Real People Sick and other Bits 'n' Pieces

• I'm real people sick. I hate it. I don't feel human, because my head feels like a doll's head - all stuffed with cotton batting. It makes me and my blood glucose kind of cranky.
• I took this pic some days ago. It's from the category "you know you're a PWD when..."
  

  Spots, gushers, smearings - you know you're a diabetic when blood is everywhere.

• I participate in the World Diabetes Day Postcard Exchange organized by Lee Ann and I dropped my postcard the week before last. I hope it arrives on time and I'm so excitedly waiting for the reply!
  
• I might be participating in a clinic study, which will be testing a Lantus-like insulin. The preliminary physical examination has yet to take place, but up to now everything sounds good and very interesting. I'll keep you updated!

Plan of Action needed

My A1c has been in the high sevens for quite a while now and while I am overall satisfied with my "compliance" and control, I'm eager to get to the next level of blood glucose control. Especially with my eye doctor appointment coming up in January, I want to be able to say "I really am doing everything that's possible". Because in case of a discouraging result I don't want to have to start working on my control when I am scared and frustrated already.

I think that a large part of my A1c has to be accounted to post-prandial spikes as those high's are the ones I don't catch. Unfortunately, before I can get started on tuning the distance of the space-time events "bolusing" and "eating" to give my insulin a head start, I have to guarantee that my basals are ok and that my bolus factors and correction factors are ok. (I think they are, but I need to check.)
My next blood work is scheduled for mid November. I guess I can figure out the prerequisites until than although I hate basal testing.

So the plan of action is as follows:

1. Check your basals. Check your factors. Tweak if necessary. Complete task until November 16 (date of blood test).
2. Vary time delay between bolusing and eating until post-prandials are in range. Complete task until January 26.

But this planning is of course the easy part. Everything's easy in theory. The hard part is: Start logging again. Be disciplined. Don't guestimate. Eat regularly. Try again, every day. Start now.

Hopefully this decleration of my goals will help to keep me accountable. I'd like to have smaller steps in my plan, like things to do or to improve for every week or so, but I'm not sure how to do that.

By the way, does any of you have experiences with fat-protein units? Is it worth the effort?

Venting and Ranting

I hate being sick. And I even more hate to be sick, when I'm don't know that I am. When I feel completely fine^* and just my friggin bs gives a hint on the fact that something might not be okay. There's nothing I can do about it, other than treating the second bs over 300 mg/dl today and now also ketones. I'd like to eat something at some point!

I just feel so at the mercy and pretty vulnerable because I do not - cannot - understand what's happening inside me.
Also it's only few weeks since this happend the last time and I'm really fed up with this. At least this time I'm not frightend, I'm just angry.

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* By fine I mean fine despite the dry mouth, evolving hunger due to meal skipping and named emotions.

Eyes

On Thursday I had an appointment with my eye doctor. Unlike many other diabetics (it seems) I've never been afraid of the results of my eye exam because they have always turned out "without pathological findings". Only this time they did. In my right eye the doctor found few small bleedings and the information sheet for my two-in-one doctor & diabetologist (who's a type 1 himself and a really great guy who "get's it") says micro aneurysms and mild/modest retinopathy for the right eye.

After getting over the first shock, I'm still not quite sure what to think. I never really looked into diabetic long term effects and I have not googled anything yet. I'm easy to freak out - or rather panicked - and I don't want to get hysterical ahead of time. But of course I'm worried. I'm 26, for heavens sake! When I start now with bleedings in my eye, how will things be in 50 years??
My A1c hasn't changed a lot during the last year. It's always around 7.5-7.8, so it's not good but also not terrible and it's stable. If anything I have less unsteady blood sugars. My ophthalmologist said that poor control during puberty (or in my case college) can take it's toll even years later. Not saying I didn't know that... it just wasn't very present in my mind. Also when I started to regain control and took responsibility for my health again, I kinda thought "everything is going to be ok now, 'cause I'm taking care of myself". You wish.

My follow-up is in January. I just hope hope hope that things will not get worse. (Or even get better. Can they get better? I didn't dare to check.)