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...

My clever idea

Oh my goodness! The number of dates and appointments I've got to deal with!

All of the blood tests I have to do need to be done on specific days of my cycle. I have pre-surgery appointments coming out my ears, and I need to ensure that the surgery itself doesn't occur on my period!

So I have begun using two systems to help me:

• Google Calendar
• Hormonal Forecaster

Google Calendar is great, because I can share the calendar with my hubby, so he gets fair warning of what is when. And it has the fantastic feature of SMS text message reminders to your cellphone. This will be great for me, so I can remember when to take all these tests, and see all these doctors, at the right time. It also means I won't have to use my work calendar, cos this is not really the sort of stuff to be putting on that! It's also online, so I can access it from anywhere I have an internet connection.

Hormonal Forecaster is a great little piece of software that you can download and try out, although it does cost to get a full registered version. It's not too expensive, when you think of all the "period math" it saves you from! I use it to track the length of my cycles, and estimate when and if I am ovulating. I want to do all I can to try and figure out if I'm fertile and functioning before proceeding with any fancy fertility treatment. As far as we know, I'm fine, and hubby's swimmers are fine (as evidenced by 3 bouncy kids). It's just a vasectomy getting in our way.

So it's technology to the rescue!