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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After a lot of tsuris which I'm certain Mom never meant to visit upon us, her remains were laid to rest on Friday the 13th, and — for what it's worth, since we've been far from traditional about it — the week of shivah, the deepest mourning, has been observed.

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While I really hate being such a "Debbie Downer" this early in the year, I'm getting extremely frustrated with the red tape surrounding my mother's passing. The basic: we are still waiting on the life insurance to cut loose enough money to bury my mother. While she pre-paid the funeral expenses, she didn't have enough money to pay for a plot —
and without the life insurance money, neither do we.

I'll spare the details of dealing with government-based life insurance (Mom was a Federal Government retiree). The funeral home has been as helpful as possible (which is actually very helpful, especially in terms of compassion and empathy), but the end result is that we are dealing with businesses, and at the end of the day, they need to report a profit (or at the very least, the lack of a loss).

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If I've been a bit incommunicado during the early part of the month, a chunk of it can be attributed to the pre-Christmas time crunch of cookie baking and working retail. I actually had several ideas sketched out — two of them even drafted — but no time to sit and get them posted. Finally, I had some time over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day — but for some still-undetermined reason, every time I tried to access my page to post, I got a 404 File Not Found error. Worse yet, I got this error for everything under Blogabetes — so I missed Carey's posts on Charlie's Christmas and all but the first paragraph of "Prickings" as well. (READ MORE)

"Trick or Treat" came early this year.

Perhaps I should clarify. While Saturday, October 29 was the designated day for many children's Hallowe'en-themed activities — including costume contests, mall Trick-or-Treats, and the costumed American Diabetes Association Step Out to STOP Diabetes Walk, Mother Nature had other plans for us — plans that included snow shovels, flashlights, streets full of wet, slushy, ice-snow, and not a microwatt of electric power to be had for three towns' radius around us.

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The ongoing issues with The Other Half's sciatica have come to a close, at least for now. It's taken two rounds of anaesthetic shots to the L5 nerve, and he's still prone to discomfort and fatigue after long periods standing, but he has been released to return to his "day job". He started Monday, on a 4 x 10, 1300 to 2300 shift. Since my shift is currently 1000 to 1800, this means that four days a week, I'll be on my own for dinner -- and hopefully asleep when he gets home. It also means having to take care not to wake him when I get up at 0600 to take my morning ride. (Unfortunately, neither of these has happened this week -- nor have my Monday or Thursday morning rides.)

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