I may have been quiet, but I haven't fallen off the map completely!

Yep, took a two week break from blogging, from thinking, from doing much at all except throwing myself into my new job - which I love by the way! I just want to let you all know that I'm ok, kind of. :P

Thank you to everyone for your kind thoughts and emails. It's helped more than you can know.

After getting the news that apparently we would not be eligible for publicly-funded IVF treatment we didn't know what to do at first. "Grieve" seemed to be the natural response. Then get bloody angry!

But then I remembered a New Zealand organisation called Fertility NZ. They offer advice, advocacy, education, information, and support for those New Zealanders affected by infertility. I had nowhere else to turn, so I wrote them an email. It's not everyday I spill my most private thoughts and fears to a stranger on the end of an email address, but I seriously felt like I was out of options.

Less than two hours later, a super-lovely woman who shall be called S emailed back asking for more information. I had to wait two days to get a lunch hour long enough, but I called her and we spoke for an hour. It was the best conversation - helped me to realise that I'm not crazy and what has happened to us is not right. Not right at all. (If you want the details, please read here and here.)

S advised us to get together a list of questions to put to the fertility clinic, to try and figure out this whole mess. So I've been doing that. And working a demanding new teaching job, and doing freelance web design work on top of all that. Trust me, my brain is full!

On the diabetes front, things have been interesting. Take a look at the last two weeks numbers:

Breakfast numbers under 10mmol/L. Woohoo!

Check out those breakfast numbers! Two whole weeks and only one result above 10mmol/L. I don't think that has ever happened to me in 22 years of blood testing! :) Woohoo! And why did it occur? Well, I have decided it's because I'm not stressed about my old job anymore. I can't believe that I stayed there, and actually did myself physical damage. Well, now I have proof - stress is bad for you. Duh. (Umm, yes, in case you were wondering, that is a smudge of blood in the top right corner. Eww)

From my desk at my new work, here's a 11.1mmol/L reading, next to my log book, which got all smeared with blood when I failed to notice my finger was bleeding. Oh yeah, and I was teaching a class at the time. So that was interesting: I had to stop and fossick around for a tissue! haha :P My students won't forget that class in a hurry!

I hate these stupid people on the cover.

So that's the rough guide to my last couple of weeks. Better blood sugars, stupid fertility clinic, and working to 10pm most nights to write 4x courses, so I can teach them the following day.

Oh, and I had an appointment with my diabetes nurse educator. You know, the one who always makes me cry. Well, surprisingly, it went very well. She saw my new numbers, my new insulin calculator on my iPhone, my new carb-ratios, and my new carb-counting and proclaimed me to be doing very well. Actual praise. Wow! :)

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!

Log for Life - Diabetes Tracking Software

Diabetes is a disease all about data. You do blood tests several times a day, you count how many carbohydrates you eat, you note the amount and type of insulin you inject, and you record the time at which everything happens.

I'm a really good logbook-er. I have kept a written log book of my blood test results and related info for over 20 years. But since it's a paper record, I can't get all the juicy insights out of it that I need.

My main goal is to lower my HbA1C result safely, without having too many hypos/lows in preparation for the IVF treatment.

So I started testing out several pieces of online, desktop, or mobile software solutions for diabetes tracking. And I have found a winner! Unfortunately, it's not free, but nothing good is these days :P

It's called http://www.logforlife.com/ and it's an online system that was developed by a diabetic - so he has a bit of inside knowledge!

It costs $9 US p/month, which translates to about $15 p/month NZD, so it's not a cheap option for me. But I decided that the results I got in the 30 day trial period were too good to ignore. And I felt that it is a safe option, since there is no set time you have to sign up for; it's a cancel anytime thing, which I like :)

The best part of Log for Life is that you can enter multiple entries all at once. All the other software I tried out only let you enter one item at a time. (I wrote to several of them pointing out that this could mean I would have to enter 30+ entries a day! I'm not wanting to be a data-entry person! I have a life!)

But what I love best about it, is that you get some analysis of the data by clicking the Reports button. It shows you averages for blood test, medications taken, exercise, carbs, and weight.

It gives you a scattergraph that shows where all the results for the last month are on each hour of the day. That lets me see trends I had never noticed before. See the pic below and notice how you can see the meals quite clearly:


And here is what the day-to-day log book graph looks like. That little squiggly line under the larger graph is actually showing the last 4 weeks. With this I have been able to spot a trend of high test towards the end of each bottle of Lantus. So I have started changing them earlier to try and avoid the bad spikes in blood sugar. Very useful!


The other features that worked in favour of this software was the fact that they have a matching iPhone App so I could, in theory do away with the paper based log book altogether. Just got to find the money for an iPhone or iPod Touch! And the fact that you can share your data with other folks, like your doctor, or your family. Very nice. I am going to introduce my endocrinologist to this software on Monday, and I hope he likes it cos he's forever complaining that he can't understand my log book! We will see...