A Haiku

Last month I saw a few of these on other blogs and felt inspired myself...

Do I still like fruit?
She wonders distractedly.
Post-prandial spike. 

Veggie platter-pus

Breaking news. Veggie trays at parties. Have they always been there people? That poor neglected crudite plate is a real diabetic office party free carb free for all smorgasbord game changer. That plus guacamole have helped me through more than a few awkward skinny girl with diabetes but why are YOU counting carbs disdainful convos.

Any other party tips party people?

*crickets crickets-*

Perhaps you're all out partying...

$1,000,000,000 later....

The influence of bloggers is scary sometimes...

Not myself personally (obviously), but others. Two things happened recently to make me reflect on the power and impact that the internet gives certain people in your life.

One of my diabetes guru bloggers, the one who introduced me to the DOC basically, was talking about getting burnt out on blogging, and being unsure if she wanted to continue. When I read that, I honestly felt like a life raft was being grabbed away...a bizarre feeling considering I have never even met this woman...don't live in the same state as her...and (creepily) have never even interacted with her, even online! Yet somehow, knowing she's out there, living her life, following along, it's comforting for me. I don't even have any real diabetes friends in real life, but she has served as my entryway into this new phase of my own life. And I don't want her gone. I don't want to hear about her burnout, because I am afraid for my own burnout.

The second, more unfortunate influence is on my bank account. For all you non-diabetes people out there, a super-fun side effect of DKA is that, when you finally do start to recover, your poor, stressed-out, starved body celebrates its revival by letting out a big sigh of relief....and with that sigh...it also lets go of most of your hair. Seriously. We're talking falling out in clumps, hair braided into your bedsheets, decorating the back of your shirts, tangled in your brush, you name it, there was hair there. And it's not only hair...it's eyelashes, it's eyebrows, it's mustache hairs (okay yeah I was kind of thankful for that one). It's something I can get into another time, but having this happen was a VERY vulnerable experience for me. I'm not sure if it was some displaced issues about the words "incurable disease," but the hair loss made me sadder, madder, and more scared than anything else happening to me. So I started some GNC hair vitamins, I cut my hair short, I read up on the internet, and I hoped and hoped it would grow back.

Weeeeeelllll it's not quite there yet, but it has certainly stopped falling out at least. And in the meantime, I've upped my quest for hair-thickening, volumizing products...which led me to a few beauty blogs....which led me to a few more beauty blogs...which led me to a massive Sephora.com order (they just offer so many free samples!) (it's so hard to tell how small 2 oz is when you're buying online!)....which was probably a bad decision.

But when your hair is see-through in your shadow, and your eyelashes are missing....well, what can I say? Your judgement gets a bit cloudy. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I feel I can claim this as a medical deduction on my taxes.

Maybe this time...

Do you ever just sometimes like....not bolus for something? Like a really tiny, but still very sugary snack? Like say...a couple of Girl Scout cookies? And kind of cross your fingers and think well maybe....just maybe....I can sneak this in WITHOUT the trouble of whipping out my kit and beep-beep-booping all that nonsense in?

And then do you even kind of get away with it for like 20 minutes while your Dexcom arrow stays like --> and you think wow! Maybe this time...

And then an hour later, when you're at 217 you think to yourself sarcastically...wow. Maybe this time, what? 

Data Dump

In the days around the deliciousness known as Valentine's Weekend 2015, we were lucky enough to have a slew of fun visitors and activities to fill our time.

Being teachers, we were also lucky enough to have a slew of chocolate filling our bags, piling out onto the bedroom floor, and just generally hovering temptingly in all directions. (Side note: I quickly googled whether or not it was a "slough of" or "slew of"...do the google for yourself and then imagine a slough of chocolate...DREAM COME TRUE!!)

For all the days when I eat the same exact breakfast, roughly the same lunch, do the same work routine, and keep myself "easily" in-range (until dinnertime at least...damn you dinnertime and my utter lack of ability to accurately pre-bolus/carb-count you), there are times when I convince myself that the big D is in fact, no big D.

And then.

Then there are humbling days like the weekend I just had, where my average estimated A1C on NightScout jumps 1% in just a week. I forced myself to do a data dump today to check out the new Dexcom Portait on the Web and compare it to NightScout, and well, the results were a bit unpleasant to say the least.

Not as unpleasant as the sluggish, dazed, stomach-twisting, elevator-whizzing-up-too-fast feeling that I suffered through a few too many times this weekend though.

It's almost like when they tell you that junk food is bad for you....they literally mean because it's like really bad for you...

Having the Dexcom often feels like this awesome sensation of a window being cut into my body for me to look through and observe my systems working. (Note: NOT LIKE THIS COW WITH A HOLE CUT INTO ITS SIDE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY4QkhwQMRA THAT IS GROSS. THIS IS METAPHORICAL) It's fascinating and addicting to connect the dots between "bad" food, "good" food, energy levels, and my blood sugars. So when I see how french fry and brie-and-baguette dinners affect me on all these levels, it's a potent lesson for next time I'm making these choices.

There are still some things I'm pretty powerless against though...like this dang 2 lb box of See's Dark Chocolate Truffles that's sitting  on my bed right now.

Well, Rome wasn't built in a day...and I suspect my dream A1C of 4% won't be either...

Underqualified

I am an educator with diabetes. As such, I also fill the role of diabetes educator in my day to day interactions. It's strange to feel that I'm regarded as an expert in something that still feels so strange and unknowable to me, but my students ask me questions about diabetes as wholeheartedly as they ask me about long division. As hard as we work to cultivate the attitude that we are all working together in the classroom, that the teacher is not in charge of learning, there are certain realities to the situation. They are so young that I am still their mystic, their guide through the murky waters of all matters first grade and beyond. And diabetes is part of that beyond. So we have discussions about when and if it's okay to touch my Omnipod, especially when it's tantalizingly placed on my upper arm. We talk about sugar as medicine, about the idea of a disease lasting forever. We talk about who can get diabetes, how you know if someone has it. We go through metaphor after metaphor, discuss drug trials and Google images of beta cells.

We also, more key I think, discuss how to talk about these things. It's here that I struggle the most, because I am still grappling in my life about what makes me feel good and bad in relation to diabetes. We don't say sugar (or anything) is bad for YOU in our class anymore. We have substituted sayings like, it's not healthy for ME to have too much sugar because telling others about themselves feels bad at any age. We talk about the phrase "you don't look sick" makes people feel. How growing hysterical over other people's news takes the focus away from them and doesn't help. And so much more. Constantly. It's exhausting, and I often feel like I've flubbed, or gotten cut off, but that's life in the classroom. So after every discussion I try to make a mental note and, like any part of my curriculum, I know that I'll improve it next time.  

I just don't see what's wrong with enjoying a nice glass of wine with a pancake...

Tonight, to celebrate the end of a long workweek and enjoy the stormy weather, BF and I decided to make the meal of the Gods, AKA Brinner. A tradition in many families, breakfast-for-dinner is a divine idea best described in the title quote of this entry by Turk from Scrubs (holla at a fellow diabetic!).

Yes...yes he is. And so am I!!
Source: http://www.dvdizzy.com/images/q-s/scrubs7-03.jpg

In the nature of all things Internet-worthy though, things didn't quite go so smoothly...

In a small effort to be healthy, lower carb, and less double arrows pointing straight up for me, we attempted to make some delicious, low-carb, high-protein, banana and almond flour waffles. Specifically, these ones here: http://foodbabe.com/2013/03/01/banana-nut-waffles/ . Don't click on the link yet, we're going to play a little game...

Here are two images of this recipe, side by side. Guess which one is ours, and which one is Food Babe's: 

If you guessed this one...you're right!

Let me tell you something though. These waffles were survivors. They might have been doctored up with some extra almond flour/water to compensate for not enough bananas, they might have gotten dumped in the wet/dirty sink as they were being scraped out of the waffle iron, they might have been slightly burnt and crumbled from being scraped out of the iron...but they actually still tasted pretty darn good. Certainly better than the burnt and oily hash browns and the cold fried eggs. 

Imagine what they could have been with a little more TLC...maybe I will have the BF make them again and I'll post a little follow up!! 

The bright side is, we spent the evening laughing hysterically, remembering this and other epic fails on both our parts...like the time I nearly started a grease fire trying to casually wash a scorched pan...or the time he moved all the furniture in our room only to find his wallet sitting on the shelf where it normally was...under a pile of papers...

It soon moved on to reminiscing about stupid fights we've had. Anyone else ever fought about taking turns on Bejeweled before?!?!

*Crickets, crickets*

Maybe I should be embarrassed...well I guess it's a good thing there's no audience to really be embarrassed in front of :)