Once a year my company offers health screenings -- free -- and an incentive (such as a gift card) for taking the health screening. I think it's a great idea for companies to do this because there are plenty of stories about people who don't go to the doctor enough and then go through a health screening at work and discover that they have diabetes or high cholesterol or that they're this close to having a heart attack.

That's great. But I don't participate mainly because I already know what's going on with me. I see my OB once a year, I see my primary once a year, and I see my endo every three months complete with blood work. There is nothing that a health screening can tell me that I don't already know. In fact, it would likely do nothing more than piss me off because someone with little knowledge of diabetes would be telling me that I test too much or questioning the validity of a CGM.

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Whatever it was, it's gone now. But for the last four days I've wondered everything from a bad site to bad insulin to hormones to a virus and everything in between.

It started overnight Wednesday (I think) when i was in the upper 300s for no reason. I went over dinner in my head over and over to make sure I hadn't missed anything. While I had had mostly good numbers with that site, I considered that it had gone bad or that I was beginning to need to change my sites more often.

But after changing my site on Thursday I continued to have horrible blood sugars, and was certain I had a bad site. With my recent experience with worn out sites  -- shooting up the second I start eating something, spiking high and low -- I thought I might have gotten an old site.

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I've said it before and I know others have too: it's awfully strange, considering my profession, that I don't read books. I've never been a book reader. Ever. I struggled through classes in high school and college that required reading novels.

I know, right? And yes I still want to write the Great American Novel. But that's different. Part of the reason I don't read more is that I'm easily distracted. I can sit down and read a chapter or two of a book, put it down and think that I'll be able to get back to it the next day. But then it's a week before I pick the book up again and I've forgotten what I've read.

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It's after 9 p.m. on Saturday night and I've just learned something that normally would send me straight to bed. Likely crying. But I'm wide awake and I can't help but wonder if it's the double dose of anti-depressants I took this morning.

I met with a psychiatrist yesterday for the first time ever. Iv'e seen counselors before, but never for depression.

I was looking forward to the appointment. I was anxious to talk about how I got to where I was, issues that I struggle with, and I think a little validation that what I was going through was real depression and not just a wacked out personality.

I connected with Dr. L pretty quickly and easily. I imagined she'd be around my age and she was. She was easy to talk to; straight forward and rather blunt at times, which I was fine with.

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I've always been a quote collector. Each year in high school I wrote down all of the senior quotes in a notebook. I think I occasionally looked back at them. I had a gigantic book of quotes at one point, too, and I'm pretty sure I went through it with a highlighter. (Oh, wait. Looking over my shoulder at my bookcase I see I still have "Words of Wisdom.")

While I've since trashed that notebook, I am still a connoisseur of quotes. I think for the entire seven years we lived in that little town in Missouri, I had a quote (I think by Kenny Rogers) on a post-it note (that interestingly never lost its stickiness) attached to a kitchen cabinet: Don't be afraid to give up the good for the great.

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February 2010 marks my fifth anniversary with diabetes. I've been thinking about writing this post all month, though, clearly, I haven't found a way to write until the last day of the month.

I find that when I have an idea for a post -- say, a theme or a headline or just a quick idea -- but that I struggle writing it down it's usually because I just can't put my finger on the right words.

In five years I've been a lot of places with diabetes and learned a lot of things. I've had an A1C as high as 9 and as low as 5.9. I've lost 50 lb. and gained it back. I've been on oral drugs, I've taken Byetta and Symlin, I started on the pump. I had a beautiful baby.

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