Diabetes Blog Week 2105 Day 5: Foods on Friday

I have to admit that I almost used a wildcard for this one, because I worry about being judged based on my food intake. On other social media, people get excited when you post about the decadent food you’ve consumed; when it’s in tandem with being a person with diabetes, it’s a potential opening for someone to tell you “you’re doing it wrong.” Even some “confessions” you read are enough to make you feel bad. “I totally cheated today! I had half a chocolate! I’m so bad, tee hee!”

What do I eat? Anything and everything. Too much, probably. My family has always been a food-forward family. My father is an amazing gourmet cook. (Ask literally any one of my friends who has been to my parents’ house. They will tell you.) There was a joke that I was the only person to ever go to college and LOSE fifteen pounds. I joke, but I’d really rather be a person who wasn’t super interested in food. I’m often not sure if I eat a lot more than other people or not. What I am bad at is moderation. I feel I am excellent at not eating, and excellent at eating a lot – it’s the in between. Of course, a lot of what I eat is vegetables. One of my favourite snacks is a whole cucumber, and I have to stop myself from eating the whole bag of carrots.

One of my favourite things about Toronto is its wide variety of food from all over the world. I’ve always found it incredibly difficult to calculate carbs, even when given a book, because so much of it is, “potato, 30 carbs,” and there are usually maybe a couple of pages devoted to “ethnic food” (sigh). One of my favourite things in the world is okonomiyaki – yeah, not really in the carb counting book. I’m getting better at calculating for it from sheer number of times consumed. Eventually, I’ll get dim sum right…one of these days.

With my family providing the occasional amazing home-cooked meal, and my city providing a cornucopia of delights, and my tendency, when I’m home, to consume vegetables, excellent cheese (brie, bleu or goat…or really anything, but give me some St. Agur and I’ll be your friend for life) and low-ingredient combinations like chickpea salad, I’m not a great cook. Mostly it’s lack of interest. I make great eggs, and a mean balsamic vinaigrette, but my husband does most of the cooking, and it’s mostly of the heating variety. We’d love to be more invested in making meals, but it’s going to take a lot for us to change.

Of course, throw in the blood sugar insanity, and many of us are often unsure of when we’re actually hungry. It all leads to a very strange relationship with food.

My three worst sins are a) not eating in the morning, b) letting myself get hangry, and c) overeating at night. (I typed “my worst sin,” then “my two worst sins,” then revised again. I feel like the Spanish Inquisition.) I’m a night owl (I’ll stay up all night if I’m not careful, which is not a good plan on days where I teach at 8:30am!) That means I have a lot of conscious night hours, which leads to more time at night wanting to eat, and I tend not to be hungry (or even feel nauseous) in the morning. Often, if I do eat in the morning, I find that I’m incredibly hungry for the rest of the day, which I feel is the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. If I eat in the morning, in any case, protein really needs to be involved for me not to feel terrible. I am trying to get better at stopping myself from eating much past dinner, but it’s hard when I might eat at 6pm and be up until 3am or 4am, or if I have so many commitments back-to-back that dinner is at 10:30pm.

This Wednesday is a good example of various “sins”

On Wednesday, I didn’t have the greatest selection of food in the fridge, and I didn’t feel like eating breakfast. I then went and taught my class (transit time: 55 minutes). Then, it took me 95 minutes to get to my phototherapy appointment, which was one minute and seventeen seconds long. Then, it took half an hour to go back to my apartment to get my gym bag. I had five minutes before I had to leave for the gym. It was already 4pm. I hadn’t eaten. I shoved a couple of slices of deli meat, a cube of cheese, some cucumber, and a couple of spoonfuls of a light chocolate mousse into my mouth, and ran to the subway to get to the gym. I was so hangry (hungry and angry) at the more than three hours of transit and lack of food that my friend insisted I had to start with boxing. It was actually a great idea, as we were both hangry.

After doing that, running a couple of miles, doing a weight machine circuit and stretching, we decided we desperately needed dinner. We walked to an izakaya and I had some takoyaki (I want to define this better than “ balls of octopus,” but it’s difficult) and a tonkotsu ramen soup. (By now, the carb book that I used to use would have been throwing me question marks and blank looks.) My post-exercise body sometimes goes low, and sometimes throws me a random high. This was one of the latter. I stayed up a good eight hours after the meal, and didn’t eat anything else, which is unusual. Also unusual was that I didn’t have a rehearsal for two hours after gym, which I usually would on Wednesday, after which I’d play games at a friend’s place for a few more hours. (Can you say “overcommitted”? I have at least three rehearsals a week for various groups.)

There is no typical food day for me. I love that about my life and my city, but it certainly makes diabetes chaotic.

I’ll close with a random food success story from this week:

The other night I had Thai food; pad thai and coconut cashew vegetables. When I ate it at 9pm, my BG was 7.2. (I had run 5k a little earlier and done some weightlifting.) I was hungry again at a little after 1 am, so I tested. 7.1. I was suspicious, feeling like I might drop later, so I ate more of it without taking much insulin. When I woke up? 7.1.

I felt like a diabetes god, I tell you what.

Diabetes Blog Week 2015 Day Four: Changes (Where No D Has Gone Before)

Today's topic is Changes.

Today let's talk about changes, in one of two ways.  Either tell us what you'd most like to see change about diabetes, in any way.  This can be management tools, devices, medications, people's perceptions, your own feelings – anything at all that you feel could use changing.  OR reflect back on some changes you or your loved one has seen or been through since being diagnosed with diabetes.  Were they expected or did they surprise you? (Read all posts here)

I have been watching a lot of Star Trek: TNG with my husband lately (it’s my first run through the series), and though it appears that they’ve cured a lot of things in the 24^th century or what have you, when it comes to changes, I’ve really got my eye on that replicator, and how useful it could be with diabetes as it is now. There's a reason they call it the Enterprise D, right?

The food replicator could create anything you needed, with whatever nutrition you needed (I’m assuming it makes food that tastes the way you want it to with only the requisite survival calories, as otherwise it would be very difficult for the entirety of the future population not to weigh 600 pounds apiece). Chocolate sundae, 20 calories, five carbs please! Or, if it couldn’t do that, at very least it would be able to tell you exactly how many carbs there were in your food. No more SWAG-ing.

I got this, don't worry

Or, you could be, like, “hey, replicator…replicate some insulin into my pancreas” and the replicator would be like, “hey, man, what do you think this is, kindergarten? I just whipped you up a brand new pancreas.”

And Bev would be like, “who cares about all that? I’m an awesome space doctor and will just wave a buzzing thing over you and you’ll just be fine. Don’t worry about vision complications. You won’t get them, but in any case, we have sweet visors now.”

Anyway, yes, the replicator. Changes for now, right? You could make instant Dex tablets and Glucagon, and expiry dates would be a thing of the past. You could replicate medications and replicate out the side effects, and you wouldn’t have to pay half your salary to do so -

And Bev would be like, “why are you bothering with Glucagon? If Picard can have an artificial heart, you can sure have a perfect artificial pancreas. Or, here, let me just wave this buzzing thing as you lie under a silver lamé blanket for a few minutes and you are totes fine! Enjoy your space adventure.”

(I know it's really called a "medical tricorder.")

But what I’m really talking about, of course, is the replicator! You could use it to make beautiful crystal blue circle jewelry, and signs for your diabetes walk. You could create petitions with hundreds of thousands of signatures for funding for research. Maybe you could even fund research with a replicator. You could create perfect footwear, which would never damage your sensitive feet. You could ask the computer, “Computer, what is the status of my blood sugar?” and Majel Barrett’s voice would always reply, “a perfect 5.0!” (this is the FUTURE and everyone uses METRIC like Canada, you know).

Then Bev would be like, “hey, I’ve cured you twice already. Stop worrying about this crap. Go to the Holodeck and beat the shit out of a personified version of your immune system for a while for some catharsis, or talk to Troi, I don’t know. Diabetes is OVER. Did you not see the buzzing thing?”

And you’d be like, “Working pancreas! ENGAGE!”

Sorry, I got sidetracked. I was talking about the replicator and all the cool things we could use it to make to solve most of our problems, but I guess we’d just be replicating a bunch of band-aids.

What we need is that buzzing thing, and the cure.

Make it so.

Damn straight.

Diabetes Blog Week 2015 Day Three: Clean It Out

Day Three of DBlogWeek (by the way, I haven't said thank you to the lovely Karen Graffeo for starting this wonderful tradition, so thank you! Also, read all of today's posts here!) begins with a command to Clean It Out.

Yesterday we kept stuff in, so today let's clear stuff out.  What is in your diabetic closet that needs to be cleaned out?  This can be an actual physical belonging, or it can be something you're mentally or emotionally hanging on to.  Why are you keeping it and why do you need to get rid of it?  (Thank you Rick of RA Diabetes for this topic suggestion.)

My closet has been cleaned numerous times due to moving (from Toronto to Princeton to NYC to Toronto to elsewhere in Toronto), but there are still a number of things I should probably get rid of, including what’s left at my parents’ house, which was a bit of a shrine to old diabetes stuff. I think it’s been pruned, but there’s always more to purge.

Dear cluttered Self, here is a list of things you should get rid of:

Lancets from a meter that was obsolete by 1999. You know you could use them in a pinch, but at the rate you go through lancets, by the time you get to the bottom of the box, your blood sugar will be able to be checked by nanites.

Syringes and pen needles by the score. As clunky as the insulin pump can be, you’re probably not going back on MDI any time soon. A box of syringes for pump emergencies, though, should be kept. These you do wear out, if only because, when you keep one in your change purse, the numbers rub off the barrel (and you get some weird looks at the checkout counter).

An old, certainly expired half-bottle of Lantus that you’re hoping will work if you’re off traveling and your pump stops working. Girl, just ask for a prescription in case of emergency, or figure out something else. The only way that thing is going to help is as a talisman, like how taking an umbrella somehow prevents it from raining.

In a similar vein, Glucagon that expired in 2009. I know you’ve never had to use Glucagon in your eighteen years of diabetes, but get some new damn Glucagon. Make your family happy.

A Dex4 travel tube with two scraped-at, stuck GlucoLift tablets in it that you thought would fit because they looked approximately the same size. You are never going to get those out. You have tried fingernails, a knife, water, and everything else, and they are now gross, and apparently have the property that paper has when you fold it a bunch of times – you thought it would break easily, but now it’s impenetrable. You have replacement tubes. It’s not like you can get GlucoLift in Canada, anyway, so they’re just mocking you now. (Report: tube was turfed.)

Most of all, this is not in my closet, but all over my apartment, my purse, and everywhere I seem to go: test strip detritus. Pervasive, incorrigible, unstoppable, the discarded test strips line my path. I think I’m due for a strip purge, but like tribbles (The Trouble With Test Strips) they appear to multiply when I’m not looking. Case in point: this shoe was bought on Friday. This picture was taken on Saturday. Within 24 hours, a test strip mysteriously appeared. I have no reasons. I have no theories. I have no excuses. 

I just need to clean.

Diabetes Blog Week 2015 Day Two: Keep It To Yourself.

Many of us share lots of aspects of our diabetes lives online for the world to see.  What are some of the aspects of diabetes that you choose to keep private from the internet?  Or from your family and friends?  Why is it important to keep it to yourself?  (This is not an attempt to get you out of your comfort zone.  There is no need to elaborate or tell personal stories related to these aspects.  Simply let us know what kinds of stories we will never hear you tell, and why you won't tell them.) (Thank you Scott E of Rolling in the D for this topic.) 

Today's Diabetes Blog Week topic sounds like a command, or even a paradox: "Keep it to yourself." It's not that DBW, DSMA and the DOC in general aren't all about sharing, but just as Your Diabetes May Vary, so may what you share and why. We all have our limits in how diabetes affects us, and we all have our limits in what we're willing to share with other people. In a world where social media is vitally important, but can also ruin your life and job prospects in an instant (feel free to read that in movie trailer voice), sometimes we have to be careful of what we put out there. It's not even the consequences of other people reading it. Sometimes, there are emotional consequences to ourselves, just in the act of sharing.

Here are the things I don’t discuss:

Largely, I try to keep other people’s stories off my blog and the Internet at large, particularly things that would be embarrassing to other people. If I do, I try not to use identifying information. Many people’s stories interact with mine, but I keep the focus on my involvement, not due to narcissism (well, maybe a little) but because they aren’t my stories to tell.

Anything that’s too gross or embarrassing about things bodies do tends to stay out of my blog. I wrote, in my response to the Miss Manners post a while ago that sparked so much controversy, “so much of 'manners' is pretending we don’t have bodies.” In many ways, I’m against that form of politeness, because it causes people to demand, for example, that we test our blood sugar in the washroom, making an inconvenience even more inconvenient, and signaling to the person with diabetes that she or he is actually the inconvenience. I think it’s important for the world in general to acknowledge that we have a right to self-care in the public sphere, and not to hide diabetes away. I don’t think people should be embarrassed over the names and functions of their own body parts. However, I’m sad to say that I don’t always practice what I preach. Blood is really the only bodily fluid you’ll get me to talk about, and rarely if ever will I show it. I wish I were braver and more open in talking about the weird ways bodies react to things, because I appreciate when other people do, and I think it makes almost everyone feel less embarrassed or alone. You’re not going to see it from me, though.

I don’t really talk about complications or my fears about them. Maybe sometime in the future, but for now it’s like summoning the boogeyman or repeating “Bloody Mary” in front of a mirror. I don’t want to confirm any fears or tempt any fates, which I don’t even actually believe in but why take the chance? If I do have them, why make them real by putting them down in writing?

I promote the "Spare A Rose" campaign yearly, but otherwise, fundraising is not my forte. "Spare A Rose" is nice because nobody’s sponsoring me specifically, and the money goes to people who aren’t me, and who are clearly in extreme need. I donate to research-based organizations as well, and I’m desperate to fund a cure, but asking people for money that will go to something that is designed to help me…it does not come easily. A goal of mine is to get better at this and realize that my cause is worthy, even if it’s mildly selfish.

So other people, body weirdness, complications, and fundraising are the rarest of birds on this blog.

However, if you’re looking for a parody song, literary criticism by way of an explanation of how Shakespeare/Buffy/The West Wing/the general narrative impulse relates to diabetes, and long, impassioned musings on the condition’s psychology, I’m your girl.

Diabetes Blog Week 2015 Day One: I Can.

Welcome to Diabetes Blog Week 2015! Today's topic: I Can.

In the UK, there was a diabetes blog theme of "I can...”  that participants found wonderfully empowering.  So lets kick things off this year by looking at the positive side of our lives with diabetes.  What have you or your loved one accomplished, despite having diabetes, that you weren't sure you could?  Or what have you done that you've been particularly proud of?  Or what good thing has diabetes brought into your life?  (Thank you to the anonymous person who submitted this topic suggestion.)

"You don't think I can love you/But I can, and I will, and I do" -Barenaked Ladies

These lyrics are the first thing that popped into my head when I read this prompt. I thought they were off-topic, honestly. I parody songs often (it's a sickness, really), so I'm no stranger to songs stuck in my head, ready for a twist. Taken out of context as they are, the lyrics whirled insistently through my brain.

Diabetes, you don't think I can love you/But I can, and I will, and I do.

Do I love diabetes?

Do I love it for the right reasons?

Anybody who has known me for more than two seconds knows that I am fiercely proud of my academic achievements. I roar as a Princeton Tiger and as a Columbia Lion. I've always graduated with high or highest honours from wherever I was enrolled. I've done it while often feeling unimaginably terrible.

Diabetes, you don't think I can…But I can, and I will, and I do.

I've only rescheduled one test due to diabetes. I very, very rarely called in sick to work while I was in school. The one time I remember doing so, I was supposed to go into scene shop, lift heavy wooden sets and possibly use power tools, and because my blood sugar was so low I could barely walk under my own steam, I figured it wasn't safe for anyone. The only time I took a paper extension, I was real people sick with walking pneumonia, and I didn't ask for it - I looked so bad that my professor unilaterally declared that I was taking one.

Diabetes, you don't think I can love you/But I can, and I will, and I do.

In a way, I think diabetes made me tough. Sometimes, I actually enjoyed it. One perverse thing about university culture (and I think it's pervasive in our culture in general, with the higher-powered professions and schools most heavily invested) is that we like to brag about our hardship. You got four hours of sleep? Child's play. I'm running on three. You wrote fifty pages this week? I wrote a hundred. You did it with a cold? I did it with bronchitis…and with diabetes. Hard to trump. Diabetes can make you "special" in identity, or in hardship; sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong ones. Shakespeare, in his play Antony and Cleopatra, differentiated between Roman and Egyptian cultures. He billed the Egyptians as being in touch with both nature and their own senses, ready with passion, love, and a sense of enjoyment, from which they drew their power. Romans were in love, instead, not with themselves and their world, but with a sense of order and duty. How loyal could you be? How much could you work? How much could you sacrifice? Shakespeare's Romans were in love with hardship.

One of the things about "I can" is that many of us, as people with diabetes, feel we have something to prove. We want to show that we can do just as much as anyone else. This can be a great motivator, driving us toward success. It can also turn a person into a hardship-loving, hard-driving, Shakespearian Roman.

I'm doing this without an insulin pump.

I'm doing this without checking my blood sugar regularly.

I'm doing this without letting anyone in.

I'm doing this without a support network.

I am the best Roman. I am a CENTURION.

I can, and I will, and I do.

When I achieve something, or strive to do so, I am slowly learning to ask myself whether it is something I want to do, or something I feel I have to do, because it's so difficult. Do I have to play the game on the most difficult setting? Do I have to fight this thing at all turns?

Paradoxically, asking myself this question is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

Less paradoxically, it's been one of the most rewarding ones.

It may be a mistake to talk about loving diabetes, because, if I think about it a little more, that's just a slipcover for the heart of this thing. The lyrics don't even refer to diabetes. They really refer to me. How I learned to stop worrying and love diabetes is really how I'm learning to stop loving hardship and to love me.

Five years ago (in fact, I finished graduate school five years, less one week, ago), I found myself out of school for the first time, and I was unemployed. I felt rudderless; I had my achievements, but right now, I had no work to be doing. It was a perfect time to discover a support network in the Diabetes Social Media Advocacy network. Talking to dozens of other people from around the world, I found the hardship lessened, and that it wasn't a weakness; it was a strength. The Roman in me was always primed for war. The other side realized that making peace with the enemy takes more cunning than going in, guns a-blazing. Not only that, it's actually harder, but in a good way. June Callwood, in her wonderful article "Forgiveness" that she wrote at the end of a brilliant life, quotes a source as saying, "anyone who thinks forgiveness is for wimps hasn't tried it." Callwood then writes, as hard as forgiveness is, "it is worth the candle." Letting myself feel better and have the space to heal was a way of forgiving diabetes, and loving myself. Giving myself more tools to do better (an insulin pump, regular testing) is a way of loving myself. Going to the gym now, running up to 10K at a time, something I would have laughed at the concept of me doing - yes, another gift to myself.

I am still guilty of "being tough." When I smashed my dominant arm's elbow into two pieces a couple of years ago, I only took one day off work after the surgery to put the pieces back together, and the only reason I took that day off was because I woke up and I physically could not move. When I brag about that - as I have done - I realize I'm being a Roman again.

But I'm getting in touch with Egypt.

Can I promise I'll never fall back into those ways? Probably not. I still need some of my drive. I'm still overcommitted, but I'm mostly overcommitted to the things I love, and in which I can take real pride, not just hardship-pride. I love being a professor. I love having written a course that is now required for every student taking a BA program at my school. I'm trying, however, to achieve all of this with myself, rather than against myself. To make the hard choices to make things a little easier.

I can, and I will, and I do.

18 Years.

Today, my diabetes is an adult. On March 18th, 1997, I was diagnosed with diabetes. That makes 60% of my life I’ve lived with this boarder, and I’ve never collected a dime of rent.

I almost feel like a proud parent. I’ve officially shepherded this chronic illness to maturity. It can now vote, though it’s always had a certain amount of say in how I spend my day. As someone who will probably never have actual children, I will have to use this as a proxy sense of accomplishment.

As many parents do, I had no idea what to do with diabetes in its infancy, and I didn’t even know what type it was going to be (who knows, with kids?) I was not very good at discipline and maintaining order at the start, which set it on the wrong track, because we hadn’t learned to have mutual respect for each other. I kept trying to give it time-outs, which never actually worked.  I kept trying to do everything on my own, which rarely works out well. It got older, and brattier, and more rebellious, until it found its true identity. I dealt with the terrible twos to the terrible teens, and there were definitely some serious growing pains. Diabetes began to develop a personality, and I saw myself in it. When it hurt, I hurt. When it was calm, I was happy. When I saw a good number on the report card, I felt a sense of serious pride from my guidance, though I knew there was only so much I could influence and control. I began to develop a grudging respect for it as an individual. It had survived, and so had I.

It’s settled into adulthood rather well, and certainly became more mature. Oh, sure, I still sometimes forget my extra insulin at home when I’m about to spend twelve hours at the office (which I…may have done this month), and no-one said adulthood was easy, or that adults can’t be as ridiculous as children much of the time. The successes, however, are beginning to outnumber the failures:

This year, I kept my A1c in the low 7s. The 6s still elude me, but who wants to peak at 18?

This year, I received my first and second blogging awards from the Diabetes Online Community, and I completely missed the first one until I found out about the second. I won “Best Motivational Post” for my May DBlog Week “Mantras and More” entry from the Best of the ‘Betes Blogs (a monthly event with a changing adjudicator). I had no idea until I found out about the “best posts of the year” roundup and was shocked to see my name among some amazing company. Anyway, tying for the best motivational post of 2014 was absolutely stunning to me. Why? Because when my diabetes was a kid, and when it hit teenagehood, I couldn’t even motivate myself. Now I’m flying.

Then, this year, I did something that lots of people do when they become adults: I married the love of my life. Diabetes was by my side the whole day, like a junior bridesmaid or a particularly annoying ringbearer. Even though I was so nervous I could barely eat before the ceremony, it still

BG check pre-ceremony

gave me a 15.8 with all my jitters. After the insanity of the day, my parents accidentally took my purse with my meter home with them for the night, so I was flying blind at the hotel. But I never went low, I never felt sick, I was normal through dinner and after, and I never crashed, because, let me tell you, the day was one huge high.




Diabetes did not keep me from the most beautiful wedding cake I’d ever seen. It remained on the periphery through the perfect, magical, heartfelt and hilarious ceremony. The Playbills were perfect. The vows were perfect. The pictures were great. The dancing was spectacular. The photobooth was a hit. The food was delicious (and I got to eat it). I threw the flowers off a balcony, and I didn’t hit the chandelier. My pump didn’t get caught in a garter, nor was too bounced around when we were lifted precariously on chairs. Diabetes kept its distance when I danced with my father and hugged my mother, when they walked me most of the way down the aisle. Diabetes came with me the rest of the way: it’s an adult, and so was I, forging ahead. Diabetes listened to my husband promise “in sickness and in health” and mean it and so much more.

I was so worried that it would ruin the best day of my life, but it didn’t, and that’s what it was: the best day, the perfect day, a day I can’t even encapsulate in words and have been scared to try. It didn’t ruin my day. It was just a part of it, because it’s a part of me.

I have been so worried that diabetes would ruin my life, but it hasn’t. It was just a part of my life, because it’s a part of me.

Just like at my wedding, diabetes is always there. But I am surrounded by love, so much love from my astounding, wonderful family (with a “husband’s side” now) and friends. That love didn’t start at the wedding, and it didn’t end after it. Love is a part of my life. Love is a part of me. Love, I have found, is a part of learning to share your life with diabetes.

So, as my diabetes officially becomes a legal adult, I feel nothing but love. It’s an illness, an identity, and a journey. It propels me on a journey of self-discipline, analysis, and growth, which is what all good conditions, the human one included, do. Anything can be traumatic or redemptive, or both, depending on how you view this journey. After all, life is a degenerative disease, if you look at it a certain way. In another light, though, it’s the next step toward evolution.

Not Getting Married Today...

I'm getting married tomorrow.

I just wanted to say that.

All the prep work, all the stress, all the wonderful talents and gifts my friends and family have given me, are all coming together for what I hope is going to be one amazing night.

Ten years together tomorrow, and I get to marry the love of my life.

Diabetes, you'd better behave tomorrow. I'm not kidding. It doesn't really matter, though, because I truly have someone who will love me "in sickness and in health," and I know that. But I can't even really think about you right now, or the class I'm about to go teach, or anything like that.

Because I'm getting married tomorrow.

:)