Turning a Failure into a Success....

Yesterday was not really my best day.  I got engrossed in a project and it was late afternoon before I realized the only thing I had to eat or drink was my morning cup of coffee.  It’s definitely a weakness of mine - the fact that I can get so absorbed in what I’m working on that hours fly by unnoticed.

I was pretty annoyed with myself as I changed out of my pajamas and hopped into the shower while realizing it was almost time for dinner and I hadn’t gotten to the store to pick up something to cook.  And I was starving, considering I hadn’t eaten all day.  A whisper of a thought drifted through my mind…….”hadn’t eaten all day, great time to do a finger-stick and calibrate”.  My finger-stick came back one point off from my CGM.  And according to my graph, I had stayed between about 80 and 120 all day.

To which another whisper of a thought replied…..”well, look, a basal test got done today, and those daytime basals are spot on”.

Now I don’t recommend getting distracted and skipping breakfast, lunch, snacks and water all day.  And I did make sure I had a (fairly) balanced and (somewhat) healthy dinner.  But instead of beating myself up for failing yesterday, I’m going to cut myself a break this one time.  After all, I did manage a very successful test of my basal rates.

What’s That Wednesday - Meters #WalkWithD

I have identical meters - a purse meter and a home meter.  My home meter is older and also gets a lot more use.  (Apparently I don’t get out much.)   Lately I’ve been  nervous that it might be time to replace it.  So I decided to do a side-by-side test with both meters.  I used the same drop of blood and strips from the same vial.  And I held me breath to see how closely the two tests would line up.



Yeah baby!!!  This really put my mind at ease.  And it was a perfect slice of diabetes life for me to share as part of the Walk With D campaign.  Have you shared some moments of your #WalkWithD yet?

NOT a serving of fruit . . .

Yesterday I tweeted the following:



Yes, I know an apple muffin is not a serving of fruit.  I know I need to eat a better lunch, complete with some protein and vegetables.  I even tried to talk myself into a fresh apple topped with peanut butter instead, but my craving vetoed the idea.  So I caved.

It wasn’t even a home-made muffin either.  It was a ginormous bakery muffin from the grocery store.  It was delicious and it was just what I wanted.  But . . . . you guessed it.  I was high all afternoon.  It took several corrections to get back into range.  In the end, it probably wasn’t worth it.

I think (and hope) it’s normal for everyone to give in to a craving now and again, even when we know better.  But I can’t help but wonder what that feels like for someone without diabetes.  I bet they enjoy it a whole lot more.

$1.00

Guess what greeted me when I took my fasting blood sugar this morning?


 I get unreasonably excited about that elusive perfect 100.  You do know that when you get a #hundy you also get $1.00, right?  I showed my meter to Pete as he left for work, and he pulled out his wallet and handed over my dollar.  I folded it up and put it in the pocket of my meter case, along with other dollars from other 100s.  I have no idea what I’m saving them for, but they make me happy.

Do you play the 100 = $1.00 game?

Grief and Diabetes Management . . .

It’s been one piece of bad news after another around here over the past couple of weeks.  And I’m beginning to understand that grief sends my diabetes management in two completely different directions.

The first is the “eff it all” mentality.  And there is nothing like bad news to make me crave curling up with a big bowl of carby indulgence.  Hello Macaroni and Cheese.  Bring on all the warm, gooey, creamy treats.  Hey, it’s called Comfort Food for a reason, right?  Grief makes it hard to care about what all those carbs do to my blood sugar.  That whole “life is too short, enjoy while you can” thinking sets in, along with the urge to take as many diabetes shortcuts as possible.  Because, you know, it can be hard to care when your hurting inside.

But then thinking about “life is too short” brings the realization that “life IS too short so we had better not waste a minute”.  And that actually inspires me to work harder at diabetes.  Times of grief  make it easy to see how much family members and loved ones need one another.  I am reminded of how important it is to do all we can to stay around for as long as possible.  Diabetes is tough and takes a lot of work and doesn’t always respond in a way that reflects the effort put in, but I’ve been managing pretty well for 34 years.  And I owe it to my family and friends to keep trying my best, because they need me.

So yes, a good cry is fine.  A bit of an indiscretion with some comfort food is okay once in a while.  But for the most part, I’m reminded that I owe it to my loved ones to do all I can.  And so, I will.

A Kernel of Truth

I really think that the things that are most upsetting have a small kernel of truth to them.  So while I’m sure my opinion will be wildly unpopular and set me up for a blizzard of hatred, I have to say I think Miss Manners was a teeny bit right.

Blood is kind of gross.  It’s not normal to puncture my finger and bleed in public.  Does that mean I’ll stop doing it?  No, it doesn’t.  Unfortunately it is what I need to do to take care of myself.  But does that mean it isn’t valid for people to feel uncomfortable at the sight of blood?  Nope.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly won’t go to the restroom to check my blood sugar.  But I can be more “surreptitious” or discreet with my blood, especial while dining or in close confines.  Not because I think it means I should be ashamed of my chronic illness.  But because I think it’s right to be considerate of those around me, just as I would hope they’d be considerate of me.

I’m not angry at Miss Manners.  I’m angry at diabetes for desensitizing me to my own public bloodletting.

Low Glucose Suspend . . . .

It’s been just over a week since I’ve been using the MiniMed® 530G with Enlite® system. I’ll admit that at first the Low Glucose Suspend feature kind of scared me.  In my mind, this feature is for emergency use only.  Unless I’m passed out cold I’m going to treat my low as usual and take my pump out of suspend mode.  (When the CGM reaches a pre-set Threshold Suspend setting, between 60 and 90, the pump alarms, blaringly loudly as it suspends.  The screen displays the option to continue suspend mode or resume your basal.  If you choose to continue suspend mode, the pump does not deliver basal insulin for two hours.  Once the two hours are up, it resumes normal operation.)

But I started to get curious about how my blood sugars would react if I let the pump suspend itself instead of treating a low.  And hey, it might make for a good blog post, right?  So when my pump began alarming at 3:45 a.m. Saturday I decided it was the perfect time to give the Low Glucose Suspend a whirl.  (Also I just wanted to go back to sleep instead of dealing with the low.)  I did a finger-stick to verify that my blood sugar was really 60, which is where I have my Threshold set.  I was actually 68 but trending down, so I decided to let the Suspend do its thing.

I woke again at 6:30 to use the bathroom.  My pump was back to delivering insulin and a quick check clocked me in at 72.  That’s a little low, but I figured the 2 hours of missed basal was still working to bring me up so I just went back to bed.  I woke up at 8:30 and did my fasting check, which revealed . . . .



I couldn’t have asked for better.  I posted to Facebook and InstaGram and got a couple of interesting questions.  Was I nervous to let my pump suspend overnight?  I wasn’t, because I have a bad habit of ignoring low alarms in favor of sleep anyway.  So for me, knowing my pump was suspended was better than knowing I was just ignoring a low.  Also, the CGM will still send out high and low alarms if my blood sugar isn’t rising or is rising too much. Did it feel uncomfortable waiting out a low to go higher by the insulin suspend rather than the quick fix of juice?  If I had run this experiment during the day, yes, I’m sure it could have felt very uncomfortable.  But in the middle of the night, I just went back to sleep so I didn’t feel any low symptoms.  (And often I don’t feel them anyway, because I’m fairly hypo-unaware.)

All in all, I’m thrilled with how well this worked for me.  As the  morning wore on my blood sugar stayed pretty level - 115 at 10:10 and 107 at 12:45.  In the future  I don’t plan on using it as a regular low treatment - I do think I’d rather treat lows myself but know it’s there in case of emergency.  At least during the day.  I have a feeling I will be pretty tempted to let the pump suspend when I’m low during the night, so that’s something I should probably run by my health care team for a little more guidance.

If you have any questions I didn’t address here, feel free to leave them in the comments!

** My Medtronic disclosure can be found here. **

Thankful but still Needing Better . . . .

This month the DCAF blog carnival revisits a very important subject - the accuracy of our test strips.  We imagine we are speaking at a Diabetes Technology Society meeting and are asked what our comment would be on meter accuracy at the Diabetes Technology Society meeting?

This isn’t a question I take lightly and I’ve put a lot of thought into my answer.  I think it would be important to start by expressing my thankfulness that diabetes technology has progressed greatly since I was diagnosed.  I remember well the days of urine testing instead of blood sugar testing, and of one insulin injection per day followed by a strict exchange diet.  It was tough, and things today are better than they were in 1979.

That said, better than 34 years ago is not always good enough.  Insulin today has improved and is more powerful, but that also makes it more dangerous.  I need to know exactly what my blood sugar is because proper dosing of my insulin depends on it. And improper dosing means hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia - both of which are dangerous and can bring deadly consequences.  Today's test strips often give errors, sometimes more than the 20% accuracy standard allowed.  Even an incorrect result within 20% can screw up my dosing, and over 20% can really muck things up.

I'm glad our technologies are better than they were more than 3 decades ago.  However, diabetes is still really hard.  Yes, it’s hard in different ways than it was in the late ‘70s but it is still really hard.  We still need better.  Our lives depend on it.

This post is my October entry in the DSMA Blog Carnival.  If you’d like to participate too, you can get all of the information at http://diabetescaf.org/2013/09/october-dsma-blog-carnival-3/

Little Mysteries . . . .

For the past week or so, my blood sugars have been running high.  They weren’t hugely terrible, but mostly between 150 and 200 without a low in sight.  I was also having huge two-up-arrow spikes every time I ate, no matter what I ate and no matter how long I timed my pre-bolus.  I even went so far as to wait for my CGM to throw a “low-predicted” alarm before starting to eat.  It didn’t help one bit.

And then on Sunday, the highs just stopped.  Even during a birthday party I threw for Pete, with lemonade based cocktails and a chocolate peanut butter cake, I hovered in the 50s and needed to have some Starbursts.  It was crazy!

Of course, me being me, I want to know WHY my blood sugars completely misbehaved so I can fix it next time.  After some sleuthing, I’ve got three clues . . .  .

1. I put my site back in my favorite spot - I get great absorption from (and have plenty of real estate for) “ upper-butt” sites.  But I still worry about building up too much scar tissue there, so I try to rotate around sometimes.  My previous two sites had been in my abdomen and upper arm.  I wouldn’t be surprised if neither of those sites worked all that well.
2. Fresh insulin - When I changed my site on Sunday, it was time for a brand new bottle of insulin.  In fact, it was also from a new batch.  When I fill my prescriptions I get three bottles of insulin at a time. It could be my imagination, but often it seems that third bottle doesn’t quite work so well.
3. Girl stuff - I know this is TMI, but my period started on Sunday.  Yeah, happy birthday to my husband.

So those are my clues.  But diabetes makes it hard to be Sherlock Holmes, because I can’t quite solve the mystery.  Was it the site rotation?  The new insulin?  The hormones?  Any combination of the three?  I suppose this will just have to go into the cold case files.

Hello, Old Friend . . . .

** I’m not calling today’s post a “Wordless Wednesday” or even an “Almost Wordless Wednesday” because I blabber too much! **

I know, I woke up low.  No worries, my coffee will boost me right back up!

Yesterday I inserted a fresh CGM sensor and started it up . . . . . and it felt like such a relief!  You see, I had been without my CGM for over a week.  Somehow I had lost track of how many sensors I had left until I inserted my last one right before I left for Friends for Life.  I could’ve ordered a new box right away, to be delivered while I was away, but that seemed like a really bad idea.  It was blazing hot out, and I knew the box of sensors could easily sit on my porch in 90+ temps and beating sun for hours until my parents came in the evening to collect the mail and feed the cat.  So I decided to wait until I got home to order a new box of sensors.

I lived with diabetes for 30 years before starting on a CGM.   So I was unprepared for how odd it would feel to go just one week without it.  It wasn’t all bad - I tested a lot more often and I learned to listen to my body more.  But it’s still a relief to have my blood sugar graph on my hip and hear the alarms blaring to alert me to lows I don’t feel.

Hello, old friend, good to have you back.  How did I manage all those years without you?  I sure will keep better track of your supplies from now on!

You Have Arrived?

We had tickets to see Eddie Izzard this weekend at one of the local casinos.  We knew it was going to be a fantastic show.  But first, we had to get there.  Seems like it would be easy, right?  We searched “Foxwoods Casino” on the GPS and followed the directions.  How hard can it be to spot a huge lighted casino after the sun has gone down?   Apparently pretty hard, because the GPS triumphantly announced “YOU HAVE ARRIVED!!!!” while we were in the middle of a dark desolate street.  No buildings topped with neon.  No happy jingle of slot machines.  No icky haze of cigarette smoke.  Just darkness and trees.  We were lost.  We tried going farther down the road.  We tried turning around and backtracking.  All in all, we had no idea where we were going.

It made me think about the comparison of our meters to a diabetes GPS.  I depend on my meter to guide me down the Blood Sugar Highway that is my life.  It lets me know if I’m headed in the right direction or if I need to make a u-turn.  It helps guide me down out of the mountains of a 300.  It helps me navigate out of the valley of a 40.  And when the information it gives me is wrong, I am lost. 

For example, when I tested before dinner on Valentine’s Day I was surprised that my blood sugar GPS clocked me at 192.  I was sure I hadn’t over-treated the low I had before we left for dinner, and even if I had it was odd to have shot up so quickly.  But I trusted the directions and corrected so I could hopefully get back on course.

Later that evening, I was stranded in The Lows.  It took me several low treats to get me cruising back on “Route 100” and the only thing I could figure was that the pre-dinner 192 was incorrect.  Just like the directions to the casino were incorrect.  We needed to cover 8 more miles to reach our destination, and I needed to ingest 15 more carbs to reach my blood sugar destination.

Both stories have happy endings.  The Valentine’s Low was a nasty one, but we didn’t let it ruin our evening.  And on Friday we finally found the casino and had a fantastic night of good food, great entertainment and wonderful friends.  But I still shutter at the memory of driving around in the dark when either GPS mistakenly announces “You Have Arrived!!!!!!”.

Glooko Contest Winner

Today is a fun day, because I get to announce the winner of the Glooko contest I wrote about last week!!  First I’d like to thank the generous Glooko team (especially Molly, who I’ve been emailing with) for allowing me to use the extra set of cables I received for a blog give-away.

So, as I always do with blog contests, I used a Random Number Generator to draw the winning entry.  And the winner is . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .




Hallie from The Princess and The Pump!!!!  Congratulations Hallie!!  And thanks so much to everyone who entered the giveaway.

Glooko for You (a giveaway!!)

I used to be excellent at logging my blood sugars and food and all of that other stuff important to diabetes management.  Used to be is the key phrase in that sentence.  In the past few years I’ve fallen out of the logging habit.  I can download all of my CGM info from my pump.  And I am pretty good about always entering my blood sugar readings into my pump, so I can download that info as well.  As for the food . . . . I just don’t log any of that anymore.  But I’ve been using a new tool / app that may get me back to being a good logger.

You may have already heard of Glooko, a logging app for iPhone and iPod Touch.  A while back I signed up to help beta test the Glooko IR Adaptor, which adds Accu-Chek to the list of meters compatible with the system.  I downloaded the free Glooko app to my iPhone and my cables arrived in the mail.  I’m currently using both Accu-Chek and OneTouch meters, and it was so easy to upload my blood sugar readings from all four of my meters into one logbook using Glooko.  I simply plug the cable directly into my OneTouch meters, and use the Adaptor to transmit the data from the Accu-Cheks.

There is a pretty extensive food database in the Glooko app that I haven’t played around with too much yet, but it could get me back on the food logging wagon too!

Once you’ve got all of your info entered or downloaded, you can view the logbook on your phone or you can email logs to yourself, your doctor or anyone you choose.


If being better about logging is one of your diabetes goals, I think the Glooko system is an excellent tool to make this easier - both in the logging itself and the sharing of the information.  My only wish, which I’ve shared with the Glooko team, is that there was some kind of graphing or charting included because for me, the visuals help me spot trends and problems more easily.  However, the data can be emailed as a .csv file which can then be charted in Excel.  (Not that I could figure out how to chart it, but my Excel-whiz engineer husband could probably do it for me.)

When I signed up to help test Glooko with my Accu-Chek meter, I was sent the cable and adaptor free of charge.  I was not required to post about it, but I’m happy to share the information with you.  I’m also happy to share the Glooko system with one of you!!  I accidentally received two sets of cables and adaptors, and when I asked the Glooko team how I should go about returning the second set, they graciously told me to keep it for myself or give it away to a friend.  So if you’d like to try Glooko out for yourself, leave a comment on this post with the words “Glooko Giveaway” and I will enter you to win the extra set!  I’ll draw the winner next Monday and announce it here.  Good luck!!

Keep Calm . . .

Keep calm and carry on. Write (and create) your own Keep Calm and Carry On poster. Can you make it about your condition? Then go to (http://www.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/) and actually make an image to post to your blog.

I really love today's prompt, because I just don’t find it easy to keep calm when diabetes isn’t playing fair and my blood sugar is out of whack.  So I created two Keep Calm posters.  The first one is for when my blood sugar is way too low and I’m feeling like I should eat everything I can get my hands on.

My reminder that 15 grams of carbohydrates is usually enough to banish a low blood sugar.

The second one is for when a stubborn high blood sugar is working my last nerve.

My reminder to relax and give my insulin time to work, rather than continuing to take more and more and more!!

What will you Keep Calm and do?

Friday Night Mishaps

Friday it was time for both a site and sensor change.  I did both right before lunch and decided not to start my CGM right away since it would be asking for a calibration too soon after I had eaten.

This is where things started to go wrong.  The afternoon came and went.  I realized I was very thirsty, but didn’t think much of it because my CGM hadn’t alarmed me of a high.  Why?  Because my CGM wasn’t ON, but I had forgotten that.  So I tested and was not happy with what I saw.  320!!!!  I had indulged in some mini-doughnuts earlier in the afternoon, so I figured a carb miscalculation was to blame for my sucky number and bolused a big correction.  One hour later I saw this . . .


So not cool!!!!!  I decided something must be wrong with the new site, so I pulled it.  My cannula was kind of bent at a weird angle, so I took a correction by injection and then popped in a new site.  I also bumped up my basal to help get things moving in the right direction.

And it worked . . . it worked much too well.  Here is what I saw an hour later . . .


Oh crap!!!!!  And I had a ton of insulin on board.  As far as I can figure, I must have gotten quite a bit of the first correction bolus, even though my cannula looked pretty bent.  It was stupid for me to pile on a big correction by injection and bump up my basal - but I just wanted to come down so I could enjoy Friday Night Pizza and Martinis with Pete.  Instead I got a big scare and ate a bunch of empty calories to keep my blood sugar from bottoming out.

Diabetes is tough.  Sometimes we do things that don’t work out.  Sometimes we make poor decisions because we just want to enjoy our night.  I really screwed up this time - but hopefully I’ll remember this and do much better next time.

Swagless Christmas

I had intended to get this post up last week, but the combined forces of Pete being on vacation and a mean germ that has been leaving me feeling quite cruddy completely disrupted my normal routine.  But  now the New Year has begun, my husband is back at work, and hopefully that mean germ will be taking its leave soon as well.

But back to Christmas.  To me, a huge part of Christmas is baking Christmas cookies.


Over the years, my “must bake every Christmas” list has grown and it now includes some candy treats as well.  I look forward to my Christmas goodies, but home-baked goods are a bit trickier to bolus for without that handy nutrition label to consult.  This year, I decided to fix that problem and banish the Christmas Swagging for good!

First, I made an Excel spreadsheet with a tab for each Christmas recipe.  I listed the ingredients, and then used Calorie King to look up the carb counts.  This was time consuming and mind-numbingly boring, but I knew it would be worth it in the end.  (I also looked up the calorie counts.  Scary, but necessary because I am determined to log my calories and lose weight in 2012.)  I added a row in my Excel spreadsheet to tally up the carbs (and calories - ugh).  I then typed in how many cookies each recipe made, and let Excel do the math again.  Voilà, carb counts for my Christmas treats!!


I typed all of the information into a table and printed out a few copies.  One goes with my “Christmas Cookie Recipe Packet” so it’s ready and waiting for me each year.  One went on the dining room table where all of the treats were stored.  And one went in the drawer of our coffee table, just in case.  And my blood sugars thanked me for putting in the effort and making this a Swagless Christmas!

Cupcakes and Sock Monkeys . . . .

Over the past week or so, it became pretty clear that it was time for a new meter.  After all, I can’t remember how long ago I bought the one I was using, and it gets quite a workout each and every day.  It began throwing weird E-5 errors at me several times a day.  So I knew it was time to send it to the great meter ranch in the sky, where it could run free with its other blood sucking friends.

I was kind of sad though, because my meter got blinged (blung?) out at Friends for Life!!  I was going to miss my happy little stickers.  Unless . . . .


Unless I pick up some fun stickers at Target when I buy the meter!!!  Oh yes!!  My new meter sports a cupcake and a sock monkey - what could be more perfect for me than that?  Sure, I am (supposed to be) an adult.  But let’s face it, all that testing is a drag.  The numbers sometimes make me sad.  Why not have some fun and bling out my meter??  At least I know I’ll smile when I look at it - regardless of what shows up on the screen!

Conquering McDonalds . . .

About once a month (ahem) I find myself craving McDonalds.  Usually I try to hold out and in a few days the craving passes (ahem again).  But some months I let myself cave in to a Quarter Pounder and french fries.  I dial up a dual-wave bolus and hope for the best.

Yesterday was a McDonalds Cave-In Day.  As it so happened, I found a sure-fire way to conquer the blood sugar drama that sometimes occurs despite my careful bolusing.


The key to conquering McDonalds seems to be a major landscaping project!!  Pete and I dug out stumps from the old ugly bushes that used to be in front of our porch.


We dug up a garden patch and put down a “stone wall” border.


We filled it in with heavy bags of topsoil and even heavier bags of mulch.


And we dug new holes to plant some pretty flowers.  I’ll be adding more to fill it in, but I love the way it is starting to shape up.  I also love what all the lugging and digging did for my blood sugars.  My post-McDonalds-prandial was 95.  And before dinner I was in the 60s.  Next time I want to cave to my McDonalds craving I’m going to need to find another spot in my yard to dig up and landscape!

Out of Nowhere . . .

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t mind occasional lows all that much.  Luckily I can usually handle them pretty well.  And they go away pretty quickly.  I can treat a low and be back up in range in less than a half hour.  But if I’m high it can take considerably more time to get back down into range.

Sometimes, though, a low comes along that just plain stinks.  Yesterday I was feeling fine, until suddenly I felt like my vision was getting dark.  It’s hard to describe, I didn’t see spots or anything, it just seemed like everything wasn’t as bright as it had been.  I looked at my CGM, which was holding steady in the 90s.  When the weird vision thing continued, I decided to test.



I was sure that couldn’t be right.  So I tested again.  (Oh, and don’t mind my meter bling.  I did that at the JDRF booth at the Friends for Life expo hall.  My other meter has a turtle.  It makes me happy!)



That was all the confirmation I needed to grab my “extreme low” treatment of choice, a big spoon of chocolate frosting.  As I ate it, my CGM “low predicted'” alert blares - which tells me I must have dropped pretty darn fast.

These “out of nowhere” lows that are so very low are pretty scary.  I can’t think of any good reason for that low - no new site, no time on the treadmill, nothing.  And I hated hearing the fear in Pete’s voice when I told him about it over the phone - fear because he was away on business and wouldn’t be back until today.  I also hated that I spent the night feeling like crap and fighting to bring down a high caused by over-treating or my body spilling glucose . . . . or probably a combination of both.

Honestly, I don’t know how to end this post.  Lows can be scary.  Lows can spring up out of nowhere.  But lows happen.  We do our best to avoid them, we treat them when they pop up, we try not to let them scare us too much, and we carry on.  Just another day with diabetes.

Tune-up or Major Overhaul?

The past month has not been very kind to my diabetes management.  I’ve chalked it up to lots and lots of travel, very little sleep, and crazy hot temperatures.  But if I’m being completely honest, another factor is also at work here.  And that factor is Half-Assed Diabetes Management.  Honestly, my food choices haven’t been stellar.  My bolusing has often been less than precise (hello SWAG) and downright lazy (why wait 20 minutes to eat when I want to eat NOW??).  And once again, exercise is barely happening.

It’s easy to tell myself that everything will magically straighten itself out.  It’s easy to look at my BG average and be pleased with the number I see.  But truth be told, just because the average number is where I want it doesn’t mean my blood sugars are where I want them to be.  After all, an average can consist of some very icky numbers that might still average into a very non-icky number.  And the fact that I’m seeing random 200s every day at inconsistent times is not okay for my personal diabetes goals.

 

 

So here I am, ready to end the excuses and get proactive.  My first inclination was to do a Major Overhaul.  I thought I’d get back to basics and do some basal testing.  Honestly, I’ve never basal tested before.  My endo and pump trainer / CDE worked closely to figure my basal rate when I started pumping, and they got it right on the first try.  Over the past couple of years, we’ve tweaked when needed.  And when I spot trends, I do some tweaking of my own.  So I figured maybe it’s time to check those tweaks with a good ‘ole basal test to get things straightened out.

But then I thought some more.  Maybe a better course of action would be a Diabetes Tune-Up rather than a Major Diabetes Overhaul.  I’m feeling motivated to start exercising yet again.  Testing my basal rates would mean putting off the start of my exercise routine.  Sure, I could do that.  BUT!!!!  By getting back to regular exercise and (hopefully) starting to take off some weight, it stands to reason my basal rates will need to be lowered bit by bit.  And my intuition (or rather, my rational mind) tells me it’s not really my basal rates that are causing my d-havoc anyway - it’s that list of factors in the first paragraph that are really to blame.

So for now, maybe it is wise to start with a little D Tune-Up.  Time to tighten up the saggy areas of my diabetes management (and the saggy areas of myself!!).  Time to run some Diabetes Science Experiments and, hopefully, get back on track.

Tune-Up or Major Overhaul?  What has worked for you?