24w4d Viability and Type 1 Diabetes control

If you are more interested in reading an update about Tiny Fish then please skip down a bit :)

Diabetes and Pregnancy at 24 weeks:

I am starting to think that the first whispers of insulin resistance may be appearing.

My last two weeks - CGM data

Although in general, my blood sugars are averaging right on target (7.5 mmol), there are now some worrying patches where it is going too high for my liking (above 10 mmol). It's still brilliantly wonderful compared to the pre-pump, pre-pregnancy results, but now that I get tired so easily that little additional couple of mmols really makes me feel like crap. Tired, dry mouth, lethargic, and fuzzy-brained. What's more, if I sit at 10+ for more than 2hrs then I start to get a headache caused by the additional dehydration. Boo.

So here you can see the actual CGM readings from the last two weeks:

The raw CGM data plotted with each day as a different colour.

I was getting higher and higher reading overnight, even though they held pretty flat. Of course, nothing is guaranteed to last more than 3 days in Diabetes Land so I've started having 3am lows (note the red line) in the last 2 nights. Sigh. And I was just about to raise the overnight basals! Must be another growth spurt for Tiny Fish?

My Diabetes Nurse Educator (DNE) likes to tinker with insulin to carb (I:C) ratios first, as these are quite a quick tool to see if they are working. I think the breakfast I:C ratio is doing ok, by looking at that graph above, but it doesn't show you that I've been having to add 30%+ temp basal increases to claw my blood sugar back down during the morning for the last several days. I believe a gentle strengthening of that I:C ratio is in order. (Changed! It was 1:7g and I've just moved it to 1:6g - that may not sound like a lot but I would prefer to adjust things gently as low blood sugars/hypos really tire me out and I seem very sensitive to insulin changes.)

Lunch is definitely my nemesis. Look at that awful peak! Every colour goes up (with the exception of purple, whatever day that was??) meaning the I:C ratio is probably quite shot. I have just changed it from 1:6 to 1:5, and although I expect it will need to go further I still get very nervous giving a bolus of 5 units or more... so I will adjust the basal rate for lunchtime as well to provide a bit more of a gentle boost. Basals should start about 1hour before your want to see the result, so I will look at altering the basal from about 11am onwards thru to 3pm. I've just put it up from 0.675u p/hr to 0.7u p/hr. Not a great increase, but I will see how it goes and keep doing gentle increases every 3 days as needed.

Dinner is a bit of a moveable feast with the actual eating occuring anywhere between 5pm and 8pm. I don't really want to tinker with anymore basals or I:C ratios considering the changes I've made to earlier in my day, so will leave this chunk of the day until the next download. Best to change just a few things (or one! But I'm too impatient! lol) and know which change affected what.

Tiny Fish update:

Hooray for 24 weeks and "viability" - whatever that is. I take it to mean that should I (heaven forbid, touch wood, throw salt over shoulder etc etc) go into early labour then the medical folks would have a crack at saving the Tiny Fish. I very much like the idea that the outside world now considers Tiny Fish worth saving. I have thought him/her worth it since I knew she/he existed for us. It is interested now that I am Showing with a capital S how people react differently to me. My pregnancy has felt very real to me for a long time now, so it is strange to see how other people are just starting to catch on with the idea. I am now well over half way there, and I have been rather full of mirth this week when colleagues and students react in surprise when they ask "am I pregnant?" get a "yes, over halfway now!" in response. Hehe.

I have a nearly-flat belly button. This intrigues me, as my belly button has always been quite sensitive and now it seems to have lost a lot of sensation. I still have a waist, but only just. I can no longer wear normal pants and have been in maternity jeans since the day I bought them.

There is a little bit of reflux, but this is more from the fact that my stomach is getting compressed and I can no longer eat a huge meal. Even though I feel like the cookie monster and have an appetite that could crush mountains. It's a cruel irony that now I am "allowed" and even encouraged to eat more, I can't fit it in without reflux or terrible painful indigestion. My weight is now about 64Kg, give or take, and I still get a bit worried when I see it plateau or drop. Nearly 10Kg+ from my original weight of 55Kg.

The biggie is my leg. I have tried physio (4 sessions) and that seemed to help a tiny bit, but not really. Honestly, they don't seem to be able to help. When I went last week the physio suggested I try a stretchy type of maternity belt thing to try and hold my belly up and off the nerve in my hip. This works for about 15 mins, or until I move, when the stretchy band will roll up and try to cut me in half. I wore it for 2 days before ripping it off for good. The pressure of it squishing my belly was just too much, and I got a very good impression of what a sausage would feel like!

Today I had to take my students on a field trip. About 30mins before we were due to depart, I remembered that on this particular field trip there are very few places to sit. It would be standing for about 2 hours. I started to panic because at the moment I can't stand up for more than about 10 mins before the searing, burning, buzzing, icicle-stabbing pain goes through my right front thigh muscle. I can no longer wear shoes with a heel of any sort. This, I do not like. I spent most of the field trip propping my right foot up on anything the right height, looking like a flamingo, trying to take the weight off that hip. Not that it relieves the pain or anything, it just means I don't collapse.

I managed a gentle 20 min walk along the seaside walkway on the weekend, but couldn't walk back so Hubby had to get the car to collect me. This piece of exercise did me good and yesterday way brilliant with loads of energy. today not so great but that's cos I forgot my pre-natal vitamins!

So I have decided that the physio has reached it's limits. I will instead look at something for more whole-body relaxation, like a pregnancy massage. And I want to do more swimming and more gentle walks even though it hurts. The exercise does me good in the long run.

Depending on whether Tiny Fish is having a growth spurt (I get headaches, tiredness, and all over achiness +++) or not, then my sleep is either reasonable or complete crap. On the nights where I wake up multiple times with low or high blood sugars, plus a couple of times to pee, and then every time I need to rollover I "wake" exhausted in the mornings. The achiness is something else. Shoulders, upper back, hips, all my belly, and legs all aching together. On those nights I build a fort of towels and pillows in the bed and try to be careful with rolling over. Last night was pretty good, no towels or pillows necessary so I could spread out a bit, and just Sockington the insulin pump (in his snazzy blue sock) to take care of when I roll over. I never thought sleep would be such a complex drama. But insomnia sometimes grabs me when I am very over tired and that just makes things worse. The key is to go to bed early. Easier said than done!

Sorry for the ramble-ness of this post, that's about as coherent as I get these days.

Thank you to all of you who have taken time to post comments, it's lovely to hear from you! Even though I am not posting super-regularly I am reading all your blogs every day!

19w3d Swimming and sore thigh

Tiny Fish is somersaulting and kicking as I type this :)

I've been swimming twice with the insulin pump infusion site and Dexcom transmitter in. At first, on the weekend, I was worried about going untethered from the pump (would I go too high without insulin? Or too low with all the exercise. Answer = too low) and what the pool water might do to the adhesives or reliability of the Dexcom.

Turns out it was fine. My Dexcom has a whopping great piece of opsite Flexifix taped over it (with a little window so the transmitter can poke through) so the adhesive was really no issue. The infusion site (inset30) was at the end of its 3 days so was already a little worse for wear.

All in all it felt marvelous to be in the water and we went again tonight after work. Even with a banana beforehand I still drop between 4 - 6mmol in 40 mins untethered. But then I do climb to about 11mmol a couple of hours later. This rise is due to the lack of basal plus the emergency juice after the swim. Must try basal reduction prior to the swim itself.

In other news: OWWWWW!!!

My right thigh is hu-uu-rting! It gets tingly then goes numb on the main muscle down the front/outside of the thigh. Then it gets achy. Then the ache gets a bit stabby. Then my hip gets achy and stabby cos it feels all left out. Long story short: standing and walking hurt. Standing to take a shower hurts. Sitting or lying down makes it better. Even though I have a job that has many hours in front of a computer, I still do a lot of traipsing around campus and it's surprising how many people think it's cool to have long-winded chats in the hallway, standing up, with no chairs ready to rescue me!

I asked my OB about this when I met him the other week and he wasn't too concerned, just said to watch if it got worse. Well, it's definitely worse.

So I gave in and texted my midwife asking her advice. She thinks it might either be a pinched nerve or maybe a torn ligament in my hip. I am going to call a physiotherapist (I can do self referral which is quicker, but it would be pay out of pocket either way) tomorrow morning hopefully.

Oh and I had a quick unexpected catchup with my pump reps T and K today up at the hospital. On Saturday night I was having a headache, exhaustion, and lows. The Dexcom and the vibe (both of which had new sites inserted that evening after the first swim) took it upon themselves to wake me up no less than 20 times with various low alarms, false low alarms, error code 0, error code 1, calibration warnings, and reminders that the calibrations were failing. Bah! By 3am I gave up and turned the CGM functionality off both devices just so I could get some sleep.

An email to my rep in the morning and she offered to meet up and bring me a replacement sensor, and explain the error codes. Since they are normally in another city it was an unexpected pleasure to get to see both of them face to face. :)

And now for some devastating news. You might want to click away now if you're not in a particularly happy spot right now as this next bit is just utterly heartbreaking :(

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My little second cousin, a 10 year old boy, has just been diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer with a simply awful prognosis. He's already about to have his second surgery in a month, the first removed a strange lump and now that pathology has finally identified it he's been rushed to the children's hospital. He is not expected to out live his parents. Apart from some radical drugs in clinical trials, surgeries are the only option. Chemo and radiation don't really work well for this type. Our whole family is pretty much in shock and I would love advice from anyone about how I can best support my cousins at this time.

So, that's it for now. I don't expect to be posting many updates about my cousin as that's not really my story to tell. I'll just see how it goes and do what I can for them.

15w4d Exhaustion

The second trimester is supposed to herald in a renewed sense of energy and feel-good-ness. Instead, I seem to be getting sheer exhaustion. It has become rare for me to manage to stay awake the entire day.

Today I woke at 9am, had breakfast in bed, got up and showered at 10am, went for a 30min walk around the local park and the block, had lunch of fried noodles with tomatoes and spring onions, then promptly tried to fall asleep in said bowl of noodles. The dull headache warned me that I needed to get my head down soon or suffer the consequences of a restless night with no sleep and a bad head.

So I slept from 2pm to 4pm. This all sounds lovely and relaxing, but it is very frustrating and feels like I am wasting my days. In the morning I am mostly too groggy and foggy to get anything done, and I always feel like I have to spend my energy wisely. One outing a day is about my maximum. If I do too much one day I might feel ok, but will then crash out the next day.

I am not worried at the moment, everyone keeps telling me that I will perk up soon enough and that it's just the baby sapping my energy. However I start work teaching again the week after next and I am not sure how that is going to work. I have already got a note from my GP so I can request a disability carpark right up close to my building at work, as I know the walk (5min) up the steep hill at work will leave me knackered - plus the round ligament pain can hurt after too much walking!

My next midwife appointment is next Monday (6 days time) so I will ask her about it. I am taking my pre-natal vitamins but it could be anemia maybe? Hope not as the pre-natal vitamins are upsetting my digestive system somewhat. With the in mind I have decided one thing I can do is ensure I am eating enough. It occurred to me that I now need to eat like I am growing, like I did when I was a growing teenager! So I am working out healthy foods and snacks to eat at regular intervals throughout the day. If I don't, for instance, eat a yoghurt for morning tea then I will feel faint and go low just before lunchtime. I always need to eat before exercise. More fruits are on the menu and we are getting a reasonable harvest of fresh veges and herbs from the garden. Plus eggs from the chooks!

At the moment my one real mild concern is when/how we will get the Tiny Fish's nursery started. I am itching to get in there are start planning the room. It has no storage so I will have to find some second-had pieces and repaint them.

12w1d On holiday and doing nothing

Really. Nothing! Just mucking around the house, taking to the chooks, and dozing whenever I get tired which is often.

Went for a short bike ride yesterday and as a result could hardly wake up today. Just exhausted all the time.

And sometimes hungry. Or bloated. Or both at once. I feel like I can't fully take a deep breath sometimes. Hubby thinks I am starting to show.

I am waking up once or twice most nights to pee or fix a low. Also, I have this terrible head cold. Last night I woke up and attempted to roll over to get a tissue off my bedside table and I get an excruciating pain down my lower right side, just above my hip bone. It passes quickly but only if I straighten out again. Must be round ligament pain or something. I will be seeing the midwife on Monday (Sat today) so I'll ask her about.

Had a wonderful relaxed Christmas, managed to avoid the Boxing Day sales. Bonus! Just been relaxing and hanging out with my family :)

13dp3dt Well, it feels real...

..but will it stick around? Will I get a good beta on Tuesday?

I am pretty calm, and it's sinking in more. I am currently pregnant and I have to keep telling it to myself cos I just don't believe it. I have been to look at the pee-stick several times today. Just to check I didn't imagine that line. Or the phone call from the nurse. I am hoping they will send the results out to me on paper, so I have something tangible to fret over.

Things I have discovered today:

• People are treating me differently already. Which bugs me. Why are you all getting worried about me now, but not the day before first beta? eh? I am the same person!
• People who don't have a clue I'm pregnant treat me the same as always. Which also bugs me. Where is my special treatment already!? Can't win over here. lol
• It should not be possible to forget that something is going on down there. Most of the time, it is painful and crampy (not severe cramping). Plus there are the twinges. I guess that's what you'd call them? Sharper, achier pains that occur all over the place. Anywhere from my hip joints right up to my clavicles. Ribs. And of course the abdomen. Sometimes I can feel a twinge going right um, up me. Sometimes it goes around my uterus. I think. Without an MRI to hand, I am just guessing at anatomy here. Oh and also the firm-en-ing-up of my tummy, and the general inability to button my jeans.
• I gave in the moment we got the nurse's phone call. By that, I mean, I have allowed myself to dream of this child. I have been collecting names. Hubby and I even had the briefest of brief chat about names. I have been watching videos about what happens at 3 and 4 weeks pregnant, and I have downloaded a couple of pregnancy tracking apps. By the power vested in the Interwebs, I am able to determine that my Estimated Due Date should be 11 July 2014. None of these things are what I would consider "safe". I mean, throughout the whole time I have been waiting for this (can't use "trying" as we've technically never "tried" to get pregnant in the traditional sense lol) I have been moderating my thoughts severely. To keep my mind from exploding and my self from collapsing in a crumple of tears, I made a bargain with myself: I could think of certain things (names, due dates, pregnancy details, maternity clothes, nursery decorating ideas) only once I reached certain goals (accepted for treatment, started treatment, positive beta) to protect my mind. My reasoning being that if I didn't think up good, wishful, dreams then I wouldn't be hurt as badly should things go south.
• And now I have gone there. The gates are open and I cannot reign in my insatiable curiosity and dreaming. It is lovely to be able to feel I can now safely think about this sort of wonderful stuff...
• ...But, then I realise that I could lose it all on Tuesday, making the fall so much harder. I hope beyond everything that this, my first pregnancy, sticks, stays, grows, and is healthy. I have never wanted anything so much in my entire existence.
• The centre of my universe has changed. I'm not sure where it was before, but it's now growing in me (I hope).
• My brain can think of little else. Until I do something (gardening, cooking) and forget entirely.
• Speaking of gardening: I did lots. I know, I know - I'm not supposed to exert myself. Or get too hot. And I know. It's bad for the embryo. But it has been the most beautiful spring weekend and I have been so at peace. I was, I think, not able to garden all winter until this IVF was done. Now that I feel positive again (it's been a while since I've felt so energized) the garden is crying out for attention. I drank lots of water, made sure not to over do things, and only went out in the sun for short spells. Oh, and there is another reason why I feel positive about it. Part of the stories the women in my family share include that of doing some crazy, manual labour such as cleaning the stove, washing all the windows, or weeding the garden. So I take the desire to garden as a good omen.
• You may have noticed the word energized in the last bullet point. Imagine having all this energy and happiness one moment, and then the most crippling fatigue so you have to lie down or risk feeling faint the next. Well, that has been my day. I get especially tired towards the end of the day.
• I decided to get tougher on my blood sugars. I really really tried to get in touch with my Diabetes Nurse Educator last week, but we are playing a mammoth game of phone tag at present. Too timid to adjust the basal rates (especially while still on those progesterone pessaries ewww), I spent most of Saturday thinking what I could do instead. First up, I tried doing more correction boluses when ever I went over 12mmol. I also started ignoring the pumps suggestions of "0 units" when I had IOB, and instead gave small conservative boluses. This worked ok, so I then thought up a more permanent method - Oh hey! I will just adjust my insulin sensitivity factor a bit! I went from 1u:4mmol up to 1u:3mmol. This has proved to be too strong especially in conjunction with gardening, so I've just put it back down to 1u:3.7mmol. Let's see how that goes.
• Tomorrow is my first day of work where I will be pregnant. I have a rather unpleasant bunch of students to teach, and I hope, for my sake, that they behave themselves. I will not hesitate to "pop down to the office to get something" if I feel they are upsetting me or getting my heart rate up at all!
• I can count things in pregnancy-numbers now: 4 weeks 3 days pregnant.

So, that is all. Sorry about the rather random haphazard post today. It's nearly 11pm and I am beat. Also, just gone low. Also, getting a twinge right now!

Sing it with me: I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope Tuesday's beta is a good positive number; strong doubling is what I am hoping for.

Thank you for the flood of support you have offered me. It is truly humbling to know that so many people across the world are supportive. Thank you! :D

All work, no rest

It has been a hectic two weeks. And the next two will be even crazier.

We had the step-kids come to stay, so their Mum and Step-Dad could go overseas for a mate's wedding.

Hubby had leave from his job so he could work as a sound engineer on a massive music festival held in town. He started on Thursday, so I haven't seen him during daylight hours for 4 days now. We have been meeting in the wee hours "hi how was your day?" "hmmph, go back to sleep". Although somehow, he still gets up to make me breakfast! Even working 15 hour days. Such a sweetie! :)

You know I am studying for my tertiary teaching diploma, well the deadline for the first assignment has snuck up on me. I have NOTHING prepared for it. I went and had an emergency meeting with my tutor, and she confused me even more. Bah! I goddamn hope I teach better than that! I sense a last-minute cram coming my way...

So, I'm a student in one class, I teach four classes, and for the next two weeks I will be team-teaching on a fifth class. I don't know how many hours per week I'm working, but all I know is that it doesn't stop once I get home! I got one night off last week, and every other night I was working on lesson plans until 10pm. It's getting tiring. I am living on vitamin B tablets and bad cafeteria sandwiches.

And that fifth class is on a subject that I've never taught before and don't really know much about: mark making (read: experimental drawing). Now, I'm a design tutor, not a fine art tutor. I had to have another emergency meeting with my HoD to discuss how overloaded I'm suddenly getting, and that I had basically NO CLUE what to teach for this class. She has kindly offered to help out with the lesson plan, but it's going to be cutting it close.

On the diabetes front, it's been all over the place. I have had quite a few bad lows mainly due to stress, or doing more exercise (just walking between classes mainly) than expected.

I also had a couple of interesting lows yesterday (Saturday). I went for a 1hr bike ride along the coast, and started off about 16mmol/L, by the half way point, I was sitting at 8 (good), and I mentally told myself that I would need to stop on the way home and drink the juice in my backpack, to save myself from going low. Well, I forgot. I sailed past my intended stop-point. I kept pedalling, but all of a sudden it was like my bike was made of cement. My thighs felt like jelly. The sun was incredibly hot, and I was in a cold sweat. I biked into a shady spot and got off. Sat on a rock, did a test. 3.5 (low) great. I skulled back the juice and decided that I had chosen a very pretty spot to stop. :) The juice was working, but at juice+10 mins I had not risen as fast as I would have liked, especially since I had to bike another 5Km home yet. I scrummaged around for a fruitbar and ate that too, then biked off home. I had to have a nap when I got home. Lucky I set an alarm, because when I woke an hour later I was down to 1.5mmol/L!! Cue: how to eat honey very very quickly.

In IF news, well, I am getting disillusioned. I think I have made a breakthrough in finding that the fertility clinic may have used the wrong CPAC form, or used it incorrectly, to figure out if we are eligible for publicly funded treatment. Trouble is, everyone I've told about it is being very quiet. I don't know where to take the information now. I feel really lost and alone in this fight, and with the effort it takes to keep up with work, keep up with diabetes, the IF stuff is just not getting the time it needs. I try to spend a couple of hours a week writing emails, blogging, or making phone calls, but it's getting just so hard to find the time. And it's especially demoralising when no one responds to emails. :( Wah.

Bike ride, hot sun, faint!

We are back from our holiday up the coast (more on that in the next post), and the kids are here for the weekend.

We are very lucky in that both of our sets of parents live within bike-ride distance, so we packed up the kids and pedaled off to hubby's parents. About 3km away I guess, with a couple of gnarly hills thrown in.

We took off and it was all going well. After the first hill however I didn't feel too flash. Not very good at all! We stopped and I did a test. At 9.8mmol/L it was not a low, surely! But with a spinning head and nausea, it was reasonably similar to some of the low symptoms I get. I sat in the shade while hubby gave me water to drink. I would have fallen down if I hadn't already sat down! So faint. So hot. So want to feel not sick and just finish the ride!!

Eventually I was ok to hop back on the bike and keep going. At the grandparents house I did a test and got 6.5mmol/l. Also not a low, but when you consider that was a fall of 3 points in only ten minutes, the funny feelings start to make sense. It was a blood sugar crash! I had just caught it higher up than normal.

12g carbs in he juice box and a cup of tea 4g sugar did the trick. I looked back in my meters memory to see what the lunch time test was: 15.9mmol/L - no wonder I felt so horrid! That's a drop of ten points in about 2 hours. Coupled with strenuous exercise ( for me! ) it was all just too much.

The ride home was great :)


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Happy New Year!

I spent New Year's with my family, as hubby was working in the mad throng of downtown (sound engineer for the local Irish band). We watched the royal variety show (a bit of a tradition in our house) then said our goodnights and "happy new years". Out the window of my parent's house the valley was filled with fireworks, and it was wonderful to sit back and watch out of the huge windows.

Summer is truly here, and I've spent the last couple of 2010 days biking, fishing, walking, and getting a little sunburnt! Oops! Never fear, industrial strength sunscreen is here - and I need it, what with the  Roaccutane and my playstation-like-tan.

Tomorrow (I mean today, well, in the morning) we go on holiday and I can't wait. Just a week of relaxing by the beach, fishing, swimming, reading, and pretending to know how to play tennis.

Oh, and the food! The last week has been gloriously scrumptious, with THREE Christmas dinners spread over two days, and then a ten year old's birthday lunch, plus several trips to eat out when we can't be bothered cooking/have eaten the cupboard bare, and New Years Day lunch booked in with my Aunt and Uncle tomorrow. Now you see why I've been riding the bike! I think I've mentioned it before, but here we have a long coastal walkway, paved, and mostly flat. It's 7+ Km long, and it's a joy to ride along on a sunny summer's day :D

Throughout all the food and dining, I've been paying reasonably careful attention to my blood sugars. Although, I wasn't at ALL surprised when I spotted a few 20mmol/L's creeping in! Oh well, just deal with them and get on with it. It's definitely the strange, rich food, and different daily routine causing the trouble.

I have been trialling a new iPhone app over the last week, and it seems pretty swish. Diamedic is a pain in the a$s to enter details into, but it does give some nice useful graphs. And, I have to admit, I am much more likely to sit in front of the telly with the iPhone and enter the day's results out of my paper log book, than I am to use a web-based system (been there, Log for Life: Please fix your iPhone app! And stop charging a monthly fee thhhpppppppps *raspberry*!). So, for now anyway, Diamedic is a win. It's not perfect by far, but it has already enabled me to see trends such as how I am sitting too high before lunch and dinner, but doing well with the before breakfast and after lunch results, on the whole. It's a bit finicky but once you get the hang of it, you see how many features it offers. You can get it here.

Oh, and if any Diamedic folk happen to be reading, can you please figure out a way to retain all the features, but make the entry system multi-item friendly? So when I enter my morning bolus, I could also, say, enter the basal, carbs, and whatever else, all at the same time? Ta muchly. :)  /end request.

The year that's just been: I would not want to repeat it, but I am glad I went through it. I "lost" my job, but got a fantastic new one which is much better. I found out we don't qualify for publicly funded IVF treatment here in NZ, but I now have some hope, and another year up my sleeve. Hubby and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. All my step-kids are now in the double-digits (wow! when I met them, the youngest was only 3!!). I had an operation which may or may not have been strictly necessary, but I'm healthy and happy now.

This new year, I am hoping to achieve a pregnancy. If not that, I want to be on the official wait-list for IVF. Sad, I know, but at the moment, just the chance to get on the wait-list would be wonderful! :S In my professional life, I will be studying for my Diploma in Tertiary Learning and Teaching which is exciting and daunting, as I've not been in formal study for 9 years now. I am also hoping to grow as a tutor and raise the standard of design in my town. Well, someone's got to! The rest of the tutors in the art dept., lovely as they are, are either fine-artists, animators, or last practiced design when the ark was a-floating and dino was a-stompin'. :P I love them, truly! And they love me too because I bring them cake and chocolate. Noms. It's all good. It actually give me a great chance to make my mark on the department. I am starting off with a website (naturally!) and some social media awareness. Only one of my colleagues has a blog, and one of them doesn't even have a FB account! Shock horror! Watch this space... :)

In my blogging, I want to continue sharing my life with the world, because I get so much back from you guys, and I really enjoy being a part of your lives too. It's a cool community online here. Thank you.

There are other goals I'm setting myself, but they are quite mundane in comparison to the ones above.

Anyway, welcome to the New Year!! As I write this it's 1.30am in New Zealand. Time for a nap :)

What's the worst thing a low has forced you to do?

I am curious, because I had a low today and I was so desperate (2.3mmol/L, 41.1mg/dL) that I stole someone else's orange juice.

OK, so had the person been present, I would have asked. But they weren't, and I took without asking (probably without being able to ask, if I am honest! I could sort of think clearly, but I couldn't talk properly).

It's the last week before the office shuts down for Christmas break, and one of my colleagues brought in this neat toy:

Xbox Kinect. I played soccer, and boxing. TKO!

We have a video lab at the training institute where I work (art dept), so it was hooked up to a large projector in a darkened studio. Very cool. Before I knew it I had spent half an hour punching and kicking and victory-dancing my blood sugar from 16 down to 2.3. That is a very quick drop.

I looked in my bag: no juice boxes, no muesli or fruit bars. Nothing in the secret draw of emergency food either. Dumb. So I toddle down to the communal kitchenette that the whole top floor uses. I knew there was at least white sugar there. So I start making a cup of tea with about 10 teaspoons of sugar in it. Waiting for the jug to boil. Waiting, waiting, can't wait - need sugar NOW!

I look in the fridge - oh, there is juice! Two big 4L bottles, although one of them looks like it has been there since the beginning of time. Orange juice isn't supposed to be green, is it? :P

So I drank the non-green juice. And I am glad I did, and I would do it again if I needed to. It tasted awful. I hate orange juice! After a few minutes the jug had boiled and my brew was so sweet the spoon *almost* stood up by itself in the cup :P haha. Another 10 minutes and my blood sugar had slowly climbed to 3.3mmol/L. Talk about a close call.

Maybe I should write a note and stick it on the bottle, thanking the person and offering them a new bottle of juice.

What's the worst thing you've had to do to get sugar when you've been low/hypo?

Rollerblading and ducks

After my first week back to work after the holidays I've had a really good relaxing weekend.

I've read a few books. I have had a couple of "Aha!" moments, which I will explain in another post :)

I went rollerblading with Hubby and a selection of kids, at the local roller rink's family skate night. There nothing like flying round and round the rink listening to badly distorted emo music at full blast to make you feel 13 again! haha

Hubby and I had the kids to stay this weekend, so we went to collect them on Friday night. We were early, so they weren't all at their home yet. Olivia was busy finishing off her horse ride, so we drove down to the fields the pony club uses and watched her riding her horse, then washing and feeding her (the horse, not Olivia - although she [Olivia] did admit to taste-testing the horse feed!) As we drove back to the kids house the road passes over a small creek, and there, walking merrily in the middle of the road, was a mother duck and her five ducklings! How cute! Traffic was stopped on both directions, with orange hazard lights on. A lady walking her dog came out and shepherded the ducks off the road so it all turned out happy. :)

I tried skate-boarding for the first time! Well, I didn't go very far, but I didn't fall off either! Very pleased with myself. Ok, I will admit I had Hubby standing beside me letting me cling to his shoulder, but it was still lots of fun! :) It was cool to have most of the kids (and some mates) skating down the seaside walkway together. We ended up at the local skate park, where suddenly parents became V-E-R-Y uncool. Ha! Anyway that's where we got the idea to go to the family skate night, cos the roller rink is right next door.

We dropped Eldest Step Son off at his Grandparents, and took Two Youngest plus Loud-Mouth Friend home and made dinner - I tried making "Jerk Chicken" (Question: why is it called "Jerk"??) which was very tasty and met with silence - a good sign meaning kids are eating! :)

Here is my recipe:

700g chicken nibbles (small chicken wings and mini-drumsticks)
1 onion
2 - 3 Tablespoons of olive oil
portuguese chicken seasoning (mix of paprika, salt, chilli, oregano, lemon)
finely chopped fresh thyme (from my freshly replanted herb garden :D )
2 - 5 Tablespoons of your favourite dark soy sauce
1 Table spoon cornflour/cornstarch

Mix everything (except the soy and cornflour) together. I just put it all into the glass roasting dish and massaged it together with my hands. Messy but fun. Wash hands. Cover the dish with tin foil and put it in the oven at 200 degrees C.

Leave it for about 20 mins, or until the chicken is no longer pink. The tinfoil should keep all the moisture in, and the onion should mix with the oil to create a runny liquid.

Take the dish out of the oven and put it on a heatproof surface. Remove the tinfoil. Add the soy, more if you like saltier things, and make sure the liquid level is about half way up each piece of chicken, so they are half-submerged. This will let the top half go nice and crispy in the air. Mix up the cornflour in a little water and mix it into the sauce.

Return to the oven for another ten minutes, and put it to fan bake/fan-forced to speed up the crispy-ization. :) Serve with mini-roast potatoes, pumpkin, carrots, and fresh baby peas. Yummy!

Naughty seagulls

I absolutely exhausted myself yesterday by riding my bike just a bit too far. It was good fun though, I got up early and got to see the early morning sun over the mountain. It was a beautiful clear, cold winter day. It seems silly to wear a scarf and gloves when you go biking, but I was thankful that I looked like a snowman as I pedalled through the chilly air!

It's a total of 20kms there and back, and I was going ok until I had to take a detour from my usual route. Some workmen were repairing a section of the track, so I had to ride up a hill and through a small shopping suburb to get out to the lake. Just as I was passing the busiest part, a flock of seagulls dive-bombed me and pooped all over me! :( People on the sidewalk must have thought I was nuts - a mad swearing woman waving her arms and she pedals madly though the shops! :P

Add to that, my phone started to ring (I was expecting a call from my lawyer) so I had to jump off my bike and scrabble through my backpack to find the ringing phone - all while covered in muck! What a morning! :P I sure do know how to have fun :P

How has your week been? I hope you have a nice weekend planned :D

Testing on the road

This is me, testing my blood sugar this morning:

Hubby and I went for a bike ride along the sea front. It's roughly 10Kms, but today at 11.30am there was a ceremony and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of a new pedestrian bridge, Te Rewa Rewa:

This makes the whole promenade an extra 3Kms. We left home at 11am, and pedalled like mad to the other end to reach the bridge in time for the ceremony. Made it at 11.28! We hopped off our bikes, and joined the crowd of people waiting to cross for the first time. And then I started to feel a bit off. The world started to swim in front of me, and I felt ill. Hubby got a bit worried, so I quickly did a test. With hundreds of people around me, I got 10mmol/L. Perfect. :) I wasn't low, just unfit! haha

Let's get moving

I grew up thinking that I was bad at sports. I'm a little bit uncoordinated, and I'm not too helpful in team sports, but I played hockey, like this:

(that's not me, BTW :P)

And I'm not that flexible or strong, but I studied kung-fu for 7 years, like this:

(Again... not I, said the fly)

I joined a gym for the year leading up to my wedding, and lost about 6 kilos, of which about 3 have returned since then, but I'm ok with that.

Most of the time now my exercise will be walking. We have a long promenade along the ocean front here, and at 10Km end to end, it's a good wee walk, or bike ride. I love biking. There's nothing better on a calm sunny day that pedalling and flying along on my bike.

I also do a bit of swimming, but it tires me out too quick and often causes me to go low. Having a low in a pool is no fun.

Most weeks I reckon I'd be lucky to get about 30 mins to 1hr exercise, but that goes up if you count gardening and vacuuming, which make me puff!

That's one good thing about being a growned-up, and not having to go to school anymore, is NO MORE PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

P.E., or Gym class always showed me up a someone who couldn't play netball, was scared of the volleyball-ball, and allergic to cricket. Being a kid, I would always forget to take emergency food with me, but I don't remember ever doing enough exercise at school to make me low :P

I did, however, have an awful low at the gym one time. I went with my sister, and we were just starting a new class with a new instructor. In the middle of doing warm-up stetches I blacked out and kind of slithered down the wall to sit on the floor in a heap. She went off to get me juice from the locker room. I remember watching her come back, walking quickly, but not running, so as not to cause a panic. I thought it was funny, it's a gym after all, you should be able to run sister! Get here now! :P

The poor instructor was terrified! He kept offering to call me an ambulance. And every time I showed up in the gym after that he would enquire if I was OK.

Ok, so I guess I've realised that I don't currently do enough exercise, really. It's coming towards winter here, and the weather is not much fun. I may have to look at some more organised form of fitness soon. :)