’re paddling down a river). I did misjudge some of the meals/snacks at least twice, and shot up to the mid 300’s. That sucked, but I was able to take a little mini-bolus and get back down very quickly (isn’t it crazy how exercise super charges your insulin? It can get you in a bunch of trouble if it catches you off guard!).

I’d like to end this post with a couple of really great quotes from fellow OC bloggers that caught my attention shortly after my last post.

The first is from Kevin, over at parenthetic (diabetic):

“As I get closer and closer to my goal I’m definitely getting a much more healthy outlook on my life with diabetes and what my future with it will be like, and that’s better than any doughnut I’ve ever had.”

The second is from Zazzy’s site, over at Zazen in the moonlight:

“Be nice to diabetics, we deal with enough pricks already”

And if you’re not laughing at that, have someone check your pulse.

At least a smirk, c’mon now…