17w2d First Kicks

Our little Tiny Fish has made his/her presence felt. About 16w4d I felt what I thought might be a kick. It was not some subdued flutter or bubbles. It felt like a tapping finger, but inside. The most similar feeling I could describe would be if you tap the inside of your cheek with your finger.

A couple of days after that I was quite sure of what I was feeling and Hubby could feel it too!

Two nights ago I was doing a site change and I suddenly sneezed. I got a right strong internal thumping, and due to my excited yelping Hubby got a nice strong kick on the hand too :)

I'm now getting either kicks or rolling movements every 2+ hours or so. It gets easier to feel when I'm sitting up in bed, or in the recliner with my feet up, or wearing my pants done up (rare, now lol).

It's Sunday night and we've just had a lovely summer BBQ with my parents and the step kids. The two youngest go back to high school tomorrow, with it being the first day of secondary school for the youngest. Eldest step son has finished school and goes to college in April.

My first day of work is tomorrow and although Thursday is a holiday (Waitangi Day) I'm still not sure how I'll handle getting back into the whole work routine - I quite like being able to nap from 2 - 6pm if necessary.

Get to meet the OB on Wednesday, and Tuesday is a training day so it should be a bit of a wasted week.

I did my first ever basal test this morning. My diabetes nurse advised me just to have a carb-free breakfast I think cos she knew a complete fast would be a bit impossible for me - hungry pregnant lady raaaarrr!!! I had 2x boiled eggs, a spoon of peanut butter and a cup of tea. Looking back the peanut butter probably wasn't a good choice cos I went from 5.8mmol to sit around 10 for the entire morning. It was great to see how flat it was on the Dexcom, but I was frustrated not being able to do a correction. I think I should probably repeat this morning segment of the test just to check that the basal is fine and the pb didn't screw up the test too much. Oh well. It wasn't too much of a drama and I'm not worried to repeat it, it just too four mornings to start as I kept going low!!

In other good news, my good friend who has been trying for a baby for ages has just discovered she's pregnant. Very exciting to have someone close to me on this journey too!

I'm just so pleased that Tiny Fish is kicking away in there - it makes me feel so reassured and it just feels so, right. Before, all the weird machinations in my abdomen felt rather alien and strange. Now it finally physically feels like it has purpose.

Here is a belly shot for you. I'm tall, so I'm not sticking out much yet.

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.

11w3d Christmas Eve-Eve

Christmas shopping is all finished (hooray) and this evening I put up the tree and then we wrapped all the pressies. Including the first thing ever for our one on the way:



Here is the tree, with massively oversized tinsel star that keeps threatening to tip the whole lot over:



Pregnancy symptoms at 11 weeks seem to be settling down a bit. Over the past 3 or 4 days I've gotten a lot of my energy back. A week ago I set the record at 3 naps in one day, not including the 11.30am sleep in. Then I got a horrendous head cold that featured loud sneezing with nose like a tap.

I have given my cold to Hubby and his Mum, and now I'm feeling better lol :P

Breathing is feeling a bit weird at times, kind of like the feeling you get when the cat is sleeping on your chest.

I've upped my breakfast to be one slice of gluten-free toast with lashings if crunchy peanut butter, a cup of decaf-tea with raw sugar and trim milk, a handful of prunes and a nectarine or a couple of fresh apricots.

I still haven't gained any weight (57kg) but I have reorganized what I've got: arms and face seem a bit skinnier while belly may? Seem? Rounder? we are taking photos but even though I'm frustrated at being stick with hardly any pant to wear and still being a long way away from maternity clothing, there is no obvious "popping" yet.

Getting a lot of lows at the moment, and they generally seem to take double the amount of carbs to get me back to fighting fit. So two juice boxes instead of one. I got so frustrated with juice that I've started eating glucose tablets again :-/

Getting what may be a few food aversions to beef, some chicken dishes that I normally love, and generally being slightly nauseated by awful smells. No real cravings but I do find I must snack or eat meals every 2hrs or so otherwise I feel slightly weird/ill. When I go low I go pale and get tired needing to sit down immediately.

Still having mild trouble with constipation, but can't really complain since I've been doing idiotic things like swapping my pre-natal vitamins from bedtime to morning (not cos I forgot! Honest!).

I got out in the garden for two days and tidied things up in preparation for hosting Christmas lunch for our parents. Kids will be here for breakfast and back for dinner at my parents house.

After over a month of waking at 4am for a low blood sugar that would haunt me until dawn, I finally remembered to actually so something about it. Cue messing with nighttime basal rates at 1am the other night! Result? Flat as a pancake from midnite to 8am woohoo!!! Very proud of me self on that one. Guessing it won't last too long before things all change again.

So, Merry Christmas to all you lovely readers. Have a wonderful day and I hope Santa brings you what you asked for!

P.s. Can I ask you all to say a little wish/prayer for a good friend of mine who is doing clomid treatment right now and has, 2 days before Christmas, got another negative result. She's battling on but getting a little overwhelmed and considering IVF. I really hope her next cycle works and she gets what she's been dreaming of! Thank you! :)

9w How to thoroughly scare everyone, including yourself

First, be a high-risk Type 1 Diabetic pregnant woman who has just done IVF.

Next, wake up at 2am on a Friday morning with a splitting headache and take a couple of panadol. Wait 20 mins.

Start vomiting dramatically and violently for several hours. Decide you have suddenly been hit by the worst morning sickness the world has ever known.

Drink a tiny amount of water. Fail to keep even that down. Repeat a couple of times, enough to get really scared about dehydration and the baby and whatnot.

Thank the heavens that your husband is here and that he can monitor the Dexcom. Double thank you to the diabetes gods who prevented me from going low throughout all of this.

The the other end joins in. Belly pains. Not morning sickness. Food poisoning. Well, that's sort of okay if it means I won't be doing this every day, but only on the condition that little walnut baby is kept safe and healthy.

At one point I feel so sick, I'm sitting on the couch cos it's closer to the bog that the bed is. My temperature is mega hot and I've just sweated so much I've drenched my big fluffy pink polar fleece dressing gown. Hubby gets very worried when I start moaning and pacing. I know he nearly took me to hospital right then and there.

Early hours of the morning: remember that vomiting plus headache could equal ketones. Do a blood test and get 0.3 on the Optium. Fail to remember that this is still within the normal range and decide I will probably need to go to A&E for IV fluids. Decide to wait a bit until morning and if it's not better, then trundle off down the road to the hospital.

As soon as it's respectable, start texting and calling: my Diabetes Nurse Educator, my GP, my midwife, my boss, my friend, my Mum.

DNE was great, she called or texted throughout the day to monitor my progress. We discussed it and she suggested if I was really worried about dehydration I could go straight to A&E, but that we could try managing this at home.

The time between events started to increase. By about 9am I can drink a little ginger ale, and I try my hand at some marmite toast (too soon!). Tiny, tiny bites. We'll chewed.

The GP doesn't want to see me, even though the DNE and midwife both want me to see him. Well, technically the receptionist doesn't want to see we. She tells me just to go straight to the hospital.

The midwife phones after 1pm and is working off old info by that time. She wants all sorts of nasty tests that involve leaving the house. I tell her I am now able to hold down liquid. Put down the phone, and turn my truth into a lie! Sigh.

DNE checks in again, she is happy with my progress. Hubby looks exhausted, poor darling.

Snack on ginger ale (regular) and ready salted chips. I find that if I let my tummy go empty I feel a lot worse. Use a couple of temp basal increases, and bolus carefully for any food - but always wait to see if I'm going to keep it!

Mum pops round about 4pm, by which time I have finally, almost got a complete set of clothes on.

I manage a small dinner of pasta spirals with chopper mini tomatoes in olive oil and black pepper. The best food in the world it tastes like!

Last night I sleep a full night for the first time in weeks. I didn't even get up to pee. Which probably means I'm still a bit dehydrated. I feel much better today, although I've lost 4kg (from 59kg back down to 55kg). I am eating small snack and trying to drink a steady amount of water.

So, yeah, that is how to scare the pants off everyone around you.

CD 4: When the headache takes control

When I woke up this morning it was to in incessant bleep-blaring of an anxious Dexcom screaming that my blood sugar was low. Again. Two lows in one night and the result was my headache from yesterday growing super-powers. I felt awful this morning.

Some breakfast and out the door to work. Hubby offered to drive me in, which I though was a good idea since my head was feeling pretty fuzzy but it was live able.

At work things quickly deteriorated. I had a meeting and at the end of that I stood up and felt my stomach lurch: that moment when a headache takes on migraine qualities and suddenly there is aura, light and sound sensitivity, nausea, and head pain that is like a physical presence.

I got back to my shared office as soon as I could and downed some ibuprofen and a bottle of water. Blood sugars at this stage were thankfully stable at around 7 mmol.

I emailed Hubby to come collect me. I had lasted only until 10.45am :S

Once home, the neurofen kicked in and the pain went away. The pressure in my head was still there so I knew I had to be careful. I did some drawing and had lunch. Felt better. Read my book (great book! The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton)

And then I fell asleep in the armchair. I was awoken by the promise of junk food for dinner. :D

I've since brightened up and got a ravenous hunger for celery:



Nom nom nom. I love the watery fresh crispy taste.

Also I've just remembered that I should be not-drinking caffeine. Damn. Tea. I also looooove tea: black with trim milk and a spoon of raw sugar. Ooh so good. I'd bought a box of decaffeinated tea months ago and it tastes ok, but Hubby is very unsure if it's safe to drink. Being diabetic, there are very few tasty beverage choices. Juice is out (carbs), alcohol is out (I don't drink anyways), and milk is out (lactose doesn't like me in great quantities, plus, carbs). That leaves diet coke (yum, but caffeine and artificial sweeteners = headache material). Maybe tomato juice is the perfect option, but it just makes me thirstier. So. Water.

Oh, here are the pre-natal vitamins Im taking:



Left to right: Elevit with iodine, 1000 IU vitamin D (2 per night), 5mg folic acid.

That is all. Oh gawd damn! The Dex has just high alarmed again. I ate CELERY!!! (I should have eaten cake!)

Beautiful Saturday

There is nothing quite like the first day of a mid-semester break. Ahhhh the days of freedom stretch out before me :)

Today was magical in its simplicity and I was able to forget work completely.

It started with breakfast in bed, then a nice hot shower filled by drying my hair in the sun as I watched the chickens romping around the back garden.

The morning was spent weeding the rose-bed and maybe getting a bit sun burnt. My Hubby and his youngest son started making a rabbit hutch out of a packing crate, so I made everyone tuna noodles for lunch. Again, in the sunshine.

After lunch we did some grocery shopping, I got a repeat of all my diabetic supplies, and we also visited the pet shop as the cat would not be pleased should we run out of cat-noms!

As we drove into the car wash, I realized that I had forgotten to bolus for lunch. Too much sunshine-brain. A small correction bolus later and we were off to collect the cutest rabbit, and perhaps the only one with a "holiday hutch" where he will reside with us whenever the kids do too. Our back garden looks like a petting zoo!

I cooked a delicious strut fry dinner for 6 then my MIL shared not one but 2 desserts with us. Wild berry pie and an apricot/creamed rice/meringue pie. Oh, and I tore the house apart looking for a lost clarinet.

It took me 2.5 hrs of going through boxes to find it, but when I did step-daughter played her sax, hubby played guitar and we all played together (roughly) for the evening. Very much funski :D

Let it be noted that I am exhausted and slightly redder than I should be!

Retinopathy Photography and Feijoas

More good news: eyes are fine :D

This is not my retina. But mine looks a bit like that...

I am very pleased that the local eye clinic/hospital has invested in a special anti-diabetic-retinopathy-eye photographing machine, because it means I don't have to have the horrid eye-dilating drops. They sting. They make your eyes sensitive to light (light hurts them), and everything goes blurry so in the past I've had to have a helper drive me home. But no more drops! In and out in under 20 minutes! :)

First day back at work after the hols, and the building was freezing cold. Winter has hit our region with a vengeance. We've had torrential rain and gale force winds for the last 3 days. My cat went mad with the wind and yowled all day and night. Nothing could soothe him, poor thing. There was minor flooding in some places, but the wind! Two trees blown down in my street, and when I got into work today both my colleagues in the office had a big tree down in their gardens too.

I am looking suspiciously at my new fig tree. It has gone from a perfect, perpendicular happy tree, to a slanty, suspicious, "I might fall over, I might not" tree. May have to get out there and tie a rope around it to hold it upright....is that a good idea? I'm not sure...would the tree then just snap?

But winter/autumn is also feijoa season. Yum.

Here in New Zealand, you never buy feijoas. Instead, you wait, until eventually 5 people will offer you a big bag each of fresh feijoas from their trees. "Please take them!" He he he :P I've planted a feijoa tree too, and so far I've eaten 2 fruit off it. I have also stolen many fruit off the neighbour's tree over the back fence as the branches hang low into my vege garden. And I stare wistfully through the fence into the other neighbour's property, where hundreds of feijoas rain down on the dirt and don't get eaten by anyone except the birds. When the sun comes out, and the feijoas on the ground get a bit warm and start to ferment, you can see the birds walking around all tipsy. This is what my cat waits for. :P (Don't worry, he is well fed and only really catches lizards).

I got a bucket load of stuff from the pharmacy last night. Enough bags that the other customers gave me funny looks. Ha.

Top left: pen needles, boxes of Optium test strips, orange plastic case: glucagon emergency kit, Humalog pen vials (insulin), small white and orange box: statin, small white bottle: ace-inhibitor, grey pens at the bottom of pic: Lantus (insulin)

This is actually a small haul for me, as it's the tail end a the prescriptions from my old GP. And how in hell did anyone think that 2 Lantus pens would last a month? I'm using 690 units per month, and one pen only hold 300 units if you're lucky. Stupid old GP. Can't wait to put in my shiny new prescription from my new GP. :)

Took my first dose of the statin and the ace-inhibitor (to PROTECT ZE KIDNEYS!) last night, and I've not had any way-ward symptoms today.

Oh, and had an insulin disaster *smack forehead* moment when I was packing all the above diabetes-crap away. I found out that 3 vials of my oh so carefully hoarded Humalog actually expired last October. So now my stash is significantly smaller. Although I haven't had the nerve to throw them away yet....better to keep them, just in case.

When you feel uncomfortable

For me, hell is other people.

Hubby and I have just returned from a 25th wedding anniversary party of a good friend of his. In fact, hubby was one of their groomsmen. 25 years ago I was 3 going on 4. My sister was only a month old.

I had a lot of trouble at the party, and not just my normal issues where I feel uncomfortable because I'm not drinking, don't know what to say, don't know anyone there, or am a good 20 years younger than everyone.

No, tonight was hard work because they were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. And I don't know if we will. After 25 years they have 3 kids, a fabulous home etc etc, and I don't know if we will have any of that. I hate when our age difference gets thrown in my face like that  :(

Note: hubby and I love each other very much, and we had a big hug and agreed that neither of us had particularly enjoyed the party and the speeches, but it seems for different reasons. Oh well. Life goes on.

Another note: turns out I am rather low. 3.7mmol/L. May explain the randomness of this post a bit. Today has been odd, food-wise. Woke late at about 11am, and Hubby made breakfast in bed: bacon, eggs, salad, toast. Yum. But a strange-late breakfast combined with a new insulin-carb ratio meant my day has been tough to manage. Blood-sugars = random. Then we completely missed lunch because we were trying to set up a new modem. MUST. HAVE. INTERWEBS! And of course, dinner at the party tonight. I got to try smoked Marlin. Very tasty, but no carbs in fish. Plus some stress, plus walking to and from the party = low.

Anothernother note: it has taken me 2.5 hrs and 1 James Bond movie ("Die another day"? "Never say die"? "Never say die another day?") on late night telly to write this  :P

I tried so hard, but my BG just wouldn't behave!

Ok so today was always going to be stressful and unpredictable: it was the first day of semester, welcoming students and the start of orientation week.

I woke up an hour early to make sure I had time to get dressed and looking presentable, make a tasty packed lunch (smoked warehou fish, green grapes, one plain slice of dark rye bread) and get to work in time to get a good spot at the welcome ceremony. (more on this later).

I was put in a foul mood by having a hypo in the night, and finding that I was sky high in the morning. I though I only ate a tiny bit of emergency food. Perhaps I should have just waited it out?

The commute to work usually takes me 7 mins. Today it was an unholy 28 minutes. I swore. A lot. I was late for the welcoming ceremony...

Here in NZ it's called a powhiri, and it's usually a very touching and moving event, one that makes you feel special to be a part of it. It's led by the Maori elders and the people attending split into two sides: those being welcomed (students) and those doing the welcoming (tutors and faculty staff). There is speech-making in both Te Reo and English, and karakia (songs) are sung by both sides. It's all about ensuring the proper spiritual protocols are followed, and when it goes according to plan it's beautiful. The students get welcomed onto the sacred learning space :)

Well. Nothing was technically wrong with the ceremony but four people fainted and had to be taken away by the first-aiders due to the heat! At 8.30am!!

Stress put me even higher, hitting 19mmol/L directly after the ceremony. And I had been clutching a fruitbar in my sweaty palm - just in case I went low!! Lol better to be safe...

I bolused twice during the morning, and only came back below 10 in the mid afternoon. Thankfully I had no classes to teach today, so it was just lesson planning and office work.


We had a special welcome for the art department students, and it was good to see all their bright nervous faces!

I then had to wait around for my teacher training class (in which I'm a student) which started late afternoon and ran right over dinnertime. D'oh! Luckily hubby had cooked me a tasty dinner when I finally got home.

Felt like I had the day of disaster blood sugars licked.

We popped round to see hubby's parents after dinner, cue tea and biscuits :) nom!

I had a shower, and I find showers either make me high or low afterwards, nor sure why, the heat maybe? Well, I scored a 24.9mmol/L

W.T.F!?

Oh. Yeah. That's right, you're supposed to take insulin with your dinner! Dumbass! Oh what a waste of all that work!

So now it's nearly midnite and I'm sitting up, testing every half hour to check I'm in fact coming down, and not going low. I'm exhausted, just want to go to sleep. Thought I would blog and let you know that you're all helping me stay awake and get my BGs back on track. Pat on your back :D

P.S. Please please please let my BGs behave tomorrow for my first class teaching of the year!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Saturday the 12th

Today my husband was diagnosed with kidney stones.

It was also the day of my great-aunt's funeral, and it is my Dad's birthday.

Poor hubby, he's in so much pain. It started last weekend where he checked with Dr Google and decided he had prostate cancer and was dying. Then it went away. It came back with a vengeance on Thursday night when he was visiting his parents. He said he was in so much pain he couldn't get off the couch. He agreed to book in with his GP for Friday....come Friday, he was fine again so didn't get to the doctor.

Of course, today it was back again. So he duly went to the emergency clinic while I travelled with my Mum to my great-aunt's funeral. She was 82, one of my late-Nana's sisters. It was good so see the remaining 3 sisters :)

After lunch, Hubby had a nap because the painkillers were making him dozy. I popped into town to pick up a card and present for Dad (and some "sensible" shoes for work - once I start teaching classes again I will be on my feet for a good portion of the day).

Hubby perked up this afternoon so we decided it would be ok to go to my Dad's birthday dinner. After all, it was at our FAVOURITE restaurant in town! Mmmm lurve Italian food!

The restaurant was very full and service was running slow. We had waited an hour and a half for food. My sister was looking a little seedy too as she has been recovering from a tummy-bug type illness. I looked over at Hubby and he was looking ashen all of a sudden. I took him home before the food arrived, because he was in pain and not having fun. I got back in 10 mins, and the food still hadn't arrived!

Dinner was great, Mum and Dad had a great night, and overall it was fun. But then my sister started feeling unwell, so we skipped dessert and went home.

What a day!

- - - - -

Oh, I went to the pharmacy (my GP did end up granting me the script) and asked for all my stuff:
- test strips
- Lantus
- Humalog
- 2 x glucagon kits
...and the pharmacist said "our records show you still have some of this, do you need it?"

"Yes, as you can imagine, I like to hoard this sort of stuff!"

"Oh, it's just that if you get it today there is a $2 after-hours surcharge on each item, being a weekend and all. But you can still get them if you need"

After-hours surcharge = dumb
Kind pharmacist who advises me of it, and lets me know that I can just pop in on the way home from work = good

I like my pharmacy :)

Sesame snack attack

Last night I had racehorse syndrome. And I couldn't figure out why.

I wasn't too high, I wasn't too low.

And then today it clicked. It was these:

Dark Chocolate Sesame Snaps from Golden Days

Oh my how they are tasty! And according to the nutritional info each pack of three slices was only 7g carbs! Yay! A tasty treat I can eat as a true snack!

NO.

That is not the case at all. Because you have read the pack wrong. For a whole week. Dummy. It's not 7g of carbs per pack, it's 7g PER SLICE!!! That means 21g carbs per pack! Oh woe!

On closer inspection, I also found that each slice has a whopping 10g of sodium, so that explains the racehorse: extra sugar, extra salt, extra tasty, extra-needing-to-pee!

*Marketed as a very tasty and nutritious, healthy snack. Unfortunately their website doesn't actually reveal the high levels of sugar and salt in their products. :(

Have you ever been tricked by food like this?

So sleepy

I'm now in my second week back at work after the Christmas break, and there are 3 things on my mind:

• why do I keep falling into an exhausted sleep at midday?
• when will I finally write the Christmas beach holiday post I promised you all?
• how on earth do I write a letter to my Member of Parliament asking for help with getting funding for IVF?

::sigh::

First things first: the tiredness.
Last week, I took 2 full afternoons off work, and each time as soon as I got home I fell into a coma-sleep until dinner time. Then there was the drama with the fish hook over the weekend, and then I got so exhausted with a migraine yesterday lunchtime I once again came home and fell asleep. I've taken iron tablets, and now I am taking B vitamins as well. Today seems to be ok so far, but I am dreading lunchtime because I'm afraid I will be too whacked to make it through the afternoon.

Lucky that I'm on a 3 week contract with another department here at the tertiary institute, because I don't have a real boss at the moment, which is great cos it means I can just slip home, sleep, then work in the evenings if I need to.

Second: the Christmas holiday beach post
Sometime this week I hope! I have a gazillion photos to download from my camera (last count I think it had close to 2000 photos waiting for download.) I'm hopeless at downloading...just love taking photos! haha

Third: the letter to the MP
This one is hard, because I know it's the next (read: only) step in our journey for IVF. I started re-writing what I had done already, but got part way through and turned into a mess of tears. It's so hard reading about the last year+ and all the crap we've been through, and knowing that this MP probably can't do much to help our particular case, and how am I supposed to approach this letter anyway? Everytime I start, it's too much. It's overwhelming. I have set myself a deadline to do it each week for the past 3 weeks and failed each time. I don't know whether to explain what's happened in great detail, or give bullet points, or just plain ol' beg for help?? I want to get a draft written and send it to my Endo, so he can give it the once over before I send it to the MP. I also want to be able to post it here first, to see what you all think.

Yeah, so today I am also starting the non-holiday food. That means, eat more fresh healthy stuff, and less "it's holiday time, fast food is ok!" food. Delicious cous cous with spring onions and chopped baby toms for lunch, with an apricot. Raisins and sesame crackers for snacks. No more bakery food for lunch! Makes me feel too ugh. Makes the diabetes too hard to predict. Fresh food always makes me happy.

How are you handling the back-to-work transition from the holidays?

I'm so happy I just did the washing!

Not happy about the washing, silly! Happy enough to DO the washing :)

I've just come back from my appointment with my endocrinologist, and the news is all good. My HbA1c is 6.6%, he couldn't believe it. Wanted to know what I was doing different? (Not much, just using the iPhone insulin calculator app, oh, and got a new, less stressful job). Anyway, because I still do get quite a few lows at night, and especially when I wake up, he recommended "backing off a bit". Which I think is a good idea. I will try dropping my evening dose of Lantus by 1 unit for a week, to see if that helps. I tried it for 2 days last week, but stopped because I got a couple of morning highs that I wasn't impressed with. If at first you don't succeed...

I have added this new result to TuAnalyze, even though they don't yet have a map for NZ:

How my HbA1c is tracking. Not too shabby! :)

Now for the bestest bit. Turns out that my endo has worked in the field of fertility before, so when he started asking how the IVF was going, and I told him how we had been denied funding based on a couple of irrational factors, he responded that it was an "irrational for of punishment" being dished out to us. Finally. Someone seems to get it. I can honestly say that I was not expecting him to say that, or to go further and offer to help us with the paper work and the fight for public funding, but he has. And I'm overjoyed. :D  I just couldn't believe it!!

At last some truly positive news. It feels like there is once again light at the end of the tunnel, where I had been coping in a grey-darkness for so many months.

We had a good discussion about how in New Zealand, where everyone is "equal" the cost of a particular health treatment should not matter. And if it does, then the patient should be means-tested for government funding. He noted that we are being unfairly denied public funding due to factors that we have no control over, such as a vasectomy in a previous marriage, kids from a previous marriage - neither of which we as a couple could affect. We also talked about how waiting will actually increase our chances of having a baby with Down's syndrome, or have me as a diabetic mother die during the process. Duh. "From a medical standpoint, waiting makes no sense whatsoever, it only serves as a cruel punishment to you." I agree. And it is good to know there may be some medical justification in not-waiting which could help advance our case.

Oh, he also recommended Hubby and I go make an appointment to see our local Member of Parliament, to let him know how the health system is failing us. Might just do that....

In other news, the semester has finished, and I gave my whole office Whittaker's Sante chocolate bars, and little cards. They have been in a chocolate stupor ever since!

Om nom nom nom!

I now have about 2.5 months of unemployment before my permanent contract with the local college/training institute kicks in. I shall spend the time:

• gardening (ate my first homegrown boysenberry yesterday - summer is here with a vengance (drought)
• building a website for our art department at work (my dept!)
• hunting down freelance jobs (more websites)
• hosting the whole fam-damily for Christmas lunch
• buying pressies
• watching my Hubby fish of the rocks, which I lie by the seaside up the coast with a book - our secret hideaway!
• eating fresh Kahawhai, or Snapper, or whatever is caught.

What are your Christmas Summer/Winter plans?

A sort of anniversary

So this will be short and sweet, but I just wanted to mark the start of October since it's roughly one year since we started this journey of diabetes and infertility. My bloggiversary occurs next April - I can't believe it's so far away, I feel like I've been writing for ever! haha  I will have to think up a special celebration for it.

Oh well, to mark the day, here is one of my favourite paintings. I actually made a reproduction of this work, in my student days (no, you can't see it!)   :)

Girl with a Pearl Earring - c.1665 -  Johannes Vermeer

My lovely hubby took me out for Indian for dinner tonight. Yum yum! Butter chicken my favourite (predictable, I know - but I only choose it about 50% of the time I eat Indian, honest!) Lots of poppa dams, naan bread, white rice, and fried tandoori things on a hot stone. Ooh food heaven!

I have to say, I am a very useful person to take out to dinner. You see, whenever I take out my test kit, the wait staff ALWAYS come over. It might be coincidence, but it's happened so many times (more than 100) that I think the waiters are just curious! What is she doing? hehe - anyway the upshot is that we get served pretty quickly!

The downside, with indian food, is I have no idea how to carb count it. :(

Actually, it would be helpful if I knew exactly how much I ate :P  But I just wolf it down, so hungry!

I had my first day back at work today after mid-semester break, and with a good breakfast test, and not much food (no grazing at the biscuit tin today!), and plenty of walking between classrooms, I went quite low during a staff meeting this afternoon. After treating that, then eating Indian for dinner meant a nice high just now. Ah well. Bolus. Then the painful part - staying awake long enough to know if it's "just right" and not going to send me plummeting overnight.

I also don't want to be high all night, as that will ruin me for the exhibition opening tomorrow (so excited!) Oh, question for you: do you get incredibly hungry when you are high sometimes? Like, ravenous? It's weird, my symptoms seem to have done a flip-flop over the last couple of months. I just want to eat the cupboards bare when I'm high, and (TMI warning, advance apologies, avert your eyes etc) I need to pee like a racehorse when I'm low. Weird I know - I've never been one to do things by the book :P

Some heavy lifting required...

New day, new job, new desk, new colleagues. What you do is this:

• say hi to the new colleagues. Cos they're a great bunch. Then get freaked out when they tell you about some of the "interesting" students you will be teaching in a week. What?! A WEEK!!!!?! *faint*
• go on a tiki-tour of the campus with your boss. Cos she's one tough cookie on the outside but a big sweetheart on the inside. Meet a gazillion new people, and fail to remember their names or jobs.
• tell your office buddies that you are diabetic. Cos you want them to shower you in sugar should anything bad happen. Get told a story about another bloke who works there who regularly "has comas" and "doesn't carry sandwiches in his bag."
• break your computer. Cos it's crappy and you really want a new one. Shame it turns out that it's not broken at all. It's just you can't log-on to the network. Start fiddling with the cables. Your boss and office buddy start helping. Find a bunch of dust and junk and rubbish behind desk. Start cleaning. Don't stop for two and a half hours.
• mention that your desk is a funny shape. Watch with amazement as your new colleagues re-organise their entire office to give you a nice, normal, rectangular desk. Many filing cabinets were harmed in the making of this movie. :P
• Sit down at nice clean workstation, with nice shiny new ring-binders and staplers, and try to write weekly outlines for 4 x courses. Get one partly done. Sigh. Mañana.

I am exhausted. My mind is mush. Hubby's iPhone arrived and he is devoted to it which is sweet. He cooked me a scrummy-yummy dinner of steak, mini-roast spuds, and a carrot, zucchini, olive and garlic sautee thingy. Om nom nom nom.

And that is only Monday!

Pasta, Puzzles, and Lawyers

Got myself a lawyer today. A really nice one. Yes, she is going to charge me the earth :P

But it feels really good to know that what my boss did to me was officially very illegal. I'm not crazy, and you can't just offer someone the choice between resigning or taking redundancy. It just don't work like that! So now I have some backup, and a plan, and I feel much better.

Had a morning tea get together with some of my mates from my ex-work. They are pretty shaken up about the whole thing. Giving me big hugs, lots of advice, and telling me how they're now looking over their shoulders all the time. That's really sad. I will be ok, but I'm worried about them having to continue working under those conditions. There are not many options in our little city.

One of my good friends brought her young son, and as she is currently on maternity leave, I hadn't seen her in about a week. She's the same friend who was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Her little boy has grown up so much since I saw him last, he was running around and generally being adorable. And of course, she looked absolutely radiant! I talked to her about how I wasn't sure how being unemployed would affect our plans for IVF. Especially since I will now not get maternity leave. She basically said it wasn't that much money anyway, and being on a single income shouldn't really stop us from doing what we want. Made me feel good anyway, stopped me thinking that my life depends on work!

We've got the kids this weekend, and I made a yummy pasta bake which they basically slurped up before it was out of the oven! After a was-jig puzzle and some telly, I am sooooo ready for the weekend!

Once again, thank you to everyone our there on the interwebs for your supportive comments and emails. You rock! Gold stars all round! :D

It's the little things

So, I've been a bit slack this week. My poor blog got a bit neglected, but I hope you will all forgive me with this post!

I went to see my dietician on Thursday. It was fantastic. Absolutely, I couldn't have asked for better. She understands.

She looked over my log book, which is jam-packed with my tiny scribblings, and assumed that I was on a pump due to the sheer amount of information I collect. And how often I test. And how I'm trying to get my carb counting down pat. I took that as a Good Thing, since she followed up by saying I was doing all that was possible without a pump! Finally, can I get a hell-yeeah! :D

Looking over the book, she was able to spot some wonky high numbers in the past week and a half. I explained that I couldn't explain them, so she explained that in each instance they were caused by me having a meal with high fat content. This meant that I would give my insulin, get a low cos the food hadn't "kicked in" soon enough, and then go high about 2 - 4 hrs later when the fatty meal got digested, by which time there was no Humalog left in my system. What a great explanation! Actually helpful! :D She was able to sort out what ALL of my wonky numbers were caused by.

The other reason was when my carb counts were a bit off, and this would always be caused by eating a meal that I didn't cook - restaurants, bakeries, hubby's cooking etc. Yummy but unpredictable. :P

I feel so empowered to know these two little piece of information. It's like everything has just slotted into place since seeing her. Here is a day of test results from

BEFORE: 12.6, 15.4, 12.1, 8.6, 2.5, 16.3, 15.5, 11.7

OK so that day was nothing special, a couple of highs and only one low. But look where I'm at now!

AFTER: 5.4, 9.0, 6.7, 6.6, 8.2, 5.4, 6.6, 6.1, 6.3 - this is today :D So steady, nothing above 9.0, no hypos, no lows. Wahoo!

At the end of the appointment, she enquired about my next visit to see my nurse educator, and then she offered to share our next appointment so I get to see both of them at once! I love getting my docs in the same room together. Especially when one of them seems to understand me so well, and the other sometimes seems to mistrust my ability to a) carb count or b) dose insulin correctly. For the record, I think I do rather well, considering I've never actually been formally taught either topic. :P

Meeting with my dietician has just proved that a well trained sympathetic eye can spot issues that need refining. I finally feel like I'm getting a handle on this. I mean, honestly, I haven't had a day as stable as today in years. I feel great. :) It's the little things that make me happy. See also:

In other news, you may not be aware but I am a photographer. Or at least I'm trying to be. I've joined up with my local camera club, and got myself a shiny piece of camera apparatus. I entered a competition "people, portraits, stories", and won an honours with this image of my gorgeous little sister:

So that's my happy post for this week :) It's a long weekend here, which makes me even happier!

This just proves how random my diabetes really is

I thought I could best describe it with a picture:

Click to see a larger version

Notice the little "average" icon on the right. Yes, 8.7 - is that awesome or what!? (The green indicates my target range, between 4 and 8mmol/L).

I'm normally an average of about 10 mmol/L, so that little number makes me very happy to see :) (Thanks Log for Life!)

But it has come at a cost, as you can see from today's graph, I've been low three times already.
Trust me when I say I am starting to feel the effects of it. Getting tired, brain is just a constant fog and I can't concentrate on anything for more than a minute. I've been eating fruit bars like there's no tomorrow, and even switched to having sugar in my tea today instead of Equal, but I keep going low. Must be because I had a very light dinner last night - hubby is learning to cook vegetarian and he made a delicious cauliflower soup. Don't make that face! It honestly was delicious, with potatoes, celery and almonds. Yum! But not many carbs.

I normally eat about 150 - 170g carbs per day, and I don't know whether that counts as a low carb diet or not, it's just what I eat. I try to eat sensible food, but if you put something tasty in front of me, I will probably eat some of it. And test and inject to cope with it. No strict meal plans or anything. Which makes life...interesting. :P

And yes, I am blogging while low. haha. I will probably need to cull this post tomorrow!