Living with Diabetes

Feeling a little philosophical today. There have been some odd thoughts relating to death circulating around in my head. It all started with the 60 minutes episode about presidential candidate Edwards interview with Katie about his wife being diagnosed with breast cancer . In response to one of the questions, Elizabeth Kerry said that she told her kids that she now knows what she will probably die of. I got thinking. It got me thinking. Now that I know I have diabetes, I pretty much know that I would die of complication related to Diabetes and Heart Disease. Sad, but true. I am not being negative, just thinking rationally actually. Then there came a business trip. It has been a while since I had got onto a plane. The mind went back on death while sitting on the plane. There is always a possibility of it dropping out of the sky. But I sat down, closed my eyes and went over quickly the facts that most of the loose ends are tied up. I would be leaving my family emotionally distraught, but...

Monday I have to go to a customer site for a business trip. I am dreading this trip. For the last week I have kept a strict control on my sugars and am seeing great results. Now suddenly going on a trip across the nation is very disconcerting. First of all, there is no good food available on the flights. There is carbs galore around the whole airport. Secondly, I will not be able to eat better since I will be dining with other folks at the site. The choice of places to eat goes down when you have multiple people wanting to eat together. Thirdly, I am going to be missing my wife and kids. The stress of that is bound to keep the sugars up. Overall there is nothing but anxiety. But I hope to deal with it and learn to be better. This amount of anxiety does not seem normal.

There are so many tempations around. I am on a vacation/worki trip and staying with family. It is amazing how many temtations are around. There are little kids and their food. The adults also love sweets and carbs. There are donuts and mini muffins and ice cream and white bread galore in the refrigerator. I have managed to keep an iiron heart and stay away from it all. That is nto really true, I did taste each thing atleast once. Luckily, I am on the check four times a day roll. So watching a sugar over 200 brought me back to earth each time. I am hoping I can have one day with sugras in the 160s. I am amazed at seeing how bad some of the folks are eating. Also worry about some of the kids eating junk as they are not getting the right diets. Is it is a wonder why Type 2 is showing up in younger folks? I see the signs already with the foods that folks are running after. Just three years ago when I was here, I was enjoying the exact same things. Everytime I used to come for vacation, I w...

For the last six months took it easy on my sugars. I let myself eat almost anything I wanted, did not pay much attention to exercise. Last week got tested and the A1C number was - 7.6. Weight went up by 10 pounds. I was shocked. A high A1C means I am courting disaster. Now I am back on the wagon. Checking sugars 4 times a day. Watching every morsel going into my mouth, walking around at any chance I have. Goal is to bring the A1C under 6.5 in 6 moonths.

For dinner I had some cheesecake, I skipped the bread. 2 hours later 196. Holy crap. I cleaned up dishes for another hour to get some physical activity in. The throbbing headache slowly melted away. Woke up in the morning, the sugars are 142. So anothe depressing day starts. Maybe the kids will cheer me up after they wake up.

So today I have manged to see an even higher number on my meter. Wakeup check - 144 2 hours after breakfast - 267 2 hours after lunch - 178 Have not had dinner as yet. This is reallly depressing. I am not getting enough sleep. Work is piling on. Sugras are piling up. Not sure what the A1C numbers will be. Got to get a handle here. If only I can reset some things and start over.....but then I would miss out on all the fun of putting things back together again....this life is something....I have heard about a site called secondlife.com....Seems like you can reincarnate yourself into a new online person....sounds like a good idea....

Finally today I decided that it is time to start monitoring the sugars rigorously. So I checked 2 hours after breakfast - 206. Interestingly I do not feel any high sugar symptoms. My theory, In the last few weeks the body has gotten so used to higher sugars that now 200 does not bother it. Body, be Scared and Warned !!!! I am planning to get back to living in the 140s...

My morning sugar number are still hanging in there. Have not managed to get them down, but also managed to keep them there. Got a couple of theories on why the numbers are higher - 1) Put on some extra weight on the waist. The scale does not show it, but the pants do. I think some muscle is converting into fat. Have not been exercising and also been drinking full fat milk. 2) No exercise. Will be corrected now. 3) Extra stress hangover from the last couple of weeks recovering my son from his surgery. The good thing is that he is doing better and now some of that stress is going away, but has left a deep emotional scar on all of us. Looking forward to better days/mornings ....

If you are starting the thread here, on Jan 12th my son went through a major surgery. He is just one year old. I was jittery and totally nervous about the experience. My previous post talked about my state after the procedure was done. Then a couple of days later came the post-op shocker. The doctor had warned us that it is going to be rough, but I had no idea how tough it would get. We had to remove the bandages ourselves on Monday, which is totally insane. This would never happen in India. Only in the US does medical insurance try to skimp on all costs and have the patients be responsible for taking off bandages. It was a nightmare. The kid screamed so much that he lost his voice. There were three people working on him, two to contain him and the third, me, taking off the bandages. They were supposed to peel off, but they refused to. I had to call the physician on-call and have him be on the phone as he instructed me to take off one layer after another. Imagine peeling off bandages ...

This post has nothing to do with diabetes. It is about another part of my life, my children. My son just went through a major surgery. He is just a year old. He was in the operating room for three hours. The eight hours I spent in the hospital with my wife were really really hard. I sat through that time and remembered the last time I waited for hours in the hospital, my dads triple bypass surgery. Both the surgeries have left huge nightmares in my psyche. I am thankful for good doctors and being fortunate enough to be able to afford them and the nice hospitals that the procedures were done in. Surgeries are truly amazing advances of science for me. Being able to rebuild parts of a persons body and having them come out living and as normal as before, is a miracle that science brings to us. But at the same time they also leave me feeling helpless. I think it is because you have no control left on the situation. For my son, it was really acute. I am one of the primary care takes for the ...

Seeing President Bush taking a new approach to Iraq, I took a hard look at what I need to do to get my diabetes back into control. It has been over 10 days into the new year and I have not gone on the treadmill even once. I am still eating more than what I should. Still not testing more than once a day. Well, I think the current actions are not working. This is not going to lead to tighter control. So I am going to be making changes. I am going to take away choices. I will make it necessary to take a walk each day. Have to test after each meal. Restart keeping track of the sugars into some format, right not I will go back to my Excel spreadsheets. I feel more confident of my new plan of action than President Bush's. I pray for all the American soldiers and all the people in Iraq. They all deserve better that a violent life of war. May there be peace soon.

The new year is upon us. I have sworn to start waking up to the 120's. Right now I have managed to get it into the 130's. Not good but it is still better than the 140s that I was having in the last two weeks of December. I hate waking up to higher sugars. It really messes up my mood for the rest of the day. And the fact that your body is hurting like someone beat you up in the night, is another unpleasant sensation. There are too many mysteries for me related to higher sugars. Body aches, odd sensations in the legs and hands, unclear vision, ringing in the ears. But I am setting the goal to reduce the morning sugars and will reach it by the end of the month.

I am trying out the feature where you can e-mail to blogger and have it post to the site automatically. I figured as part of the new year, I am going to learn more about blogging and all the features that are available. I have moved my blog fully over to the new blogger, including migrate the template. Also added myself into feedburner.com. This is another way to get blog entries e-mailed to you. Cool new technology. Next I would like to explore del.icio.us. Some social networking through e-mails will be good. I have been wondering of there is anyone out there podcasting about diabetes. Would be interesting to find out.

Went for a party last night. The temptations were out there. I resisted but it was hard. I feel that this year the urge to let go was more than before. Maybe the harsh reality of living with the restrictions all year round is now making it harder to keep it up at the end of the year when the temptations are at their finest. I have another party to go tonight and I hope to keep my resolve.

I knew this was coming. Woke up to a sugar of 140. Body is sore all over. The pants are already feeling tight on the stomach. Looks like the tight control diet has to start before the new years party. Bummer, I was looking forward to a last splurge before the lean period. Well got to do what you got to do. Cannot let this go out of hand. I can either put the brakes on now and be all back to normal by the middle of Jan, or else it might be mid Feb before life is back on track. I sure am thinking hard about the new year resolutions.

I have been having a really good time during this Christmas. Lost of parties and get-togethers. Luckily most of them have lots of Chicken to eat. Folks are already aware that I will need protein so they make extra Chicken and some salad for me. Works out good. I am still only tracking my morning fasting sugars. The numbers are coming between 118 and 135. A huge spread, but then so is the variety and timings of my food intake these days. I am happy at how the body is doing. I know that January will be a hard month. The body will have to be retrained to a normal diabetic life. No more freedom to eat whenever I need to. Monitoring sugars 4 times a day. In another week I expect my appetite will have grown and I will have to go through some weeks of partial fasting to shrink it back to the size it needs to be. Also been craving sweets at the end of each meal. Not a good thing. I guess I could substitute with stuff made in Spenda or Equal. Also not getting good and continuous sleep. Has lead...

There are times when I wish that Diabetes had not come into my life. There were some things that were so much more easier before. Some of the things I yearned for last night - Ability to eat a nice sugars snack for Christmas at the mall. The taste of melting dark chocolate candy in my mouth Rice and sambar Eat idlis Pasta Alfredo French fries Mango chutney Peanut brittle A big glass of Orange Juice I console myself with this saying - "You cannot expect life to be the way you want it to be. You have to deal with it the way it is."

So I have been experimenting with diet for a couple of weeks. Not by choice but due to the circumstances. The sugars are misbehaving and I started to sit down and think about what I am doing. For about two weeks I have only been checking my morning sugars. Not and ideal thing but I will blog about that later. Morning sugars are trending all the way from 118 to 145. I started to note what I ate the night before. I am totally off carbs in the dinner time. No bread, rice, roti or noodles. Nothing. I stick to vegetables and protein. I found out that the more protein I have for dinner, the better sugar numbers I wake up with. I am still trying to sort out the science behind this, but it seems to work. The protein has be a good quantity though. Atleast one full chicken breast, a nice chunk of fish, a big serving of mutton (goat meat. Tastes like lamb), a big serving of tofu.

Been too busy for the last few weeks. Things are settled down and now I can get back to blogging. To start with, first the results of this months Doctors visit, the A1C came out at 6.7. It was good. I was expecting a lot lot more considering how little I exercised, but not too bad. What else is going on, I am beginnign to get some control after a bout with some cold and cough. I was very worried about how it will affect my sugars. It raised the numbers without any reason. I was uncanny to not be eating anything and still having numbers out of nowhere. But I kept my cool and told myself it is a temporary thing. I was beginning to have some sugars that were reaching closer to 120 in the morning, but then I started hitting 135s and even went all the way to 150. Next week I am going to eat dinner early - 8:00 PM and not eat anything carbs before going to bed. With some small amounts of moderate exercise, should be back in business. Have to get though this holiday season with suagrs in cont...

I have managed to get life back in control. It is a relief to have the sugars back into reasonable numbers. I was getting very tired of waking up to body aches and feeling lethargic the whole day around. IT sure is amazing what higher sugars can do to you. The holiday season is upon us. Just went through the Diwali/Eid celebrations for the Indian community. Lots of food and lots of sweets. I do not have trouble resisting the sweets, but when they get spread around in front of you, sometimes you just want a nibble. This is how I help to work it out - - Before getting to a party, always eat something filling. Have a can of diet soda. If the tummy is not growling for food, the choices you make are much saner. - Never spread out sweets etc in open view in your own home. If having a party, clean off the sweets and stuff and put them away as soon as the party is over. - EAt the meats. I particularly enjoy Eid for this as there is always some meat to have. Have to watch out for the rice and t...