A1C

Went to have my quarterly appointment with my Endocrinologist today at Duke University Medical Center, and I just wanted to report that I lowered my A1C reading down to 7.2%!! It's not ideal, but I'm ever so diligently working on getting it below 7.0% without all the complications of the unnecessary lows that cropped up on me over the summer. As always, Type 1 Diabetes is a daily work in in progress.

Lack of Communication

I was in my local Food Lion grocery store this evening checking out when I guy approached my aisle and pulled out his phone. He proceeded to make a call when all of the sudden a guy who was paying for his beer, two people in front of me, answered his phone. The guy behind me says "what aisle are you in?" To which the guy two people in front of me steps back from the register, looks up at the number on the pole above him and says "5" back into the phone. The guy behind me says "oh" into his phone and hangs up. At no point during this entire 30 seconds of recorded human history did either one of these two mental giants look forward or backward at each other. I laughed at the guy behind me, because at the time I thought it was funny. He, unfortunately, looked at me like I was crazy. I honestly thought for a minute that I was on Candid Camera or at the very least Punk'd. What's really scary is that as I left the store I realized that these two individuals live near me, purchase beer near me and drive their respective vehicles near me. All the more reason why I stay in as much as possible at night as I continue to advance in age.

Hey, It's May!!!!!!

Just thought I'd check in to see if anyone had read anything I'd written yet. Sadly, it's still just me writing then reading!! I'll be back shortly when I get time.

Online Diary and not a Blog

I've come to the conclusion that no matter how much stuff I put on here, unless it's promoted to others, nobody's going to find it. I didn't actually just come to this conclusion, I knew it all along from reading other peoples blogs and tweets about the subject of readership. So with that being said, Type 1 Spartan is going to be more of an online diary about my activities than an actual blog. A "blog" is loosely defined as a shared on line journal. Since I'm not in the business of promoting right now, it can't be shared with anyone. Once I get into the business of writing something more profound, I'll invite others to share in my glorious ability to write. So for right now, this can best be defined as Type 1 Spartan 1.0 since I'm the only one it's being shared with!!

Snow/Sleet

As of about 12:00 PM on Saturday, January 30th, we here in Raleigh, NC have received nearly six inches of a combination of snow and sleet. The only problem we're having now is the sleet continues to fall, the temperature is hovering around 23 degrees and with the wind chill it makes it feel like 10 degrees. My sons were extremely eager to get outside and play in the elements until they realized how cold it actually was. Hopefully we can venture outside again later this afternoon with our "sled" and find an appropriate hill for them to go down without the constant pelting of sleet hitting their faces!!

Late January Blues

I've started my new regiment for maintaining a healthier lifestyle, albeit mostly unsuccessful, for the better part of a week. What I didn't realize would be my most difficult challenge would be getting my insurance to cover the cost of more test strips. As a Type 1 Diabetic, one of the main challenges in controlling your blood sugar is to test often. Testing five times a day is good if you're not doing anything exercise wise or if you have any unexpected problems during the day. Five times a day gets me my three main meals, bedtime and one random time in between meals. My usual random time is between lunch and dinner, around 3:00 PM in the afternoon when I'm sitting at my desk. Again, for any diabetic looking to get their blood sugar under control this is a good number to start off with as far as daily testing goes. So five times a day times 30 days in a month equals 150 test strips needed in any one month. While at my Endocrinologist last week, I mentioned that I would probably be better able to control my blood sugar if I could test more often. After all, I do want to lower my A1C reading, the three month average blood sugar reading, to a more normal range from where it is right now. She informed me that she would write me a prescription for 200 strips a month, which she electronically filled out to my pharmacist while I sat in the examining room. A couple of days later I went to pick up my new prescription and I got that all to familiar look from the cashier when you know something's not right when the pull up your order on their screen. She said she'd be right back. She returned to tell me that the insurance company takes between 3-5 days to process the new prescription and that I should call back instead of just showing up. So on day five, I called back to see if the insurance company had accepted my new prescription and the person at the pharmacy said I needed to get in touch with my doctor to see what the holdup was. I proceeded to get in touch with my doctor's office to tell them they needed to find out why the insurance company was not accepting the new prescription. To make an already long story somewhat shorter, the nice lady at my doctor's office came back to me with this: Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina, through my wife's state employees health insurance plan, will not accept an increase in my test strips until we meet a certain dollar amount in deductible cost. It was at this point that she didn't know in what way did I have to meet my deductible, thus forcing me at some point to now contact my health insurance to ask/beg them why they don't want me to be healthier. I'm not complaining, I'm really not. It's just hard not completely understanding why the people who take so much money from you, your insurance company, can't fully comprehend how expensive Type 1 Diabetes is, but that's a post for another day. I need to get on the phone and talk with these people.

Closing commentary, my two sons both had an exciting week. My oldest ran into a mailbox on his bike last Monday and needed 13 stitches to close the very deep gash in his cheek and my youngest had his quarterly ear infection return. Hooray for the services of daycare!!

Time to get my life on track

Well it's been an interesting week for me so far and one that's going to be, looking back on it later this year, a real wake up call. One of the things I said I was going to do this year was visit a dentist. I'm not going to get into the length of time between appointments or the myriad of excuses for not having gone, but let's just say it's been a while. With that being said, I've had two thorough cleaning procedures done in the last week and my gums are healing and my teeth look better. Now I need to figure out exactly what I need to have done to my mouth moving forward and the all important fun part of how I'm going to pay for it. As I sat in the office on Wednesday morning, after my second cleaning, the dentist came in and looked over my mouth and prepared a sort of game plan on what should be done next. When she was finished checking me over, the office manager came in with a sheet of paper outlining the plan and handed it to me. I don't know if it was the look of shock on my face or the delayed reaction from the cleaning, but the office manager asked me if I was OK. I informed her that while I knew the procedures would cost more than the two cleaning appointments I'd just gone through, I didn't know that they would be nearly 10x more!! So I'm at a bit of a loss right now with exactly what I'm going to have done and how those procedures are going to be paid for.

What I'm more focused on right now is what I need to do in order to get my Type 1 Diabetes back on the right track, specifically after yesterday's appointment with my Endocrinologist. I've just started my 25th year with Type 1 Diabetes and I've only been an average patient at best during many of those years. I was doing well last year with my A1C number, which is an accurate average calculation of your blood sugar numbers over a three month period, lowering it in three consecutive appointments. All of that ended yesterday. So again I could list all of the excuses why it went up yesterday, or I had could set some real definitive goals to greatly reduce my A1C by my next appointment in the middle of April. So with that, here are the things I'm going to do, and continue to do for myself, my wife and our two young sons to remain healthy. (And they're going to be bullet points because that means you're really serious!!)

• I will test my blood sugar between 5-7 times a day to regulate both the highs and the lows.

• I will exercise four days a week a minimum of 30 minutes a day.

• I will start with my weight loss program of 15 pounds.
  

• I will aggressively count carbs and thus reduce the portion sizes on my plate.

• I will snack, but I will compensate for the snacking with the proper amount of insulin.

• I will not see a blood sugar testing number over 200mg/dl unless under a breakdown of my body that can not be fully explained.

If I can manage the six bullet points above, I can walk out of Duke University Medical Center in April knowing that I did an excellent job with achieving a lifestyle that will keep me around for a long time which is my ultimate goal.

Sports and Gambling

I've been known from time to time in a previous era to cast certain wagers on an athletic event or two, but since I've grown more older and mature I've shied away from such vices. One of the main reasons I stopped gambling was because I was only very average at it. The wins and loses were far to equal to continue as a full time venture. While I thought I knew sports, and particularly basketball and football at both the collegiate and professional levels, I quickly realized you really need to focus your efforts on a full time basis to be successful. While this may not come as a surprise to many who partake in these types of endeavors, I began like most people by thinking I knew what I was doing when it came to placing a wager.

Which brings me to the present day. I enter a college football and basketball pool ever year through a friend's business in Pennsylvania. The stakes to enter are rather minimal, but the payout can be substantial if you happen to come in the top three places of the pool. One year I was lucky enough to win the "March Madness" pool they had and took home a very nice payday because I was the only one who correctly had both participants in the National Championship game. So as I entered the 2009-2010 college football bowl pool I thought I had good enough picks to be respectable if not somewhere in the money. Well all I can say is that I got off to a horrendous start picking games against the spread, and it only went downhill from there!! In the first seven games of the pool, the underdog getting the points won the game outright in six of them. Needless to say I was off to a less than stellar 2-5 start. With 76 people entered in the pool I was history as far as getting in the money. It's kind of like The Masters golf tournament where you can't win the event on the first day, but you sure can lose it with a bad round. It was at this point that I was just trying to remain somewhere around .500 with my picks. I did OK over the next few games, winning a couple in a row and then losing one or two. It was on January 1st that the wheels just came completely off. From the games on the 1st to the 7th, I went 4-10 with only the Alabama win in the BCS National Championship game vaulting me from 76th place all the way to a tie for 70th place. I finished off going 12-22 for the 34 bowls which is absolutely miserable for someone who claims to watch a myriad of college football from Labor Day until the first weekend in December.

I obviously don't have a clue about betting against the spread. But what is also obvious is neither do the guys in Las Vegas that set the lines when it comes to college kids and lengthy time periods between the end of the regular season and a bowl game. Thank the good Lord above that I only do this for a nominal fee twice a year and that I don't make a living out of this because it would have been a very bad financial start to 2010 in my household.

On a related note, I can't wait for March Madness in almost exactly two months!!

Start off 2010 with a purpose

It's been a goal of mine for some time to enter the blogging world to get stuff off my proverbial chest. With all of that being said, there seems no better time like the present to jump into the deep end of the pool and get started. The stuff I'd like to communicate to everyone else out there will revolve mainly around three topics. The first being Type 1 Diabetes. Since I've just started my 25th year with the disease I can be qualified as an expert with having it. That's not to be confused with an expert in dealing with it. Having Type 1 Diabetes and dealing with Type 1 Diabetes are two completely different avenues that I'll be more than happy to inform you about in upcoming posts. The second will center around sports. I've always loved them either as a participant, or as a spectator. The third will revolve around my work in a strategic advisory firm (read consulting). I'm not exactly sure which topic will dominate my blog, but it's a good bet that since I just wrote more on Type 1 Diabetes than sports and work combined my money right now is on Type 1 Diabetes. I look forward to looking back on this post one year from now and saying "boy, that post was really amateur hour", but everyone has to start off someplace and January 6th, 2010 is my best place to start.