Meme from the D-Moms

10 Years ago...

1.) How old were you: 11
2.) Where did you go to school: ****** Middle School
4.) Where did you live: Suburb of Portland, Oregon.
5.) Where did you hang out: my bedroom, my backyard, the fire station where we had Girl Scout meetings.
6.) Did you wear glasses: yes, my eyesight actually started going in 6th grade and it freaked me out. I thought I was getting complications. Turns out I just have sucky eyesight.
7.) Who was your best friend: Jenny
8.) Who was your regular-person crush: Ryan
10.) How many piercings did you have: 1 in each ear.
11.) What car did you drive: I was eleven...
12.) Had you been to a real party: Does real constitute "one that serves alcohol"? If so, no.
13.) Had your heart broken: No.
14.) Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter: Single, c'mon.

Five years ago...

1.) How old were you: 16
2.) Where did you go to school: Suburb of Portland High School.
3.) Where did you work: just babysitting
4.) Where did you live: Suburb of Portland, Oregon
5.) Where did you hang out: Sharis, Julia's house
7.) Who was your best friend: didn't really have one... I had a large group of friends my junior and senior year in high school.
8.) Who was your regular-person crush: Nathan
9.) How many tattoos did you have: none
10.) How many piercings did you have: still just 1 in each ear.
11.) What car did you drive: Buffy, my Nissan Sentra.
12.) Had you been to a real party: I'm going to go with yes.
13.) Had your heart broken: Yes
14.) Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter: Single

Present Day...

1.) How old are you: 21
2.) Where do you go to school: graduated!
3.) Where do you work: three weeks away from working at a PR agency
4.) Where do you live: Oregon for 14 more days.
5.) Where do you hang out: Roma, Max's, my apartment, Sharis, my house.
6.) Do you wear glasses: I wear contacts now.
7.) Who is your best friend: still don't have one.
8.) Who is your regular-person crush: I actually don't have a crush on anyone.
9.) How many tattoos did you have: None.
10.) How many piercings do you have: Six - two in left, three in the right, and my nose.
11.) What car do you drive: Buffy! But I'm getting a new car soon.
12.) Had you been to a real party: Definitely a yes now.
13.) Had your heart broken: Yes.
14.) Single/Taken/Married/Divorced/Bitter: Single and becoming bitter...

Four Years

This past week marked the fourth anniversary of Dr. Hansen's passing. Because yesterday was Memorial Day, I decided to submit in my 1st annual D-Blog Day post to this weeks Grand Rounds over at From Medskool.

If you're new to this blog or don't know me very well, I suggest you read this post.

In other news:

Change of plans once again. Father unit is not driving across the country. Yeah, I knew that wouldn't last very long. Back to the original plan of him flying out a few days after me (this minimizes the amount of work he misses).

I'm kind of sad, though. I was looking forward to buying a car this weekend.

I also cut and highlighted my hair this weekend. What a disaster! Highlights were sheer blond against my dark brown hair, and it look ridiculous. Parents insisted it looked fine, but considering this was the day before we were supposed to have family portraits done, I insisted we cancel until we got my hair looking normal again. Of course, this means I have to drive another 200 miles roundtrip again. I'm really getting sick of the Oregon I-5 corridor.

15 more days. I have five boxes now.

Who's Excited!?!

Headlines is baaaaaaack!!!

Hells yeah!

I don't know where it went, I don't know what went wrong, and frankly, I don't care! I'm just happy it back!

---

Got home last night after spending four hours the movie theater. One hour for waiting in line, three hours for the movie.

Yes, three hours.

It was as hilarious and swashbuckling as the first two, though I have to say, this one is slightly...how shall I say... odd. See for yourself.

Oh! Stay until the end of the credits! REPEAT. Stay until the end of the credits!

If you don't stay until the end of the credits, email me and I will tell you what happens.

---

20 days!

Three Weeks

I am leaving for New Jersey in exactly three weeks. I have four boxes packed. Small boxes.

I have finished the graduation announcements and my tongue has recovered. Why didn't I use a sponge? Because contrary to popular belief, I'm not very bright.

I put pictures from my graduation picture photo shoot up on Flickr. Facebook people have already seen these, but if you're not on Facebook (and why not?!) you can see them here. The pictures were taken by my friend Jenny at Torrey Pines in Del Mar, California during the CWD Pumping conference (though I was already on the TOTO technique, so I'm not actually wearing the pump in any of the pictures).

Tonight, Pirates of the Carribean is opening in theaters. Guess who is going to the 11:41 p.m. showing?!? Oh you know there's going to be dressing up, long lines, card games, and oggling Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom.

Tomorrow I am having lunch with Lori.

My dad has decided that we are going to buy me a car here in Oregon and he is going to drive it across the country with all my crap by himself. He's crazy, but I get to go car-shopping this weekend!

I went to Target last night to buy boxes and I also bought some cheap popcorn. Don't buy cheap popcorn. You don't get a lot and it burns easily. I went through two bags already. And I have mixed feelings about this new Peach Citrus Fresca. I like original Fresca. Not too keen on this new stuff.

I have to go pack now. I hate packing.

Edit: Oh yeah, and my article on blogging and diabetes management is in this month's Diabetes Self-Management. Silly me.

Dependent Much?

Am I the only one who had a mild panic attack this morning upon discovering that Diabetes Headlines and the entire Diabetes Daily website was down?

I think I have become just a smidge too reliant upon that service to keep me connected to the rest of the O.C. I mean, when you have just under two hundred blogs listed in the Diabetes O.C. directory (we have not yet hit 200, trust me, I counted), having a service that tells you exactly which ones have been updated is not only valuable and convenient, it's a bloody necessity!

David! Elizabeth! Please come back from your honeymoon! We neeeeeeeed you!!!

In other news:

Excessive dining out, alcohol and my monthly cycle has my meter average slowly but surely making its way up to 200 mg/dl.

Aside from the medical emergency Saturday morning, the rest of the weekend was quite lovely. I drove up on Wednesday to surprise a friend who was back from college. My car was about 10,290 miles overdue for an oil changed so on Thursday I did that as well as finally buying test strips and Lantus.

I was introduced to two French public service announcements on AIDS and condom use. There's a straight version and gay version.

My friend who works at Portland's concert venue The Crystal Ballroom got us into the Joss Stone show on Friday. Fabulous! Really great show. We stood backstage in the security area and pretended to be security guards when Joss Stone passed by the audience.

I spent most of Saturday watching the Heroes marathon. I love Heroes. The finale was amazing. I cried, a little.

I've spent today and yesterday printing out my senior photo for my graduation announcements and now my tongue tastes like glue. I am never graduating ever again.

Suspicions Confirmed

Two hours after everyone left for the hospital, my mother calls me and asks me to pick her up.

"He's fine, but the doctors can't really figure out anything that's wrong," she tells me.

Typical doctors, right?

Other than pumping him full of saline and giving him some Tylenol, there really wasn't much that needed to be done. He was home by lunch and slept for most of the afternoon.

Although it seems that this was pretty much just a case of dehydration and/or low blood pressure from being sick, the irony of it being Eric and not me didn't escape anyone.

And that I think is why I was more compelled to write about this whole experience. My brother, the "healthy" one, happened to faint in a house with three people. But I, the "unhealthy" one, the one with the far greater odds of that happening (although it has yet to happen ::knock on wood::), am about to move to the other side of the country.

"Are you sure you still want to move to the East Coast?" my dad joked. It's not too late to change my mind, of course. I'm still here, fully capable of turning down the job and canceling my plane ticket. Of course, I don't want to.

I know there are plenty of people who live successfully by themselves with diabetes. I've been doing it for awhile myself. But there was something unnerving about having that happened just weeks before I move across the country to live by myself.

For those who have lived by yourself with diabetes, what kind of safety precautions did you do to keep yourself as safe as possible? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Edit: Comments are fixed! No idea how they got turned off for this post, but thanks to Bernard for the head's up! Okay - ideas please!

Wait, You've Got the Wrong Blass!

"Call the ambulance! Call the ambulance!"

My eyes flutter open. I feel slightly nauseated. But I am alone.

I hear my mother yelling outside my bedroom door.

"Eric, what's wrong?!"

My parents yell back and forth about what they think is happening and about what they think happened that led to my brother lying on the floor of our upstairs bathroom.

"I think he just passed out," my father is saying.

I'm not sure whether the mention of a possible seizure happened before or after my mother's request for an ambulance, but I do know it was a theory.

Sequestered in my room, waiting for my parents to figure things out before emerging, I tried to figure out myself what could have happened while eavesdropping.

I'm the diabetic, remember? Aren't I supposed to be the one having a seizure or passed out on a bathroom floor?

"Medical." I hear my father on the phone with 911. He gives them my brother's stats. My mother takes the phone and explains what happened. Minutes later I hear the firetruck's sirens coming down our street.

"What's his name?" an EMT asks.

"Eric."

"How old is he?"

"17."

My father explains what they think happened. "He was feeling sick for the past couple of days, complaining of a stomach ache and extra fatigue. He was feeling pretty sick last night. He came into the bathroom this morning and we heard a crash. I think he just passed out."

Tiptoe-ing to the window, I peer out and see the ambulance and the firetruck at the end of our driveway. I can see the head's of some of the paramedics, bodies and actions blocked by the shingles of our roof.

Then they roll out my brother, strapped to a stretcher.

As soon as they leave, I come out and walk down the stairs. My mother is staring out the window at the ambulance.

"Your brother passed out," my dad says.

"Yes, I know," I reply. "You woke me up about twenty minutes ago. I have to say I didn't expect to wake up to 'Get an ambulance!' this morning."

"We weren't expecting to have to get one."

We joked mildly about the Twilight Zone-ish feel of having my brother taken away in an ambulance after fainting while I'm standing in the kitchen, and though my blood sugar was pretty high from my girl's night out with friends, I certainly wasn't in any imminent danger of anything.

My parents just left for the hospital about twenty minutes ago. My dad says he'll call if anything happens, but the general theory is that my brother was either dehydrated, had low blood sugar or both from being sick and just fainted in the bathroom.

Hopefully he'll be home soon.

Been A Whole Week

It's been exactly one week since I last posted, so obviously that must be I've been very busy with no time to post.

Not exactly.

Mostly I've still been bored, done nothing, and thus have nothing to write about.

I spent a couple evenings last week hanging out with friends at the bars. It's one of the nice things of not having to get up early in the morning (my 10 a.m. Lantus shot isn't early and I can just take it and fall back asleep). On Friday I drove an hour north to my parent's house. I watched television and ate Thai food. On Saturday we rented For Your Consideration, a Christopher Guest movie about a horrible little independent production that actually gets Oscar buzz before it's even finished filming. It's cute, not great, but cute. Very over the top. Well, of course, it's Christopher Guest.

Sunday was Mother's Day and I actually spent most of the day away from my mother. She went out with my dad in the afternoon to buy plants for the front yard and then we went out to dinner at The Spaghetti Factory. Despite my best efforts, didn't do such a hot job on the carb counting. Which I knew. It's kind of stupid when I do that. I know, or at least I think that I've eaten more carbs than I've bolused for, and yet even after I have finished eating and I know I didn't bolus right, I don't do anything. Hm. Strange. I need to stop that.

All in all, the TOTO technique is finally starting to shape up as a legitimate method to control now that I know what I'm doing!

Lastly, I would like to mention that the O.C. now has a group on Facebook, a social networking site that is open to everyone. It's way better than MySpace and you can join either your school network, work network or a regional network based on where you live. So you should sign up and be a part of the group! If you have any questions, just holler.

What Happens When You Have a Month to Kill

Good news!

I got my start date pushed back!

Which means I have even more time to do NOTHING.

I am seriously going nuts here.

Well, it is a good thing, actually. You see, before I was moving to New Jersey four weeks before my family was planning could actually come help me find an apartment, buy a car, move furniture, et. al. Which meant I would have to find temporary housing and/or rent a car.

Do you have any idea how ridiculously hard and outrageously expensive it is to either stay in a hotel for three weeks or sublet an apartment and rent a car when you're under 25?!?

Really, really hard and expensive.

I would have spent more than my entire first *two* paychecks just to stay at a hotel. Uh, no thanks.

So I pleaded begged threw myself at the mercy of the court inquired if I could start two weeks later than original.

They said yes!

Now I can stay with my cousin for a week and rent a car for eight days (which, while still ridiculously expensive as an under-25-year-old, is slightly less ridiculous). Which is great.

Except for the fact that I still can't do anything. I mean, how am I suppose to know what apartments and cars are going to be available when I get there on June something-or-other? And I can't exactly ship a couch. I mean, I could. I'm not going to. But I could.

There just isn't a heck of a lot of stuff to do around here. Honestly, the highlight of my day was this video posted on Julia's blog.

I cleaned my room. I made cornbread tonight. I've gone on a few walks. I go to the park religiously now. Coffeehouse on campus with friends, in between their classes. Ooh! I finished Devil Wears Prada tonight. That made me happy. Considering I started it a month ago. Plodding my way through The Lovely Bones, but it's just so damn depressing.

A lot of time on the Internet. Ridiculous amounts of time. I think I have read every Facebook profile of every friend I have. Sex and the City almost every night. Hot Fuzz last Friday.

Okay, I guess there has been stuff to do. But it just seems like most of the time I'm sitting on the computer thinking of things I could be doing and then realizing that there really isn't that much to do. Other than get the dozen or so O.C. submission forms up in the Directoy. ::cringes:: I am a horrible person. I kept forgetting to star them so when I search my Gmail for "submisson forms" about eight popped up that I haven't done. Those will be up... soon...

Oh, and as far as that whole "TOTO technique" thing goes, yeah, still plugging along with that.

Lesson #1: Just because your CDE is an author, lectures across the country and has diabetes himself does not mean he knows everything. Case and point: I really do need two shots of Lantus. I tried evening. I tried morning. I tried 27 units, I tried 26 units, I tried 25 units. I tried different ratios. I switched my correction factor. I am either high or low. Luck of the draw. And if I happen to be a "middle" blood sugar, it's only because I happened to catch myself before I went low or high.

Lesson #2: When "tethering on," make sure to prime the tubing at least .5 unit to make sure you get rid of any sneaky air bubbles. Might help actually getting the insulin you need.

So, if anyone is considering the "TOTO technique" (my goal in life is to one-up Dr. Edelman), keep those two things in mind.

The TOTO Technique

Christine and I devised this nickname for my own little "untethered" regime after deciding that I wasn't technically on Steve Edelman's Untethered Regime. On his regime, you take 75% of your basal as Lantus and wear the pump all the time. But I take 100% of my basal as Lantus and I don't wear the pump except for when I eat. So we decided it deserved it's own name: Tether On, Tether Off.

I haven't written much about it since I switched three weeks ago. At first, I had really good results. Then I had really lousy results. Now, I'm havning mixed results. My blood sugar average is actually better than it was before, but that's just because I'm swinging a lot more. I'm like the diabetic Tarzan.

The pattern was pretty clear and it was exactly what I expected. Lows first thing in the morning (on the pump, my lowest basal was between 3am-6am), a fairly stable afternoon once my bolus ratio was turned up a couple notches to make up for the lack of an increased basal rate, then a normal afternoon and dinner and then high at bedtime. It was pretty much like that everyday for awhile.

I kept lowering my Lantus hoping to kill the morning low, but so far, I've either woken up low or overkilled somewhere else and woken up high.

I decided a couple days ago to try splitting the dose to see if I could fake a basal rate change. 11 units of Lantus at 10 pm (I almost wrote bedtime, but what 21-year-old goes to bed at 10pm?) and 14 units of Lantus at 10 am. Today went surprisingly well in the afternoon, but I'm still high because I underbolused for dinner. Oh well. Can't prevent everything.

I actually think I might scrape the two shots a day theory in favor of doing Lantus in the morning. I think the reason why I am high at right at 10 pm (I do my post-dinner test when I take Lantus) is because the Lantus isn't lasting a complete 24-hours and I'm starting to creep up. Does that sound right, O Wise Lantus Users? Maybe if I switched to the morning, when I need less insulin, it would match things better.

At any rate, the TOTO Technique is definitely still in the adjustment period. Lantus amounts have changed, followed by bolus ratios changes. Hopefully something will finally kick in and work. However, I would like to say that I absolutely adore not having to sleep with my pump on. I had no idea how much I hated it until I stopped doing it. Not that it was the end of the world or anything.

Oh, and I bought my first pocketless skirt in New York. I still haven't found a dress that isn't completely unflattering with my pudgy stomach, but I'm quite happy being able to dress without thinking about the pump.

But boy am I happy I don't have to do bolus calculations. There are somethings that you just can't get from anywhere but an insulin pump