I asked Charlie if he wanted to write another blog post for Blogabetes.

"Neh," he said. "I'm out of material."

He unraveled a long strand of red and white bakers twine from a large, round roll and carefully laid it out along the kitchen counter.

"Nothing?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said.

"Yeah, me too," I said. "I'm out of material."

Charlie eyeballed about three feet and snipped the twine with scissors.

"You have anything for me to write?" I asked. "Any diabetes news?"

He answered immediately, never taking his eyes off the twine as he tested its pull and elasticity; dangling it as if operating a marionette.

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In most people with diabetes, lows occur either because we've overcalculated the amount of insulin we need, or because of an impaired, inhibited, or insufficient glycogen response. While this is obviously an oversimplification, I remember reading that either autoimmunity or modern insulins did weird things to the glycogen response in people with type 1 diabetes, and I know that at least one class of oral diabetes drugs works by inhibiting, if not completely blocking, that response. Then there's the issue of undereating, or not eating sufficiently, for there to be glycogen stores that can be easily converted to fuel our bodies — and, of course, drugs such as glipizide which work by stimulating additional insulin release.

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Today, the first Friday of February, is national "Wear Red" day in honor (or observance) of Women's Heart Health Awareness, as spearheaded by the "Go Red for Women" campaign. So of course I will be wearing red to work and I've been handing out Red Dress pins.

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Finding a new endocrinologist has proven to be quite interesting. First, my insurance apparently doesn't have a whole lot of options in my area (or maybe my area doesn't have a whole lot of options in general), especially in the female category. I had about 4 choices, one of which I'm currently seeing.

If you hadn't heard, I decided to change my endo because of a recent mess up regarding my test strip prescription that has me scrambling for more strips to last three months. This was the straw that broke the camel's back after two appointments with her that just didn't go as I'd like. She is a competent doctor, but she isn't the kind of doctor that I'm looking for.

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I wish there was a number to call when in need of diabetes-related assistance while on the road; the diabetes equivalent of AAA.

We were about 45 minutes into our 1 hour trip to my mother's house Sunday when we threw the diabetes bag into the back seat and asked Charlie to test his blood sugar.  This came after Charlie said he was thirsty and felt high.

"330," he said.

Having played hockey that morning, this presented yet another anomaly in the never-ending saga of life with diabetes.  This would normally be his low period of the day. But it wouldn't be the first time he was over 300. It was nothing a healthy blast of insulin couldn't cure.

That is, if we had insulin.

Charlie patted himself down.

"I'm not wearing my pump."

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In one of my high school English classes, we had to read Samuel Beckett's play of this name. Thirty-some-odd years later, I don't remember the details, only that it centered around two men who seemed to be relatively old, penniless, and alone. They met at a particular spot each day, left each evening, and could only remember one day past and think towards one day forward. They awaited a third character, the eponymously named "Godot", who never arrived. The style was considered existentialist in that there wasn't all that much character development: what you saw was what you got. While I never read the French original, in English, "Godot" seemed a thinly-veiled metaphor for "G-d" — and since old, penniless (and possibly homeless) folk have always had the shortest from-this-point life expectancy, it made sense — at least on one level — that these two characters were waiting to die.

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