Too often, we look at the 7-day, 14-day, and 30-day trends on our blood glucose monitors, see numbers that look great (or horrid), and rather than seeing an A1c that confirms those readings, we get a number that would appear to have come completely out of left field. (Or Mars. Or the Andromeda Galaxy. It's hard to say exactly where.) We can either scratch our heads and wonder why the numbers aren't correlating, or we can take out our manual readings logs, our meter downloads, our CGM downloads, and our personal journals and try to figure "what we are doing wrong".

  (READ MORE)

Ninjabetic: I am currently high knee marching to bring down my BG! Just over an hour to go!!!
Ninjabetic: [about one hour later] My BG is 108!!
MarieBe: @ninjabetic so the high stepping worked well
MarieBe: I confess I did the same - I was 180 an hour ago, took a fast walk
Ninjabetic: @MarieBe We should have had a parade! a D parade!

“I’m going to lunch now if you want to join me,” A said as she walked passed my cube.
 

“Yeah, that sounds good,” I said. Fridays during the summer are “early release” here and we were going to happy hour when we got off, so eating lunch early was in my plan for today.
 

Although I typically don’t eat cereal because I haven’t figured out how to correctly bolus for it, it was the only thing that sounded good this morning. Which I of course paid for with a 323 mg/dL post prandial, which was roughly an hourish before A and I headed off to lunch. (Looking back, it must have been more like 90 minutes or so.) 
  (READ MORE)

I have always used my index, middle, and ring fingers to check my BG. But lately, they hurt a lot. I check my BG 8-10 times a day so those digits are covered in marks as well as just hurt when I lance them. I
have started to use my pinky to give my other fingers a rest.

So I decided to write a poem to apologize to my littlest
counter. I hope you enjoy it.

  (READ MORE)

I especially took issue with one commenter to this post who said those of us checking our sugar "that often" need to see a shrink. By checking "that often" our sugars are more likely in check than not.
 

While I don't always follow this advice, I believe -- and doctors advise -- that if you take fast-acting insulin you should test your blood sugar a minimum of six times a day. That would be fasting, after breakfast, before and after lunch, and before and after dinner. If you test only after meals, then you may over- or under-bolus for a meal. I believe the same principles apply for those who take only long-acting insulin.
  (READ MORE)

Dear Thumb, Pointer and Middle,

First, I want to thank you for your dedicated service over the past nearly four years. Your unwavering attention to the cause has not gone unnoticed. When I need an answer, you're always there for me. I may not like the answer, but you never back down from a challenge.

Unfortunately, due to your extensive use these past years, you've built up some pretty thick callouses. I've tried to work with you on this by rotating poke sites around you and deepening the lancet depth, but I find myself squeezing too much to eek out just enough blood for a test strip. With your productivity being unpredictable, I've also wasted quite a few test strips hoping you had given up enough blood.

  (READ MORE)