Happy Diabetes Art Day everyone! I hope you all were able to participate and make your own D art. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just something to express your feelings about diabetes in art form. Some people have taken pictures of supplies, others have drawn them. More information about it can be found on Lee Ann Thill’s blog, The Butter Compartment. (Don’t you just love the name of her blog!?? I smile every time I think about it!)

As for my contribution, it was SOO last minute. I did mine last night after making a quick trip to Wal-Mart for some supplies and after shaking some used D supplies out of the sharps container. *Note to self: NEVER ever stick your finger into the bottle to get more out. You can poke yourself! There’s sharp objects in there, after all!!!*

 “D24/7”

I call this "D24/7" because that's what diabetes is. Day and night, there are blood sugar checks and insulin dosages given. Day and night are separated by blood - inside the blood is the bg tests at any given time of day and the tubing represents the insulin to balance it out.

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Also, tonight is DSMA (Diabetes Social Media Advocacy). If you are on twitter, you can use Tweetchat to follow along in the discussion. If you aren’t on twitter, I would like to encourage you to sign up for an account and follow along and participate with the discussions on Wednesday nights at 9pm EST. DSMA lasts for an hour and averages about 4-5 Discussion questions. If you’d like more information about DSMA or would like to see some of the previous topics, click here to go to the DSMA site.

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And, last, but certainly not least, is a personal topic. It was on this date five years ago that I met my husband for the very first time.

We had spoken on the phone every night for three nights prior and finally decided to go on a date. See, he and I were set up on a blind date by his mom and my aunt. They work together and thought it would be a good idea since we are about the same age and had a lot in common. Getting the date started was a little rough in the beginning because he got lost trying to find my house. He felt a little lost and silly for getting lost once he got there, but by the middle of the date, I was the one feeling silly.

I had picked the movie and since I didn’t know much about him and he didn’t know a lot about me other than what we had discussed over the phone, I decided on one that seemed “safe”. Safe meaning not an action flick, but not a chick flick either. Well, sure enough, it was “safe” alright… a little too “safe”. I picked Valiant. A kids movie about a carrier pigeon who wants to become a hero in Great Britain's Royal Air Force Homing Pigeon Service during World War II. I was as embarrassed as I could be after we left. I apologized over and over. I honestly thought to myself I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy drops me off and never calls me back.

But that’s not how it ended at all (obviously). We went and ate at Chick-Fil-A, and he took me home. It was a nice evening. The date didn’t seem like a date really, it was almost like going out with a friend. A friend that you were taking the relationship to the next level with. There were butterflies, but there was comfort as well. He held my hand on the way home, and kissed me good night. (Yes, I know, “don’t kiss on the first date”!, but I kinda broke that rule for him)

And that’s how the story of Erik and Sarah began.

So, Big E, if you’re reading this, I want to say that I love you. Thank you for the past wonderful, fun-filled 5 years. Thank you for accepting me as I am – craziness and flaws included.

Of all the things asked for this year for my birthday, there were two things I wanted in particular. One was my piano, and from my prior post, you can see that my darling husband and his father delivered it safe and sound to my house.

The other was a three-year paid Medic Alert subscription. Yeah. I know. That’s what every girl dreams of getting for her birthday, right? Well, this one did. For gone are the days when all I had to list was “Type 1 Diabetes – Insulin Pump”. Now there’s the whole list of things…

Type 1 Diabetes – Animas Insulin Pump, uses Novolog insulin

Hypothyroidism – 137mcg Synthroid daily

Allergy to Cleocin (antibiotic) and Contraindication for Tylenol.

Continuous Glucose Monitor

… and a few other things to boot.

All that can’t be fit onto a standard bracelet. Granted, my alert now says on the back “Diabetes – Insulin Pump”, but that was back before all the other stuff was added. But, at least it has my member number and all so they can call and get the rest of my info and I’ll also have a card to keep in my meter case as well.

I know it should be the last thing on earth for a diabetic to ask for on their birthday, but I have transitioned from asking for things I want to things that I need. I needed my membership to be renewed. I needed the security of thinking that if something were to happen, medical personnel would have what they need to keep me alive to see another birthday. So, instead of paying for it by the year, thanks to everyone from my side of the family, I now have a jump start and am covered for the next 3 years.

(The blue circle bracelet is my Who’s Your Link bracelet, which can be purchased by giving at least a $5 donation to the JDRF on the “Who’s Your Link?” site.)

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who have posted happy birthday wishes on my facebook wall and on twitter. I feel as if I have been hugged by the whole DOC, and I’m so thankful for that. I love you guys more than I can say!

Yesterday, my boss and his wife surprised me with a cake. Normally, they just tell me happy birthday and hand me a card with some birthday money inside. But this time, they actually went and got me a cake and presented it to me while singing “Happy Birthday”. They are the greatest people I have ever worked for, and they hold a special place in my heart.

Last night, Big E took me to Olive Garden to eat a nice dinner. I chose the Steak and Gorgonzola Alfredo pasta. It was sooo wonderful to be able to eat regular pasta again as a treat for my birthday! That, with a glass of red wine on the side was just heavenly! Of course, seeing as how this was already 138g of carb, I opted to skip the apple pie and ice-cream dessert and savor just the classic “Olive Garden” Andes mint.

This morning, to off-set my high-carb/high-caloric meal from last night and any pizza, cake, and ice-cream I may consume today, I thought I’d make an effort to visit the gym. I Zumba’ed to my hearts content for the hour-long class. Afterwards, my mother-in-law (who Zumba’s with me), treated me to breakfast. I chose a strawberry-banana smoothie from McDonalds. Man, those things are SO delicious!!!

The one thing I reeeeeeeeeeaaaalllly wanted for my birthday today was for my husband to bring over my piano from my mom’s house. It was given to me when I was 18 years old by my mom and dad. They had gotten it from a local rotary club that didn’t want it anymore. The only thing we had to do is pay to replace a few keys and have it tuned. I have loved this piano ever since then. When I got married, it was the one thing I couldn’t take with me at the time because we were staying in my dad’s cabin. Not that it couldn't’ have been moved down there, but we knew we weren’t going to be staying there, so we opted to leave it until we got a house of our own. Now we have our house and it’s taken us two additional years to move it, but it’s finally here! Big E and his dad went and got it this morning, and now it’s here, and I can play to my heart’s content.

Now, of course, just because it’s my birthday, I cannot ignore the regular D stuff. Checking bgs have still been just as often, and today was even site-change day. I also had to change out my Dexcom sensor a few days early because my sensor I just put in Wednesday was irritating me and now I have a welt on my leg from it. But overall, today has been good. Captain 100 even decided to visit, see??

Now, I’m off to my birthday party at my sister’s house. Diabetes has been nice to me so far today. I’ll wish for the same to happen all year when I blow out my candles tonight.

Sorry for my rant post yesterday. Sometimes I get so frustrated and writing about it is just my way of getting it out. Sometimes it’s the only way I can get past my slump, clear my mind, and move back into my “Super-D” mode and get back in the fighting ring. So that’s where I am. Back in the ring, ready to fight again.

**For the men, this may be digging into too much TMI**

After much thought and calculation, I can only attribute what’s been going on to hormones. Not PMS, but ovulation. Heck, women can determine an ovulation time when your basal body temperature rises due to a change in hormones, so why can’t diabetic women chart ovulation with changes in bg’s and insulin needs as well? I may have already covered this before, but this is the first time I have had steady enough bg’s before hand to really test this theory. There is nothing else that has been going on that I can think of that has caused such a change in my insulin needs, and prior to this happening, I had wonderful bgs. So, for this, I have activated the additional basal profiles in my Ping pump and set the “Other” option to equal what the Temp basal increases have been during these past few days. 

Now, late yesterday and today, I have been going back to my regular insulin needs, so I have switched my basal rate back to the “Weekday” profile on my basal. I really wish you could rename these rates, since my typical weekday rates are the same for the weekend, I just adjust my Saturday and Sunday rate according to what I need via temporary basal rate. Not because I don’t think they are useful, but I like having the idea that when I set a temp basal, it’s used only for that time period, and I don’t have to remember to go back into the pump to switch the basal profile again. Besides, what am I going to do for the weekends that I’m not “hormonal”? That would mean there needs to be yet another basal rate. Which goes back to my theory of needing them to let us name the rates. That way I can have one called “Regular”, one called “PMS/OV”, one for “Other” or “Sickday”, and an “Exercise” one. Otherwise, you’d need one for Week days, Weekends, PMS/OV weekdays, PMS/OV weekends, sick days, and exercise.

I dunno.. maybe I’m making it way more complicated than it is. Which, that’s very easy for me to do. especially since getting the Ping. Not only do I have 4 different basal rate profiles to choose from, I also now have increments of 0.025 to play with and minipulate so help me set an exact basal rate, which has proven to be a good and a bad thing. Why? Because I catch myself wanting to lower 0.025 here and go up 0.075 there.. just to see if it really makes that much of a difference in my blood sugars. I’m like a mad woman testing this and testing that to see if it helps flatten out my bgs so that they look like an almost perfect line on the dexcom. And I know that by doing that, I’m setting myself up to fail, but it’s a goal. It’s something to work towards. Everyone needs goals, reachable and unreachable. Because if we set goals that we know are reachable, we’ll never try harder than we know we have to to try to reach the unreachable one.

So, ladies, what do you do? Do you set a temp basal or start over and create a new basal rate profile for PMS/OV?