Waiting for… how to save a life

This weekend was the music festival that signals the beginning of summer around here. It is four days of an eclectic group of bands – everyone from Pitbull to Foreigner to Creed to Wiz Khalifa. Sunday included two bands I actually wanted to hear so I headed to the waterfront to enjoy the music and sunshine.

NEEDTOBREATHE

I’ll admit now the ice cream may have been a mistake. I didn’t bolus before I got the cone and then by the time that I did, the ice cream was melting ALL OVER my arm and dripping onto the street. I would have bailed on the whole thing if I hadn’t taken that time to bolus. I ended up having to buy a bottle of water just to clean myself up.

Fun fact: As a child, my parents would dress me up in my older brother’s clothes any time we went out for ice cream because I ended up wearing chocolate every time and my mom was tired of trying to get the stains out.

The Fray

Fireworks Finale

Between heading to The Bloggess’ book signing on Friday and the music festival Sunday, I didn’t get much done around my apartment – but I sure had fun!

Insulin. Action.

Whatever happened to predictability?

(and now you are singing the Full House theme song)

I have a “math brain” and have used it to test EVERY setting related to my diabetes. It helps me feel confident about my carb counts, correction factors, basal rates, and every other bit of math we are required to do in living with diabetes.

Except none of it was working on Sunday. I woke up riding my high alarm and stayed there with a few corrections. Then I started eating and ended up riding the blood glucose roller coaster all day. I stayed up way too late on Saturday night, so I knew I needed to get to bed early on Sunday night to be functional at work yesterday. Of course, that didn’t happen.

About an hour before (my already too late) bedtime, I had a snack with a well-thought out matching bolus (that works every other night). Keeping with the theme of the day, as I headed to bed my blood sugar was low. I just wanted to go to sleep so I purposefully over treated the low. I knew I needed to take insulin so I wouldn’t hear the high alarm once I was finally in REM. What am I supposed to do when I know I need insulin, but I don’t need insulin NOW, and I just want to sleep?

The combo bolus.

It’s not just for high fat foods anymore! It gave my body enough time to come up from the low blood sugar but the insulin went into action in enough time to prevent the rebound high.

My six hours of sleep were uninterrupted by my diabetes. Now I just have to figure out a way to go to bed earlier so I can get more than six hours in!

I didn’t think to take any pictures during my Sunday blood glucose battle, but if I’m talking about insulin action time – guess when I took insulin this day?

A spoonful of sugar… and beyond

The last time I was in the Magic Kingdom was the day before the official beginning of the Friends for Life conference. It was the first time I met Kim, Martin, Jess, Jacquie, Brian, C, and a bunch of other people with with diabetes. In that respect, it was a great day. Diabetes-wise, not as much fun. Heat, humidity, lots of walking, questionable food decisions, and there was more that one type of roller coaster going on that day. I’m not even going to mention the 30 or so minutes that Kim and I spent sitting on a bench trying not to revisit lunch.

Brian was in town this weekend so I made a return trip to the happiest place on earth. Thankfully our day in the park turned out significantly better. Other than a slight low from waiting too long for lunch, I stayed in range all day. I mean, my numbers were so good that I double-checked with the meter just to make sure it wasn’t an error.

I guess you really can do Disney with Diabetes (hat tip: Bennet).

898 miles

And worth every foot.

These are my friends

As I was packing for this trip and looking for a ride to the airport, quite a few people questioned why I would fly to Kansas in the middle of winter when I could enjoy the beautiful weather in South Florida.

The answer is quite simple. I wanted to see my friends.

You know those times when you laugh so hard that your stomach hurts and you can’t stop crying? This weekend, those times looks something like this.

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the past nine years of struggles and triumphs living with diabetes.

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Wow! I can’t believe all the comments on my post for the Stick Me Designs Deluxe clutch giveaway! It just shows how amazing her products are and how great they are for the diabetes community.

I put the comments into the random number generator, and Julie L. is the lucky winner. Please click on the envelope at the top right hand side of the page to e-mail me your shipping address and I will send the clutch on its way!

Zing!

First of all, I hope your weather has been as good as mine this winter. Otherwise, please just enjoy this picture.

Secondly, I had the best “dinner” a few nights ago. I was practicing for my award-winning lip sync performance through dinner, so I was desperate for food later that night.

There is a chain called Miller’s Ale House that claims to have world famous zingers. Well, the ~~plate~~ platter below had my zingers on it. I forgot to take the before picture, but I will next time – and there will be a next time.

As you may be able to see from the picture, my Zinger Mountain Melt was a platter of breaded boneless chicken wings, “piled over crispy fries and smothered with melted jack & cheddar cheeses, and bacon bits.” I picked honey mustard flavored chicken wings and asked for a side of honey mustard.

I had a horrible DexCom graph the rest of the night and I woke up ready to drink gallons of water but it was all completely worth it.

Stories to tell

I wish I could describe this weekend in a way that would make sense to anyone else. It was basically a gigantic competition at my work. And by gigantic I mean there were battles in Jenga, Chinese Checkers, soccer, football, Catch Phrase, ultimate frisbee, table tennis, a dance off, and just about any other game you can imagine.

I represented my team in Scrabble and brought home the victory – probably from all my Words with Friends practice. I also was supposed to play wiffle ball, but they ended up having enough players so was the ~~very important~~ first base coach instead. I took my job very seriously and led us to an undefeated record.

The culmination of the weekend is a lip sync competition. The amount of time, effort, and attention that go into these songs is just amazing and so are the results. I have a “blink and you’ll miss me” role in this video but am proud to say that this was the winning performance.

And I can almost guarantee you that you will never think of Switchfoot the same way again.

P.S. See also – the effects of adrenaline on glucose levels.

Saturday afternoon snapshots

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

~e.e. cummings

Up in the Trees

On Saturday morning I was at a local state park with some friends taking some pictures of them, when we sat down on a bench to take a break. It was a photo shoot to capture the last few weeks of her pregnancy so there were a lot of breaks.

While we were sitting there, I heard the leaves in the trees above us rustling. We were at the beach, so at first I thought it was just the ocean breeze. That is until I looked behind me…

Can you see it?

How about now?

At least it isn’t winter. Since these lovely creatures are not native to the area, it gets too cold for them and they end up falling out of the trees. I don’t think I’d recover if one of those things fell on me!

30 minutes or less?

If you don’t get your pizza in time, you don’t have to pay for it.

Do you think we can work out the same deal for our insulin?

In almost (exactly) 5 years of pumping, this has only happened about three or four times. But man – it is nothing but frustrating when you can’t figure out why.

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How was YOUR weekend?

Moments of Wonderful

…rather than a lifetime of nothing special. A blog about diabetes and other moments.

Tag Archives: weekend