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Michelle Kowalski is a writer, editor and photography hobbiest from St. Louis. She now lives in Phoenix with her husband and three young children where she is an editor for a global human resources association.
Diagnosed in February 2005 with pre-diabetes, Michelle started on a regimen of healthier eating, a daily 30-minute walk and oral medications. Just two months later, she learned she was pregnant with her third child. With input from a diabetes educator, Michelle's diagnosis was changed to type 2 diabetes based on the log she kept. She started on Lantus and later in her pregnancy took Novolog to manage her blood sugar.
Post-baby, Michelle continued on Lantus, started Metformin, tried Byetta and eventually went back to Novolog because it offered her the best control. In January 2008, as part of her quest to start on an insulin pump, Michelle learned that she actually has type 1 diabetes.
The Mr. took No. 1 to his last well-child doctor's visit. I should have gone. I'm such an information junkie that I ask so many questions of The Mr. after things like this that it would have just made more sense for me to have gone.
I was shocked to learn that No. 1 is in the 91st percentile for weight. Dr. N, who I absolutely love, sent a note home about increasing the amount of fruits and veggies No. 1 eats and decreasing the amount of fats and sugars he eats.
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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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Carey is a full-time hater of diabetes. The benefits stink. His 7-year-old son, Charlie, has been giving he and his wife the finger since November of 2003. Carey's parenting humor has appeared in various websites and print magazines. He resides in the suburbs of Philadelphia with his wife and three children.
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Kerri Sparling, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was six years old,
doesn't let diabetes define her. It just helps explain some things.
