I want OFF this damn rollercoaster! Can you help?

Next week the students come back and I will be in teaching mode again. That will be exhausting but challenging work which I'm looking forward to.

The week just gone has been absolutely frenetic, with last minute course prep (still not done, and it's Sunday!), moving the entire Art department into a newly refurbished facility, oh yeah, and 3 days of compulsory academic staff training!! It's been super nuts.

I know my diabetes control has been degrading. It's like, seriously crappy at the moment. Here's the last 7 days for you:



(Apologies for having to twist your neck to see that!)

As you can see, I'm all over the map. There are some trends, which I guess are a blessing as it may just mean the Lantus (basal) dose is screwed up:




Massive peaks and troughs = massive headaches, tiredness, grumpiness, and brain-fogginess :(

So what I'm doing about it is some intensive tracking and analysis to see if I can figure out where the hell I'm going so wrong. I've just purchased Diabetes Diary for iPhone and that's where I got the pretty graphs. Have to say that so far, I'm liking this app the best of all. And I've tried most of them!

I'd been using the Insulin Calcilator app, made by the same folks (http://www.fridayforward.com/) for nearly a year now and I credit it with a 1.5% drop in my HbA1c, so I figured their diary app was worth a shot too. I like how the two apps work together. I can take a bloodsugar test, enter the results into the Insulin Calculator, then just press a button and it transfers all the data across to the Diabetes Diary, where I can add more info and make adjustments. Cool eh? :)

I think it's really good that I'm back in intensive analysis mode, because if 10+ bloodsugar tests a day aren't giving nice smooth control there must be something else going on. And I can't find it without graphs, averages, and data to help me.

Let's be clear: I test constantly. I inject semi-religiously, and I track it all in my paper log book:



But that doesn't give the instant clarity of a graph, or the insight of weekly averages. I hope this system helps. I suspect it will. I've done this intensive analysis thingy before and it has always had positive results, even if only minor.

BTW, if you can spot any major issues for me by looking at the graphs, please let me know in the comments. All help on nutting this one out is appreciated. :)

I take Lantus twice a day (11u breakfast, 9u dinner), and bolus with Humalog. I'm incredibly sensitive to changes in insulin, and am on child-size doses of Humalog. My I:C ratio is 1:14. I eat between 90 - 180g carbs per day including emergency food like juice and stuff. I walk, weather permitting :P And I work hard and get pretty stressed out at times, which never helps. Anything else you would like to know so you can help, let me know in the comments. Cheers everyone.

- 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 :)

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!

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...