Thankfully

Thankfully, it is not difficult for me to answer the question, "What are you thankful for?". A great many of us will answer that question today with words like 'good health', 'family' and 'a roof over our heads', but what of those who struggle to make even these meager claims? In my heart I know that today is for those souls, the ones who are not be able to answer such a question with warmth, joy and hope in their voices. Today, I'll think of them as I count my many good fortunes.

I am grateful for insulin and the people who continue to work on ways to make it better

A family that buys me a silly hat to wear when I make them special meals

My wife's strength and patients

My son's heart, my daughter's spirit

A warm home

My mother, brothers and extended family

Health, happiness and the staggeringly amazing diabetes community

I am thankful that the people who make up Spry Publishing let me write books... their kindness rescued my love for thinking

I'm thankful for all of you and I wonder if you understand how much helping you... helps me

Of all the things that I listed and all of the things that I didn't but could have, if you made me choose just one. If I had to tell you that I was thankful for one thing and that my gratitude meant that the rest of it would magically disappear, I'd choose insulin. None of these things would exist in my life if there were no insulin. 

Without insulin, I'd be too sad to think, love, find friends or care about the world around me. Insulin is everything, it's what I am grateful and thankful for. In it's absences, I would be the one of the people who struggle today to find a warm word of thanks. 

Think of those people today. May you share this day, and each that follows with your family, in a way that brings honor to those who weren't lucky enough to live in a time when their "insulin" existed.

Have a very happy Thanksgiving!

Best,

Scott

Oh Canada... It's DexCom time!

The DexCom G4 continuous glucose monitor is now available in the true north! I'm not exactly sure how DexCom got their device ready for sale in Canada. Perhaps the transmitter will be wearing a tiny little hockey sweater? Who knows...

Getting started looks pretty straightforward. Go to dexcom.com/en-ca and then click "Contact Distributor". The link takes you to www.animas.ca, the company that is handling the distribution for Canada. The Animas page doesn't have any DexCom specific links. I would use the "Contact Us" tab at the top right of the Animas page and ask how to get started.

I found this contact information for Animas Canada at the bottom of the Canadian DexCom page linked above.

Local Dexcom Distributor

Animas Canada

200 Whitehall Drive

Markham, Ontario

L3R0T5

General inquiries: 1-855-293-5083 or 

CustomerCare@Animas.ca

Product support: 1-866-406-4844

I'm so excited for my Canadian friends, you are going to love having a CGM!

And the winner is: Diabetes Circle Laces

Arden picks the winner of our Diabetes Circles Shoe Laces giveaway...

Thank you to everyone for sharing and entering!

Prep Pad

So there I was, surfing the Interwebs, and I saw this video...

Introducing Prep Pad from The Orange Chef Company on Vimeo.

I was intrigued, and so I set out to learn more. My advanced Googling skills quickly led me to The Orange Chef, makers of the Prep Pad. I watched a few more videos, read about the product, and decided that it may be a huge leap in how I count carbohydrates for Arden. A few phone calls later, the makers are sending me a scale so I can give it a try and write a review.

The review unit should be arriving at my house in about two weeks, then I'll put the scale through it's paces and let you know what I learn. 

Based what I've seen and the conversation that I had with Michael from The Orange Chef, I'm more than excited to see what it can do. 

This is just the tip of what Michael says the Prep Pad can do but... Imagine you make a dish at home, just enter the ingredients as you go and the scale (In conjunction with it's companion iPad app) retrieves a bevy of nutritional information about your concoction - and it saves the information so that the next time you make the dish, all you have to do is call it up, weigh your serving, and the carb count is at your finger tips. This thing may completely change how we count carbs in our home cooked meals. Fingers crossed. 

This is not a paid review. I'm not receiving a free unit... I just thought that if the Prep Pad works as advertised, it may really help a lot of people who count carbs everyday. We'll find out soon.

When things go wrong, they go wrong.

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Yesterday was a busy day around here. Arden was leaving straight from school to attend a gathering of her friends at one of their homes. I also had a speaking gig at a local Barnes & Noble in the early evening. Remote management of Arden's BG extended past the school day and into the play date as I prepared for the event.

Everything was going great even though the food choices at the get-together were carb heavy, pizza, brownies and the like. Arden's BG was steady at 145 for most of the afternoon, we had seemingly defeated the pizza and the brownie didn't seem to be gaining any ground on the last bolus. Good stuff.

Arden arrived home just a few minutes before we had to leave for the bookstore (Kelly is away for work, so the kids came along), her BG was still holding steady so we jumped into my car and headed out. It was on that short ride that things began to go wrong. First Arden's CGM indicated that her BG was rising slowly so we bolused, it seemed strange because she was now over ninety minutes past the the time that she ate the brownie and there was no spike after she ate it. The pizza by this time had been ingested over four hours prior. I thought it (BG rise) could be the pizza but more likely we were fighting with the combo of pizza and brownies. Still the rise was slow and I had no concern that the bolus wouldn't handle it.

Forty-five minutes into the book talk Arden's CGM was going nuts. Her BG was now rising quickly and the last bolus didn't look like it was going to hold. She tested and we were very aggressive with the next dose, very aggressive. So there we were in a Barnes & Noble, I'm chit chatting with the crowd about Life Is Short, can't leave for an hour and trying to decide if Arden's blood sugar rise is food related or if her pump site suddenly went bad... I didn't know and only time was going to tell. A short while later we boulsed again because subsequent testing indicated that the last bolus only served to stop the rise in her BG and wasn't enough to bring it down. By the time we got home her BG had fallen just enough to create more confusion. Do you know what I mean? I was in that spot where it seemed like everything was going to be alright if I just gave things a little more time.

But you know that wasn't the case.

Arden climbed into bed with me to watch television (Far after her bedtime), she was drinking water, I was setting increased temp basal rates and staring at the DexCom screen - the evening had devolved into a good ole' fashion cluster fuck.

I gave up after one in the morning and changed her pod. I felt comfortable that her BG was in a safe place for me to sleep a little after four thirty in the morning. Good news is, my TiVo is empty now...

Bad news? I never heard my alarm and we didn't wake up until eight in the morning, school begins at five after. I woke the children and told them to get ready, "Don't rush, I just want you to arrive in time for second period". Cole jumped into the shower, Arden went to her room to get dressed - CGMnow was 80.

I brushed my teeth, got Cole to the first floor and called for Arden, she didn't answer, I called again... nothing. When I tried the knob on her bedroom door and it was locked, I knocked, no answer. So I raised my voice, "Arden!, Arden, open the door".

"I can't, I'm on my bed and I can't get up - I'm low".

When I unlocked the door to Arden's room she was sitting on her bed, her face lacked muscle tone and she looked pale. I immediately handed her a juice and asked why she didn't call me or drink a juice. She responded, "I can't move, I have a bad headache and I'm dizzy". We treated, tested and she ate a piece of toast. When her BG finally came to a balance I asked her to get ready for school but she said that she felt like she didn't sleep at all last night, she thought she was getting sick. I explained that I've heard from many PWD that they experience a hangover like sensation after a significant overnight low and that it comes with a feeling that you didn't sleep. Then she said something that dropped my heart into my stomach.

"That never happens to me..."

I had to explain that each day with diabetes wasn't going to be the same and that different issues are going to arise as she gets older. I think she was sad to hear that, but too out of it to care. It's almost noon and Arden is still sleeping in her bed. Her BG is all good now but I'm a little worse for wear. I'm sharing this today because I promised to try and be even more open during Diabetes Awareness Month. But also because I was reminded recently that my blog reaches a lot of parents and I never want any of you to think that the shitty stuff that sometimes happens to you... isn't happening to us. It is, it's happening to all of us.

You are not alone and I hope knowing that helps in some small way.