I completely forgot my diabetes anniversary. January 24th. Two weeks ago. To be fair, I’ve been very busy lately with work and other things (more on that later), but it’s kind of surprising that it slipped right by. This was a big one too…18 years…my diabetes can buy cigarettes now! (Not that it should, of course.)

I discovered this not by reviewing my calendar (note to self. calendar - noun: a place to record dates of important occasions that you might want to remember), but by yesterday’s occurrence of the Super Bowl. You see, it was on the weekend of the Super Bowl 18 years ago that Type 1 diabetes forced its way into my life. Everything started off Friday morning at my pediatrician’s office. My mom had brought me in after several days of those typical symptoms: frequent urination, unquenchable thirst, constant tiredness. A quick blood test at the doctor was all it took to determine that the old pancreas was on its last legs (Or beta cells. Whatever.). Honestly, I don’t really remember what happened after that. The rest of the day was a whirlwind of doctors, dieticians, new medicines, long-term complication threats…all things that were completely mind-blowing to a 12 year old boy.

I’m not sure of the protocol nowadays, but the standard procedure back then for a newly diagnosed juvenile diabetic was to be admitted for a few days in the hospital. I suppose this way the doctors could try to get things under control and familiarize you with the injection and testing routine, before throwing you into the deep end of the pool, so to speak. Again, I don’t remember a lot of details about that weekend, but I do remember Sunday evening pretty well. My parents had both gone home for some rest, as visiting hours were over and they had been with me in the hospital most of the weekend. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in the hospital after hours, so I enjoyed my carefully portioned meal and browsed the channel lineup using the combination TV remote/nurse call button/bed adjusting controller. Even though I wasn’t a huge football fan, I ended up watching the Super Bowl, because well, it’s the Super Bowl. It’s just what you do. I remember that the Redskins and the Bills played, but my mind was still swirling with so many questions and concerns that I doubt I really paid much attention to the game. That is the first time in my life I remember feeling so alone…all of the food exchange and regimented injection schedule talk had subsided, and it was just me and my new companion in that room. No doctors, no family, just me.

I’ll be the first to admit things have vastly improved in the past 18 years. I’ve become more comfortable with the cards I’ve been dealt, and the technological and medicinal advances have made things a thousand times easier. Still, every year at this time, amidst all the commercials and halftime shows (oh, and football), I think of that hospital room and the half-size can of Diet Shasta, and I look at how my life has been changed by that Super Bowl weekend 18 years ago.

Oh, and Diet Shasta? The WORST diet drink I have ever tasted. I’m still wondering if that was some sort of test.

You know how rednecks usually have that worn spot in their jeans from where their can of Skoal sits in the same pocket every day? No? Well here is a picture for those of you city folk unfamiliar with this phenomenon:

Pretty trashy, huh? Yeah, I thought so too, until I was looking through some pictures on Facebook recently and noticed that I have a similar outline in my jeans. Not from smokeless tobacco, or any other hip accessory…no, mine is from an insulin pump. Pretty sweet, huh?

So yeah. The chicks at the chronic disease rodeo are totally going to dig this.

P.S. Yes, I do realize the irony of mocking rednecks in the same post where there’s a picture of me holding a Budweiser thermometer and a giant fish-pillow. It was one of those white elephant gift exchanges, okay? This was actually one of the classier gifts.

Editor’s Note: This is probably the only time men’s asses will be featured in a post here. I hope.

So I did something really stupid the other day. No, not writing “2009″ instead of “2010″…that’s going to be a problem until at least March. Or that time that I responded to myself on Twitter. Granted, those were not my brightest moments, but they’re hardly worthy of a blog post.

Anyway, so we decided to go to a movie on New Year’s Eve (Sherlock Holmes…I recommend it, BTW). Since it was a 7:00 movie and we hadn’t eaten dinner, we just had a snack of cheese and crackers before we left, saving room for popcorn at the movies (the latter being a carb-counting challenge in itself, but not part of today’s blogging agenda). Back to the story. So we’re sitting about an hour into the movie, and I start to feel like someone had replaced my blood with corn syrup. I thought if anything, I had overestimated the dosage for the popcorn, so I couldn’t figure out why my blood sugar would be high. I pulled out my pump to take a quick glance at the CGM reading just to be sure. It was around 200mg/dl if I remember correctly. After placing the pump back in my pocket, I retrieved my meter from my wife’s purse (sure is nice to have someone to lug all of my supplies around!) to double check, as I was on day 7 of that sensor and it hadn’t been doing so well on the latest cycle. After fumbling for a minute in the darkness with the meter and auxilary lighting supply (a.k.a. iPhone), I got confirmation that something was off…309mg/dl off, to be exact. Reaching back into my pocket for the pump, I happened to brush past my infusion site, which felt smaller and sharp-edgier than usual. After a brief pat-down, I realized that there was an important component missing from the aforementioned infusion site…namely, the part with the tubing that supplies that lovely protein that we depend on. Well that makes sense. But when did it become disconnected? Oh, right. I changed pants a couple of hours ago. You know, before we had cheese and crackers. And sweet, buttery popcorn. So it’s been a few hours since I’ve had ANY insulin. No basals, no bolus to cover either of my snacks, nothing. Now comes the hard part…figuring out how much to bolus to bring things back under control. Of course the pump didn’t want to give me anything, considering how much active insulin I had on board (nevermind that it had actively soaked itself into the fibers of my jeans), and I had no idea how much things were going to keep rising. The initial bolus brought things back into a more acceptable range, but it took a few follow-ups to get things just right. Not the end of the world, but still pretty frustrating that I forgot to do something so important.

Some things about diabetes are pretty tough to figure out, even after years of experience. On the other hand, making sure the insulin actually gets into your body, is quite elementary, my dear Thompson.

Okay, not really Waldo, but my CareLink USB upload device. I swear I spend more time looking for that thing than I do actually using it. I really need to find a consistent place to keep it. The past couple of times, it has ended up under a picture frame on one of our end tables. My wife said this evening that “that’s where it stays!”. That’s not really where it stays, it just so happens that the space underneath that picture frame is just wide enough for the little fella to slide under there, yet the frame is just wide enough that I can’t see it poking out when it’s there. I just don’t know where to put it. I don’t want to store it with the rest of my diabetes supplies, because I need a computer when I use it, and I never have a computer near there. I suppose I could keep it in the basket with all of my iPod cables and such, but I’m afraid it would sink to the bottom and become lost yet again. I just don’t know. Fellow CareLink users, where do you keep yours?

Unrelated “Where’s Waldo” trivia that I learned recently:

- Apparently there’s a movie in development based on the little red and white dude. How they’re going to scrape a plot out of that, I have no idea. Hey, maybe they can just turn it into a 1.5 hour GM commercial like they did with Transformers.

- It seems that everywhere else, it’s known as “Where’s Wally?”, he’s only called “Waldo” in the U.S…which brings to mind a whole host of other questions. Okay, I can really only think of 1 question: Was there already a guy in the U.S. named Wally that got lost all of the time?

This place needs a little light-heartedness, so I thought instead of complaining about injuries, we’d rock a little Meme Monday action…thanks to Hannah (and by proxy, Lee Ann) for the inspiration. If you’re in need of a blog post, feel free to snatch (tee hee) this one for your own use.

1. Do you like bleu cheese? Not particularly. If I order buffalo wings and the restaurant decides that bleu cheese dressing is a better accompaniment than ranch, I can deal with it, but I’m not going to go out of my way to get it.

2. Have you ever smoked? Like regularly, or ever? I have the occasional cigar, but that’s about it.

3. Do you own a gun? Several. But I only like to shoot non-living things (you know, like targets). I don’t really have much of a desire to go hunting, or to shoot people (unless they mean me harm).

4. Favorite type of Food? Is bacon a type of food? How about “slightly floppy” bacon? That is a type of bacon, and bacon is definitely a food. I think that counts.

5. Favorite type of music? I like Hannah’s answer of “the good type”. Really, it depends on my mood. I have what I like to think is a pretty diverse catalogue. Right now, my favorite type is Pearl Jam on Austin City Limits, because I’m watching it, and it is freaking awesome.

6. What do you think of hot dogs? Fucking love them. Just had one for dinner, actually.

7. Favorite Christmas movie? Muppet Christmas Carol, hands down.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Lately, coffee. Although if it’s really hot, I’ll go with a diet soda. As long as it has caffeine, I’m good.

9. Can you do push ups? A few. The tendons in my elbows start popping after a while, so I prefer not to.

10. What’s your favorite piece of jewelry? My wedding ring. It pretty much never comes off.

11. Favorite hobby? Listening to music. I have other hobbies, but I usually listen to music while doing them.

12. Do you have A. D. D.? I suppose my wife would drive if I was really drunk, but it’s not her full-time occupation. (see what I did there?)

13. Do you wear glasses/contacts? I wear sunglasses…

14. Middle name? Starr (yes, really.)

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment: I could really use another pillow. Eddie Vedder has an awesome voice. Stop head-butting me, stupid cat.

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink: Okay, but that seems silly since they’re gone now. But since you asked, Samuel, Lenny, and Wolfgang. Can I anthropomorphize anything else for you?

17. Current worry? I’m really quite concerned our TV will die before Thanksgiving. It’s not looking good. And you do not want to be in this house during the Macy’s parade without a functioning television.

18. Current hate right now? Don’t really have one, but I’m still a little irritated at this really close-minded bumper sticker I saw earlier.

19. Favorite place to be? Geographically, I would say Seattle. But only if Meredith is there with me.

20. How did you bring in the new year? I don’t really remember, but I think I was asleep.

21. Someplace you’d like to go? Big Sur. I was so close a few weeks ago, but just didn’t have time.

22. Name three people who will complete this. Lee Ann, Hannah, and Harry…and hopefully some of their friends.

23. Do you own slippers? Sort of. I have some canvas Crocs that walk a fine line between slipper and shoe, but I think they’re more “shoe”.

24. What color shirt are you wearing? Red.

25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? I’ve never tried them, but they sound like they might get hot.

26. Can you whistle? I can, but I actually do better whistling inward as opposed to your conventional outward whistle.

27. Where are you now? Couch? House? Cornelius? North Carolina? Turducken?

28. Would you be a pirate? Probably not. I don’t have a clever response to this, I just don’t think I would do it.

29. What songs do you sing in the shower? You never really know what’s going to come out, but I sing in the shower almost every day. Often they’re very strange songs, and I wonder why I’m thinking of them so early in the morning.

30. Favorite Girl’s Name? Meredith. (that’s the name of my favorite girl, at least.)

31. Favorite boy’s name? Julian.

32. What is in your pocket right now? An insulin pump, kleenex, and a receipt from lunch.

33. Last thing that made you laugh? This Geico commercial.

34. What vehicle do you drive? An F-150 Supercrew…which is nice to have, but the longer commute to my new job is getting expensive.

35. Worst injury you’ve ever had? I think something might be wrong with my pancreas…

36. Do you love where you live? I do. I’d like a larger house, but I really don’t want to move away from this area…unless it’s to Seattle.

37. How many TVs do you have in your house? 5, but only 3 that are used regularly, and as previously mentioned, one of them is dying.

38. How many computers do you have in your house? 3 that are used regularly, plus a couple of old laptops that we’re still holding on to for some reason.

39. If you changed your job, what would it be? I guess “Customer Account Manager”, since I just did, and that is my new job.

40. If you were granted three wishes, what would they be? A cure for diabetes, healthy children, and a world without hate. (cheesy, I know. But it would be really nice.)

Tap…tap…is this thing still on???

Hey everybody. So things haven’t really gone as I’d hoped since the last post. Despite resting, icing, and everything, my hip pain really hasn’t gotten much better. I’ve pretty much had to put the marathon plans on hold, since I can’t run more than a half mile without the pain forcing me to stop. It’s very disappointing, but it got to a point where I had to look at things realistically and decide that trying to go forward with the training schedule just wasn’t going to happen.

Also, while knowing the cause of the pain may not have affected the outcome, it would be really nice to know exactly what’s wrong. Unfortunately, since I just changed jobs, I don’t have health insurance for the month of November, and thus can not go to the doctor for a diagnosis. I’m sure it’s one of the many overuse injuries that runners are prone to, but I honestly have no idea which one. Really, it doesn’t matter though, as the treatment for all of them is pretty much the same: rest and reduced training.

I’m now halfway through a self-imposed 2 week rest/recovery period. I felt like before I would take a few days off then run again and re-irritate the injury, so I thought it might be best to stay completely off it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. To be honest, it really sucks. Running 30+ miles a week is hard, but NOT running is even harder. I see people running, and I just get jealous of them. I’m going to miss the Thanksgiving day Turkey Trot this week, which has been a tradition in our household the past few years. And due to the lack of exercise, my blood sugars have been complete crap lately. Not to mention the $85 marathon registration fee that’s now down the drain…

I’m really hoping that the 2 weeks off will allow things to heal and I’ll be able to start running again after Thanksgiving. If not, at least by then I’ll be able to go to the doctor and find out exactly what the problem is. At least there are plenty of Spring marathons, so if things get better soon, I may be able to get on track for one of those. We’ll see!

Word on the street is that today is d-blog day. So I guess that means I should write on this blog. Perhaps even about the ‘betes. I haven’t really had much time for blogging, what with the new job and related travel and such. I’d like to say it’s also because of the marathon training, but unfortunately I’ve been battling a hip/knee injury so it feels like forever since I’ve been on a “good” run. Come to think of it, the last good run I had was also the last time I blogged.

Also part of the lack of blogging is that I’ve been a little depressed lately as a result of the injury. I feel like I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am now, and yet my body has suddenly decided to hold me back. Not all that unlike diabetes, really. Sometimes you work really hard to achieve really tight control, and something completely unexpected (a bad infusion site, infection, etc.) happens that makes everything up to that point seem like wasted effort. The only thing you can really do is to deal with whatever comes up and move on. Sometimes that means feeling like crap for an entire day after a stubborn midnight high, and sometimes it means having to stop training, ice the pain, and deal with some uncomfortable runs until things (hopefully) get better. In the meantime I’m trying to stay focused on the goal of running 26.2 miles on December 12th, just like I’m focused on avoiding diabetes-related complications down the road. Will I actually achieve either of those goals? I honestly don’t know, but I’m still hoping for the best…

Sorry for the downer of a post. I’ll see if I can find that witty sarcastic guy that normally writes here and get him to scribble something down.

This morning, I ran longer than I ever have in my entire life. And I felt pretty darn good. On top of that, my blood sugars were awesome the whole time! I needed that, because neither the running or the blood sugars have been doing that well lately.
Now, we’re heading up to Maryland for the weekend for a college friend’s wedding. I think Meredith may be driving this time…my legs have done enough today. Hope you guys have a great weekend!

Like any normal person, I usually can’t wait for the weekend. It’s normally a great time to recover from the work week and do things that I want to do on my own schedule. This weekend has been pretty freaking exhausting though. Just a rundown of what I’ve done in the past 3 days:

Friday: Nothing big, just quit the only job I’ve had since I graduated college. It really didn’t “hit” me until Friday afternoon when I was packing up my desk and saying goodbye to all of my work friends. I know I’ll still get to see them, but the fact that they won’t be around every day to exchange sarcastic comments and small talk sort of sucks a little. I think I’ve made the right decision though, and am looking forward to the new job. Oh, and for my last lunch, we went out for a boatload of sushi. Quite literally:

Saturday: Got up at 6am to get ready for the Lungstrong 15k. Since this race was actually very close to my house, I ran to/from the race as well in order to rack up the mileage I was supposed to do for my training (Note: the run there was much easier than the run back). I was actually very pleased with my result, even though it was by no means blazing fast. I kept a 9:56 per mile pace, which I feel pretty good about. I was pretty busy the rest of the day, so I tried to take a nap before lunch, but that didn’t work out. I guess I was still on my runner’s high? Yeah, let’s go with that.

Sunday: We went to IKEA to pick up some new furniture for our living room. We thought we had everything figured out based on our previous “scouting” trips, but we still took forever to decide. Finally made it home with everything, did some minor assembly, and loaded up the old couch/chair/ottoman and took those to Goodwill. I would show pictures, but I don’t really want to get up and I’m not really sure where the camera is, so that’ll just have to wait.

Luckily, I’ve decided to take the next week off to decompress for a bit before I start the new job. I’m looking forward to being able to relax a bit. I’ve got several projects planned, 32 total miles to run, and a wedding in MD this weekend, but it can’t be any more exhausting than the past 3 days. You stay classy, blog readers!

My workout today got me thinking. Of course, before we get too far into this, I should explain…according to the training plan, today’s workout was supposed to be an easy 3 mile run. However, for the sake of our neighbors’ property values, it instead consisted of mowing .27 acres of grass and edging waaay too much sidewalk (one of the pitfalls of having a corner lot).

Anyway, back to why I was thinking. As far as I can remember, every time I’ve mowed our lawn, my blood sugar has gone low. I’ve tried temporary basal rates, having a pre-mow snack, I’ve even taken the pump completely off and still gone low. The only logical entertaining explanation is that yard work is a cure for diabetes. Since I pretty much know nothing about chemistry and the biological sciences, I’ve compiled a list of possible “cures” that I’ve encountered over the years. Those include:

1. Yard Work – I know. I already discussed it. But this is my list.
2. Swimming – Always makes me go low. The pump is pretty much always off, but it still happens. I suppose it’s possible that I’m just so bad at swimming that I expend a ton of energy just trying not to die, but I like to think the water has magical powers. You know, like in Signs where the aliens didn’t like water because it made their skin sizzle? Something like that.
3. Woodworking – It’s a hobby of mine. I’m not great at it, but I’ve managed to build a few pieces of decent-looking furniture. But I think every time I get a chance to work on a project in the workshop/garage, I end up going low. Low blood sugar and power tools? Not a good combination.

Okay, so it was a pretty short list, but I’m sure there are others. What did we learn? Apparently that I wasted 5 years of college. I could have become a landscaper or carpenter and potentially cured my disease. Instead, I paid thousands of dollars for an education, so I could get an air-conditioned office job and pay for health benefits to keep the diabetes train a-rollin’.

What potential cures have you guys discovered? Feel free to leave a comment and share. If you need me, I’ll be in the pool treading water and eating cupcakes.