Duchess is Ready for Halloween

                                                                Happy Halloween

Duchess my little bumble bee

                      

                                              

                                               

                                        Duchess is such a fun dog she loves to dress up in costumes. In fact her first Halloween with me she had a queen outfit with a crown and everyday after work she wants to put it on when we get home. She likes dressing up for the Renaissance Festival and loves to see the kids Halloween costumes when they come to the door trick or treating. She seems to be liking her Halloween costume today. She has worn it all morning and does not want to take it off. I know most service dogs do no seem to mind costumes I think because they are constantly wearing their service dog vests.  Now if I can keep my hands off the candy things will be great. I caved and bought some candy. It did take me a week or two to eat but normally I try to avoid it at all costs. Hope everyone has a happy and safe Halloween.

Working on Balance

                  I have loved the past two weeks I feel like Duchess is so much happier now that we are back to our normal schedule ans so am I. I have a very stressful job and I handle some very complex tasks which I love but sometimes it can be hard with all the diabetes plus my work. I am always trying to find a good balance between work and time off. This has been even more difficult with having Duchess and I honestly never thought much about it until I started into the many months of overtime. It is not something you think about until you get your service animal and how much rest and time they need to just have some fun and be a dog,. When your working longer hours it makes doing all the little things she needs and keeping up with all the stuff I need done. I know I will do thing slightly different next April when my overtime will start again. I have some plans on what toys I will bring to work with her and how I will manage our breaks at work. I also need to spend more downtime  working on fun ways to work on keeping up her training.

                    There has been so many things I have learned from having Duchess that I had never thought of before I actually had her. I know there was no surprise how much she would change my life but the depth of my relationship is not something I knew until I had bonded with her. I hate to leave her even for an hour or when I have my occasional night away from her. I love Duchess more than I can describe and I honestly love her strong personality that keeps things light and fun. I am hoping the longer I have her the easier it will be to find the right balance for both of us at work.

Dr. Phone Call Yesterday

                     My current Endocrinologist is driving me crazy. I am switching in December when I have my appointment with my new one. I thought everything was going pretty good after my visit on Tuesday when they understood why I wanted my A1C at a certain range but yesterday I got a call that they want me to come in two weeks so they can download my pump information. They want a two week appointment because I dropped .2 on my A1C which is not a large drop. In fact for me around this time of year that is typical for me. When the weather starts to change my insulin needs seems to change rather quickly. I do my changes and things seem to level out vary quickly. My recent change to Novolog also contributed to the drop as well. I am extremely sensitive to changes of insulin and always have been. When they called they acted like I was such a terrible person because it dropped. I hate being treated like a child. They now want me to call every time I go below 70 so they can drop my basal rates.

                     I am not going to call the Dr. every time I am below 70 because they seem to forget I work for a living and that calling them is the last thing I would do. My job is very stressful and I have the work load of about two or three people. I do not have the time to do that. I feel lucky my work is not trying to get rid of me because of all the appointments I go to as it is. My endocrinologist must think I am made of money want me to come in one or twice a month. That get's really expensive not including the supplies I need. I am so glad I am done with this group. Will be nice to get away from being treated poorly because they think I am a bad diabetic even though I try hard to avoid lows.

Interesting Appointment

              I was meeting with my PA yesterday at my Endocrinologist's office yesterday for my monthly follow up. I have been assigned to have monthly follow ups until I have stopped having seizures monthly. We were talking about how frustrated I am with the infusion sets again. I started having issues again with the infusion sets not lasting as long. The Novolog was working great for a couple of days then same issue again. I am going to be switching to Apidra in the next two weeks if the issue continues. I am not too happy about the recent change but at least I am currently averaging a little longer between changes. I am hoping the issue goes away so I will not have to switch insulin's. Hoping things improve soon. This morning I started to itch all over my stomach near my Dexcom site and now my infusion sets looks like I may have a possible adhesive issue.

               The PA and I were discussing the all the higher numbers I have been experiencing because of the infusion sets and she was not worried about it. I worry because my A1c has been under 6 for almost two years. I try to keep things as controlled as possible. Mind you my Endocrinologist wants all patients with hypoglycemia unawareness at 7.5 A1C's but I refuse. I have complications and putting me at that high will only increase me to develop more. I know my PA said to me this month will not kill my A1c she thought I would be below 6.5 which is the areas where you avoid further developing complications for the most part. I am glad to hear they are finally getting it. I work way too hard to let my A1C sit at 7.5 and cause more issues if i can avoid it. I know my previous Endocrinologist wanted my A1C under 6.5 funny how much they vary on their opinions of where you need to be when you have hypoglycemia unawareness. I think it has taken so much work for me to get my endocrinologists and PA to listen to what I am saying.

                Last night at home I was cleaning out some of my supplies where I keep them and I found an empty test strip bottle which fell to the floor. Duchess say it hit the floor and ran over to retrieve it. She thought it was the greatest toy. She was moving it around on the floor and chewed on it a bit. Funny how much animals love cardboard boxes and trash sometimes.

Reflecting Back on Time

            I have been spending quite a bit of time recently reflecting on all the diabetic devices I use today. Back in 1980 when I was diagnosed there was urine testing, beef and pork insulin. There were no meters, pumps, home A1c tests, or all the gadgets we have now. I know even with all my recent struggles with infusion sets I still would not give up my pump. I love that my Dexcom can help me make better basal changes. I could not survive these days without all my meters at my finger tips. All these devices are such a part of my life these days as I'm sure the next new one's will be as well. I love that thinks are getting better over the years but that sadly is just not enough. I know the statistics are staggering and so many people deal with the issues diabetes brings and make it look so easy. Sometimes I am bitter how much other health issues get for research funding because diabetes unlike cancer is a slow killer I think it does not garner enough attention to the issues. The issue is for me that after 32 years will I ever see a cure? Will diabetes ever been seen by the public as something that needs to be cured?
                                
              My advocate sides wants us all to push to get diabetes to be seen as the disease that needs a cure now not twenty years down the line. I want people to see that yes we have insulin but that will never be a cure but just something we require to live. To have people understand that test kits, pumps,cgms, and other things are great but all can have issues. None of our treatments are easy or simple as many people that our not well educated about diabetes seem to think they are. Life as a diabetic is fairly routine with occasional very serious detours. I am hoping we the diabetic community can garner enough attention to make people realize that we need a cure. I am hoping as more and more diabetics spread the word that change will follow. I know the diabetic community seems to be doing more and more each November hopefully we can continue to push for what all of us have been waiting for so patiently.

           

Still Amazed Everyday

                        I have had times when I was in public shopping or going to movie's and Duchess would alert me. I test and I was in a normal range. Most of the time she is telling me another person is having a low or a high blood sugar near by me. The interesting thing is that she is trained to alert to my scent but also can pick up others scents as well. There has been time I ran into some type 2 diabetics who  but they said they were fine and did not believe that Duchess could know their blood sugar. I find it funny how people react when I approach them to ask if they are diabetic and most people are not sure how to take it. I thought people would like to know but some people I think like to ignore it. Duchess goes with me to all my local type 1 meet up group once a month usually and she handles all the smells quite well.

                                     

                        Most of the time half the table is above 120 and the other half is below 90 which is what I have Duchess alert at for me. When at the meet up she will tell my friends at the table if they are low or high and she has never been wrong which is amazing in it's self. She even alerted others when at a diabetic conference earlier this year and people were just amazed. It is interesting even with all the other diabetics around she does not miss my lows or highs which goes to show how focused she can be on her job. All I know is that I am still to this day is amazed at Duchess abilities and ever more so at her love of me.

Unexpected Issue

                       I have been working with getting Duchess back up to her best alerting level. We hit a plateau of sorts recently which I was not expecting. I have another friend who's dog did the same thing so I started to do more scent games which is basically a hide and seek game. Duchess really loves to play this game I have been doing the games at work and home to get her more motivated again. She has been back up to alerting as much as an hour in advance of a low again which has been wonderful. Even having Duchess two years there is always surprises and how they each handle situations or even new noises. I learned when we were shopping this weekend that she is afraid of the flying model planes. there was a guy flying one around trying to get people to purchase them but she even with watching it was still afraid which is not the normal for her. So I do plan on going back to see the planes until she is able to better handle the planes.

                                           

                       I could not of been more proud of Duchess because she really has handled the extra hours of scent training work and has really gotten back to where she was previously. She is a very hard working dog who has handled a great deal of long hours and scary situations. I am hoping after a couple more weeks of extra training I can start to go back to the the old amount of training.

Total Relief

              I have almost made it two days on the same infusion set. What a relief I was really getting concerned that I would not find a solution. This has been one long rocky adventure so far but at least I have a solution for the issues. I have realized that the inset infusion sets still are not working and I can use the contact detach, inset 30 or the comfort infusion sets. I am perfectly fine with those choices and just glad to not be changing out my sites several times a day. Almost all the bruises are healing up so in a few more days I will look like myself again. I have never been so frustrated except when I am high and am unable to figure out why. I do have to say that with all the bad infusion sites I was having the Dexcom was priceless in that I was able to see by the arrows how fast it was moving which made the decision to pull the infusion sets sooner and keep my blood sugars lower which was wonderful. So who knew Insulin can cause this much issues with an infusion set but hopefully any person who has the same issue now will have the answer.

                                

              I have to admit Duchess was a good sport about the constant alerting to keep my blood sugars in range. Duchess would alert before the Dexcom as usual and then the it would provide me how fast it was moving which was helpful. Overall I think it would of been more frustrating without the Dexcom. I did find that I have become better about testing for possible causes of the issues such as scar tissue and other little things. I know some of the testing I did personally speed up the process to finding a solution. I did fine quite a few articles from people who went off the pump because they thought they would not find a solution. I am glad I stuck with it and continually searched for the solution who knew that a sales representative from Animas was the one who came up with the solution.