Monday morning, 10:15 am: Pick up phone. Dial numbers. Make idle chit-chat with wife before getting to real reason for phone call - what's Charlie's blood sugar?

Tuesday morning, 10:15 am: Pick up phone. Dial numbers. Make idle chit-chat with wife before getting to real reason for phone call - what's Charlie's blood sugar?

Wednesday morning, 10:15 am: Pick up phone. Dial numbers. Make idle chit-chat with wife before getting to real reason for phone call - what's Charlie's blood sugar?

Though tempted to boost my word count even further, I'll stop at Wednesday, knowing that you get the point.

Respond to wife with the following assortment of interchangeable exclamatory interjections:

"Damn!"

"Crap!"

"Great!" (not the good kind, the sarcastic kind)

"Super!" (again, sarcastic)

"Thank God!"

It has gotten just a bit monotonous.

And not just on my end.

10:15 am

Me: Hey

Susanne: Hey

Me: What's up? (READ MORE)

*sigh* My endo/nurse practitioner wants me to log blood sugars. Grrrroan. She said she wants random numbers, which I can't see how in the world would actually be useful to someone. (That drives me nuts, by the way, when a doctor tells a patient to log randomly. How can you get the whole picture if the patient gives you a breakfast reading one day, a bedtime reading the next? But I digress.)

So I printed out more of my home-made log sheets, three-hold punched them and put them with my other half-filled out log sheets in the pretty pink three-ring binder I bought probably close to two years ago during my last I'm-serious-about-logging attempt.

  (READ MORE)

Kerri asked on her other blog today (Six Until Me) if sleep deprivation affects diabetes care. I can give an answer to that: It's a resounding yes.

I am constantly tired. Not only do I have a 19 year-old son and Olivia (and no one told me that 13 was going to be so exhausting), I have two little girls. The youngest, who is 17 months old, is still waking up 4, 5, sometimes 6 times a night and she wants to nurse every. single. time. Even if I go to bed at 11, I'm still not getting a full night's sleep. Heck, I could go to bed at 8 and still not get a full night's sleep. It's maddening.
(READ MORE)

I am proud to say that I still have every log sheet I've ever written, most of which are pretty comprehensive. If it will offer some perspective, I had a perinatologist once (not my own, but someone I was talking to in another capacity) tell me he thought my logging practices were a little overkill.

You can tell, though, when my efforts start to fade. Of the 10 sheets in my purse, some days are filled out completely, some just have what I ate for breakfast and my fasting sugar. Most, however, are blank.

I actually enjoy logging. It might sound cliché, but logging helps me see patterns, keep track of what I'm eating and know what my blood sugar was in certain situations. But, often, as quickly as I decide to start logging (again), the practice is abandoned. (READ MORE)

In accordance with American Diabetes Month, dLife bloggers are focusing on how we can improve in different areas of our diabetes management.

Numbers. A decent one to us might be not so decent to you. It’s a matter of perspective.

The nurse couldn’t reach Susanne earlier so she called me at work to give me Charlie’s number.

  (READ MORE)

How many hours since a meal has elapsed
Before bg tests will ring true?
How many tests when blood glucose is tapped
Til we have enough points for a clue?
And then how can we process postprandial curves
With no CGMs for Type 2?

(with apologies to Bob Dylan)

One of the stricter schools of thought regarding "tight control" is that we should never let our blood glucose levels rise above 140, nor let them ever drop below 80 -- and if we really want to be vigilant about it, we should keep our peaks below 120. That said, there will always be some irresistable or unavoidable food, or some threshold serving size or combination, that in the past has sent our blood glucose levels soaring through the roof, and if we're being "good little diabetics", we will monitor the heck out of the expected excursion and, if we're on insulin, try to micromanage it.

  (READ MORE)