Sunday, 10:30 p.m.: I'd just finished eating some cottage cheese and fresh pineapple thinking I was too low to go to bed. I had been 116 mg/dL after dinner and was around 110 mg/dL at bedtime. I had taken off Dexcom Saturday morning because the edges of the tape were getting frayed and the internal sensor was actually poking me funny. I decided to have a weekend without the extra equipment. But as I went to bed, I was really wishing I could see a trend line, especially since my finger sticks all weekend had been mostly lower than I expected.

Monday, 5 a.m.: I tested prior to getting out of bed and was not happy to see 322 mg/dL. It's kind of hard at 5 a.m. to figure out why you're that high, but I tried. The only thing I could come up with was that I was too aggressive with my bedtime snack. Also, I had momentarily gone back to using my lower abdomen for an infusion site and I thought it was possible that my site had gone bad. (READ MORE)

After several days of using relatively unused abdominal real estate for my infusion sites, I've determined that I had most likely worn out the prime spots, which resulted in some pretty horrendous blood sugar spikes. I guess I should have known it would happen.

I have tried in the past to move my sites around. I've gradually moved toward my love handles, I've moved north before, I've even tried a thigh site with less than desirable results. In fact, the results were terrible. Terrible enough that I either yanked the sites after just a few hours or went back to the tried and true spots.

Perhaps I should have been more patient. (Story of my life, right?)

  (READ MORE)

Some mornings you just can’t friggin get things right.

4:50 a.m. The alarm will go off in 10 minutes, but my bladder wants me to get up now. Living in the desert means it’s always dry and drinking lots of water before bed was not a good idea if I wanted to sleep past 4:50 a.m. I want to sleep for another 20ish minutes. Actually, I want to sleep for another three hours.

5:22 a.m. Get up. Again. Brush teeth, get dressed for walk, feel remarkably good about being up and looking forward to walk.

  (READ MORE)

As people with diabetes, we have to make choices about literally everything everyday. Much of diabetes management is trial and error, and many of those decisions and choices we make daily lead to error.

Christmas is a time of gifting, and in the magazine publishing world, we often get bombarded by gifts--quite often of the foody nature--from advertisers or other clients. Last year around this time, we received an enormous gift box of food from Harry & David. It was enough to feed our office of six for lunch one day and leave us drooling over leftovers for several days. So when the same box arrived today, we all went crazy over it. (READ MORE)

I hate to say it, but I had to consciously give up on my walk for some time. And I hate to harp on one subject, but my allergies seem to have literally taken over my life.

I had gotten in the habit of making sure all my walking gear would be ready for me in the morning-walking shorts, old grubby T-shirt, scrunchie, New Balance (Won't. Ever. Buy. Another. Brand.) walking shoes-and going to bed with high hopes of being able to walk in the morning. For roughly the last two months it was nothing for me to have a before-bed blood sugar reading in the low 100s or even under 100 and to wake up over 200. No, it wasn't dawn phenomenon. It was a funky combination of Byetta and allergies and whatever I ate before bed. (READ MORE)

I ran out of my sugar free coffee creamer yesterday and didn't go get more. This morning, instead of using low fat milk and Splenda® in my coffee, I decided I could use my husband's regular flavored creamer. This stuff is 5 grams of sugar per tablespoon. I probably use 2 tablespoons per cup and I had 3 cups. I'm pretty bad at sizing up a tablespoon, so it was probably closer to 7 or 8 tablespoons total. That's 30-40 grams of sugar on an empty stomach.

You can guess what happens next. Suddenly, I can hardly keep my eyes open. I take my kids down to the family room and we all park in front of the TV. Next I'm lying down. I dozed off for about 20 minutes. When I woke up I wondered what had caused this exhaustion. Maybe I had taken ill. It took a few minutes before it dawned on me. (READ MORE)