post-christmas

i hope you all had a great christmas! (if you celebrate. if not, i hope you had a nice weekend.) i got some lovely christmas cards some from friends in the DOC that i enjoyed - they're on my fridge! thanks to you all!

i had a great holiday weekend, and i'm enjoying a nice little staycation this week. 

i had my handy dexcom with me this year, so for all the celebrations, i was keeping an eye on what my blood sugar was doing as i devoured the treats of the season. 

pretty much everything went as usual, i bolused for what i ate, and watched the graph climb and drop. i actually did really well on christmas day, i didn't go over 200 after my meal ... so when i decided i would indulge and have one of my aunt's delicious chocolate covered rice crispy treats (and bolused of course), i was pissed as i watched the graph shoot up with a straigh arrow. sigh. lesson learned. but it was totally worth it. 

hope you all have a great new year! 

[almost] wordless wednesday

this, and many other boxes and containers of cookies and sweets, 

tempt me at work every day this time of year. 

(and of course i give in sometimes.)

guest posting

today i'm guest posting over at america's dietitians.

you should stop by and check it out. :)

hope everyone is ready for christmas! i can't WAIT! my favorite holiday of the year.

JDRF walk recap 2011

last night was the awards dinner for the jdrf greater louisville walk to cure diabetes. we hadn't been before, and last year my team and i won some awards and wanted to go this year. 


mom, dad and my friend becca went with me, and it was a fun little hour. met some new people, ate some good food, got some awards and had these ADORABLE sneaker cookies that were DELICIOUS.


and, becca was adopted into our family for the night with our last name on her name tag. :) 

the totals are in!


i raised $1,255 and received a golden sneaker award for fundraising excellence and my team raised $2,497 and received the bronze achievement award for fundraising! WOO HOO!! 

thank you SO MUCH to everyone who donated, walked, came to the fundraising activity, asked their family and friends for donations, listened to me asking you to donate for months; i couldn't have done it without your help!

the awards are hanging out on the shelf with the awards from last year. :) 

hey team, next year, let's go for a higher level! 

learning...

so i've had the dexcom on for almost a week ... and now i know how ridiculous my blood sugars are on a day to day basis. geez. it's almost embarrassing. but ya know, i have diabetes. it's not going to be perfect.

my blood sugars have been i guess okay during this week ... i'm noticing the reaction times based on certain things i eat and some other stuff i want to work on for myself (including getting my ass back on a regular workout schedule. sigh. i miss bootcamp.), i am trying to perfect my delivery time when i bolus for meals ... why is it so hard for me to perfect the combo ratio? what percentage now? what percentage over the next hour? should it be an hour? a half hour? more than an hour? i hate math.

i got excited yesterday because i thought i was doing something right ... my 12 hour graph looked like this!

i hadn't done anything out of the ordinary, had regular meals, regular boluses ... things were just working out in my favor i guess. and then i jinxed myself by saying it out loud.

this morning, i look like THIS.

now, my blood sugar checks this morning have been in the 220s and 230s but i mean, seriously? wtf? why? i didn't eat anything unusual, but apparently at night my body was like hey guess what THIS IS GONNA HAPPEN.

i'm really happy about it. which is probably also helping me come down at a nice rate ...

life with diabetes continues.

it's arrived.

yes. it's official. i'm a dexcom user. 

last night i charged her up and begged asked allison to come over and stab me in the back of the arm (my preference for dexcom location - and i couldn't reach so of course i needed her help) ... which turned into a series of ongoing jokes the rest of the night but we won't go there. 

i just thought it was funny that they include cards about the computer software in ten languages.
kind of a waste of paper.

we're good to go! first night was lovely, i'm sure i'll have many stories to come.

diabetes humor

(comment by mom under photo...)

ps - endo appointment today!!

the book of better

have you all heard of this book? it's been buzzed about around the twitterverse a little, a few of my fellow bloggers have read it, kim wrote a review ... and when i read her review, i told her i agreed and my review would be quite similar.

i got an email from three rivers press about the book that said: It’s ultra-visual, resoundingly positive, and completely different than any other book about Diabetes out there. ohhh, ultra visual? positive? COMPLETELY DIFFERENT?? i'm in. 

the book of better is by chuck eichten, who is type 1 and is the creative director at nike. you guys. i'm a graphic designer. i am in LOVE with the way this book looks. and the coating on the cover? don't get me started. yum. it just LOOKS GOOD. so let's just say he was off to a good start.

i really enjoyed the book. it was easy to read, it was funny! i found myself chuckling at the puns and funny phrases he used throughout. i related to the way chuck felt. the style of the book made it feel ... less, hmm, formal? i'm not a professional book reviewer by any means. I LIKED IT. there. 

it made some good points ... basically the gist is that you can make life with diabetes better. no matter how much better, better is better. even just a teeny bit. that's still better. i am a fan of this thinking. every little bit counts! chuck talked about how he's not perfect, living with diabetes can't be perfect (hey, subtitle...) but you can make it better. if you just TRY. i'm not going into details because, well, i think you should read it. it's a quick read too, which i am also a fan of. 

it also had some points that i wasn't sure i agreed with; a few specifics: saying that just turning down your insulin pump when you feel low will make feeling of being low go away ... i mean, that's one part of it. but clearly that is not all you have to do. and not everyone uses an insulin pump. another was that one page actually read 'you can make your type 2 diabetes go away.' uhhhmmm, what? i mean, i knew where he was going with it, but that part made me squirm a little. i felt like there could have been a little more information provided about that. if someone who was recently diagnosed with type 2 was just picking up this book to learn about it, they might feel a little mislead. and there is a page toward the end where United States was spelled Untied States. ohhh, that misspelling slipped through the cracks. 

there were pages with huge graphics that i was nodding at. yes, diabetes IS totally unfair. so are lots of other things in this world, but sometimes it's nice to see it in print. it's affirming that i'm not the only one who thinks so.

'through it all i have retained my good looks.'

and i mean, who doesn't think this is funny? if you don't have a sense of humor, probably you. but if you didn't have a sense of humor, i don't think you'd be visiting my blog very often. ;)

all in all, i'd say this is a good read. you should probably getchyaself a copy! i thought it was a positive outlook on how to just make a little effort to make life with diabetes better. 

Disclaimer: i got this book from three rivers press but they did not ask me to write about it or post a review in any form. i am of course not a professional book reviewer of any sorts. i just wanna tell you what i like and don't. thanks bye :)

yay!

in case you were wondering about the status of my dexcom ...

woo hoo!! hopefully dr. awesome will let me bring it home with me so i don't have to take the class that is sure to be slow and repetitive since i know how to use it when i have my appointment on monday. :)