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Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Synopsis

The week that school starts up again (for me this means ~20 teaching hours on top of research and seminars in my graduate program) calls for a big and tough adjustment, diabetes-wise and otherwise. It has been especially challenging considering that I crashed my car on Monday morning (the day I was supposed to start teaching). In fact, I may have saved a curious and playful (with cars unfortunately) Border Collie's life by the accelerating and swerving around a dirt-road curve on my way to work, causing me to spin out and crash into a barbed wire fence and wooden posts... Yup. Thankfully both I and the dog are OK but the same could not be said about my car. Thanks to support from friends and my mom's kind comments about good karma for possibly saving a dog's life I'm pretty over it and can't wait to get back into the car that's being repaired. In the end, it was only a busted radiator, but having the cheapest (liability only) insurance left us to fund that replacement, causing more financial stress on top on carpooling stress on top of start-of-school stress... Whew.

Diabetes-wise, the increased cortisol levels and sedentary condition are causing major insulin resistance that are causing me to rethink my basals. Additionally, I don't drink on weekdays and most weekends during the school year, whereas summertime in grad school pretty much means beer and BBQs on a semi-regular basis, which obviously lower BGs on its own, although I don't think that has that much to do with it.. On the bright side, Integrated Diabetes (@Integ_Diabetes) sent me 4 free Dexcom 7+ sensors, as they received a donation. Although they all expire within a week, I think it'll be just fine, this sensor I installed has been very very accurate, and I plan to set a high alarm of either 180 or 200 as soon as I get this shit straightened out:




Honestly having Dexcom back for a little bit right now has made my week (well that and not killing a dog with my car).. I'm pretty annoyed with the high pattern, and have increased my Levemir from 10 to 12 total Units (split) in the last 16 hours. Not too concerned about it, unless one of my insulins went bad, given the recent heat-wave. I've been holding off switching out the Novolog, but I think I may have to, as I've corrected a few times this morning, and it just doesn't seem to be working well. But I seem to also be going up between meals, and that caused me to change my basals first... I've almost always had a consistent I:C if I stay at the same weight (which I have been!), although I recently figured out that in the mornings with coffee, I'm more 1:10 or 1:12 than the usual 1:15... I'm trying to be patient here and not change too many variables, but I'm seriously starting to suspect my Novolog... But I will get it figured out. Today. Maybe tomorrow.