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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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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Yesterday, I responded to the question about "things you wish your doctors knew about diabetes and the daily task of living [with it] by mentioning that many healthcare providers' knowledge of diabetes is incomplete and/or out of date. Rather than be a part of the problem, I've proposed a first-draft solution — some things I would put into a Continuing Medical Education (CME) syllabus to fill in some of those gaps. I'm sure I'm missing rather a chunk of stuff, but then again, this is a first draft.

If I were to develop a syllabus to fill in the gaps in professional diabetes education, as I perceive they exist today, these are some of the things I would consider:

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On dLife's Facebook page, the following question is posed:

There is no doubt that doctors are key to success in maintaining your diabetes. However, not all doctors have diabetes. There are some things that even doctors do not know or understand about living with diabetes. What are some of the things you wish your doctors knew about diabetes and the daily task of living with the illness?

The responses range from issues of doctors not spending enough time with PWDs, giving incorrect information, doctors believing the information we gather about our diabetes is solely for their use (and not ours!), and having poor bedside (or examination room) manners.

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It's unusual for me to have nightmares — especially nightmares about flying. Mine are usually about family relationships gone completely awry. But facing a World Diabetes Day on which I am working at a place whose uniform does not allow even a touch of blue, having given Nick Jonas my last World Diabetes Day pin (and not having had the money to replenish my stash), and having failed to have the presence of mind to do the Big Blue Test at least once (even though I am bicycling to and from work at least half the time), I feel a bit like a diabetes failure. (READ MORE)

Today is the 6th Annual D-Blog Day and in some ways, I'm stymied by the topic: Gina has proposed we all do a 12" x 12" scrapbook page. Growing up, a scrapbook was a shoelace-tied book of heavy vellum-colored Manilla paper to which one pasted telegrams, newspaper clippings, greeting cards, and the like. In theory, one scrapbook could last a lifetime; in reality, the pages started falling out about five years in, and we always had to be careful not to lose either the pages or the stuff glued on to them. My mother's scrapbook has telegrams of congratulations from relatives who couldn't make her wedding and a guest-card with the lyrics to "Bei Mir Bist Du Shane", telegrams of congratulations when my sister and I were born, and newspaper clippings from every time one or another of us was mentioned in the local newspaper. (READ MORE)