Tag: diabetes

With Diabetes, Accuracy Matters

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This morning, as I read the Philadelphia Inquirer, I noticed an article on page 1 of the Health section titled Steps to help teenagers cope with diabetes.

I have one of those, so naturally I was interested in reading every single word of that article, looking for a new takeaway that will help my teenager manage his blood sugar well.

(For the record, he does quite well already in that department, but there’s always room for improvement, and there’s always the fear that teenage rebellion will get in the way of a good A1C.)

The article featured a big photo of the very same continuous glucose monitor The Kid uses: a Dexcom, along with the caption “Dexcom’s continuous monitoring system checks sugars twice a day and can share readings automatically via the cloud with parents or providers.” The same information was present in the article.

Dexcom's continuous monitoring system checks sugars every five minutes and can share readings automatically via the cloud with parents or providers.
Dexcom’s continuous monitoring system checks sugars every five minutes and can share readings automatically via the cloud with parents or providers.

Almost. But not quite.

Dexcom’s continuous monitoring system checks sugars EVERY FIVE MINUTES. Day and night. No matter what the diabetic is doing. The “twice a day” applies to finger-sticks for blood sugar checks, which must be done twice daily to calibrate the Dexcom. So instead of doing those finger sticks before every meal or snack (and any other time the diabetic might “feel low”), it only has to be done twice a day.

This means that the Dexcom, with its 12 checks per hour, provides essential information about blood-sugar trending that diabetics can use in determining their next insulin dose. You can’t get that kind of trending information from finger sticks.

And that’s why The Kid has a Dexcom. If it was only good for twice a day, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble it takes to implant the transmitter every week. That inaccuracy might dissuade some families from looking into a very helpful piece of technology.

The Inquirer has done diabetic teens and their families a great service by publishing an article full of useful tips. I just wish it had presented accurate information about the technology that is helping The Kid as he learns to manage diabetes and becomes more independent.

Monday Recap: May 25, 2015

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Monday Recap-What I've been writingAt Cook and Count:

PB CC choc cookie (2) cIt wasn’t too hot to bake, so I made some Double Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cookies!

 

Pyrex cupsAnd a simple errand–buying a new measuring cup–turned into an opportunity to inform a company about what it takes to cook for diabetics. Here’s my Open Letter to Pyrex.

At CatholicMom.com:

I curate the Sunday Brunch feature. Check out some of last week’s best articles from our contributors!

 

 

Midnight Run

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(Middle-of-the-night, more precisely.)

I was actually awake until almost midnight, which never happens, but The Kid was having 4 friends sleep over and the Super Smash Brothers tournament-in-progress was pretty loud, so I sat in the living room with my Kindle book until I couldn’t see anymore.

At 4:30 AM, The Kid’s low-blood-sugar alarm went off. Hubs asked if I’d go deal with it since he’d been up until 3 with the boys.

(I didn’t ask who won the tournament, figuring that if it had been Hubs, he’d have told me.)

I stumbled grumpily down the stairs, turned on the kitchen light to grab the stuff I needed to double-check that blood sugar, and…nothing.

Figuring the light bulb had burned out (I’m still using up my not-big-enough hoard of incandescents) I tried the downstairs hall light. Nothing. Upstairs hall, nothing. Dining room, nothing.

So I went downstairs in the dark to the basket near the printers where we keep 2 flashlights and 1 battery-operated camping lantern. I went for the lantern, then grabbed the testing supplies and went to wake TheKid.

The two friends who were sleeping on the floor, and who I had to step over to get to him, were awake because they’d heard the alarm. They razzed him as he sleepily told me he’d had a fruit rollup 20 minutes ago, but I made him drink juice anyway.

After that, I asked how long the lights had been out. The kids didn’t know, but they did tell me that the basement lights worked (they’d left those on…) and so did the bathroom and The Kid’s room.

The plot thickens. The family room lights worked too, and two boys were still up, so I asked them how many cell phones they had charging in there.

“ALL of them,” one answered as he yanked chargers out of power strips.

Hmmm…

So I had to find a light switch I hadn’t yet tried, so I could turn it on and then head to the garage to fiddle with the breaker box. That did the trick, but then I was good and awake so I sat in bed reading my Kindle for 45 minutes until I realized it was 5:30 and this was Not A Good Idea.

Fitbit OneWhen I woke up two hours later and got ready to go downstairs, I lamented the fact that while I was doing all that running around in the middle of the night, I hadn’t put my Fitbit in my pocket. So I don’t even get credit for the 4:30-AM cardio.

 

Monday Recap: 5/18/15

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Monday Recap-What I've been writing

I had to take the “Morning” out of the Monday Recap, because it just wasn’t happening.

Here’s what I’ve been working on this week:

At CatholicMom.com:

Catholic-TV-appTech Talk: Must-See Catholic TV, a look at an app that gives you all 99 of CatholicTV’s programs!

 

At Cook and Count:

trinity rice with almonds c squareSuper Sides: Trinity Rice with Almonds is a great way to transform leftover rice into something new and delicious.

 

 

new Pyrex designAn Open Letter to Pyrex was written because this is one of those times when “new and improved” doesn’t work out that way. I need more precision in measuring devices than Pyrex’s new design offers.

At Real Housekeeping:

SS-Chicken-with-Snow-Peas-FB1Scrumptious Spring! Chicken with Snow Peas is today’s featured recipe. Skip the takeout–this cooks in less time than it takes to steam the rice.

Top 10 Tuesday: Measuring Up

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Top 10 TUESDAY measuring stuffIt’s #Top10Tuesday, and I’d like to share the top 10 pieces of kitchen equipment that get me through life with a diabetic child.

May I present my measuring devices:

measuring devices (1)cWhy yes, I *do* have 3 sets of measuring cups, plus one slider measuring cup, and a whole big bunch of Pyrex.

No, I’m not a professional baker. But I do like to cook and bake, and I’m always looking for the equipment that works best for me.

In the kitchen, I measure. A lot. That’s how I find out how many carbs are in the things I feed my family. Not because I think carbs are evil, but because my son needs to count them up with each meal, then take enough insulin to compensate.

So my little measuring-device problem has turned into an asset around here. Here are the ones I like the best!

For dry ingredients:

I have two sets of regular dry measuring cups. One set is mine to use for baking. The other one, with cups in different colors, stays out on the table and is used daily to measure portions at meals.

collapsible measuring cupsA set of collapsible measuring cups is great when you’re serving something like ice cream; you just turn the cup over and push the bottom to dump the ice cream into the dish. Sometimes, though, my son will just eat straight out of the measuring cup instead of grabbing another dish. He’s been known to have a couple of measuring cups sitting on his dinner plate, one filled with broccoli, another with rice. Whatever works…

Measuring spoons are another item you can’t have enough of. We have 3 sets. I love the look and feel of my metal measuring spoons, but I usually grab the plastic ones that aren’t all attached; this way I only have to wash the ones I use.

For liquids:

Emsa perfect beakerThe Emsa Perfect Beaker is fun to use. It makes you feel like a scientist in the kitchen. It’s great when you are mixing several liquids with several different types of measures (say, 1/4 cup of this and 1/3 cup of that) because you can just use this one cup, adding each one in–it’s easy to see how much of everything you have. Turn the cup around to see the different types of measures. UNfortunately, it’s plastic, so don’t use it for hot stuff.

Pyrex cupsPyrex measuring cups. I have 3 of them, in 1, 2, and 4-cup sizes. These are my workhorses, and they’re dishwasher-friendly. Barely a day goes by that I don’t use at least one of these. Since they’re glass, you can measure hot liquids in Pyrex cups, as well as melting butter in the microwave.

oxo mini beakersFor even more scientific-measuring fun, I like these Oxo Mini Beakers. It’s much easier to measure a teaspoon of liquid, such as vanilla extract, into a beaker rather than a measuring spoon.  And when kids are helping to cook or bake, these are just a lot of fun to use. I also get mileage of these when I’m setting up a mise-en-place.

pampered chef batter bowlNow let’s go to the other extreme: my 8-cup Big Batter Bowl. I got this from Pampered Chef. It’s a great bowl, comes with a lid, and is nice and heavy. It’s great for measuring or just for mixing. I’ve been known to pour an entire pot of soup, stew or sauce into this bowl to see exactly how much I get–then subtract the amount from a single serving and figure out how many servings will be in the whole batch.

Weights and Measures:

eatsmart digital scaleI use this Eat Smart Precision Pro food scale multiple times a day. It’s small enough (about the size of a paperback book) that we can even pack it in a small padded envelope and take it with us if we’re going somewhere. It is very simple to place a dish on this scale, automatically subtract the weight of the dish, then weigh the food. From the chips that go in the Kid’s lunchbox to the bowl of cantaloupe he’s having for snack, we can measure anything with this.

taylor digital scaleA little trickier to use, but still handy, is the Taylor Digital Measuring Cup and Scale. You can’t get the whole thing wet or it will kill the digital scale, so it’s hard to wash. Don’t delegate that job to the kids!

For the Sticky Stuff:

wonder cup metricI have 3 sizes of Wonder Cup measuring cups. When I need to measure solid or sticky ingredients like peanut butter, vegetable shortening, honey or molasses, these are my go-to cups! If you’re only going to get one, I recommend the 2-cup size.

Note: Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you purchase something through one of my links, it doesn’t cost YOU any extra, and it gives ME a little something I can put toward my next purchase of measuring devices.

Small Success and Cupcakes Too!

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Small Success dark blue outline 800x800Thursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!

I’m coming to the end of the third week in a row of Hubs’ business trips to Kansas. I’ll find out later today if this is the end of it for a while. I sure hope so!

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I got the chipped windshield on Hubs’ car fixed–for free! Turns out our insurance company covers those repairs with no deductible. A friend of mine recommended a good auto glass shop, so Monday morning I headed over there and sat in the Wi-Fi-equipped waiting room, helping an elderly Filipino couple navigate the Keurig machine and getting an interesting glimpse of human nature while watching Let’s Make a Deal.

It beats The View, anyway, which is what’s usually on when I’m stuck in waiting rooms.

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I’m a little sleep-deprived this morning (3 glucose alarms last night, requiring 12 oz. of apple juice and a Double Stuf Oreo. I think the cookie did the trick) but I managed not to lose my mind and yell when The Kid missed the bus. His sleep was interrupted too–by me, yelling at him to wake up so he could drink juice. He’s really hard to wake up when his sugar goes low.

So I drove him to school, then swung by Wawa to get a roll for my lunch (I have leftover meatballs in the fridge) and a free cup of coffee, because today is Wawa Day. I’m grateful for the caffeine.

turtle cupcake 2-3-

I baked. Last night at folk group practice we celebrated two birthdays. We can celebrate in style because we practice in my living room, so it’s perfectly OK to have treats after we’re done singing. My creation for last night’s treats: Salted Caramel Turtle Cupcakes.

They’re good. Really good.

Share your Small Successes at CatholicMom.com by joining the linkup in the bottom of today’s post. No blog? List yours in the comments box!

© 2015 Barb Szyszkiewicz

Small Success: Flying Solo Edition

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Small Success dark blue outline 800x800Thursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!

Hubs had a business trip this week, so it’s just been me and The Kid (formerly known as Little Brother. He’s almost as tall as me now, which he loves to remind me about, and The Kid is shorter for tweeting purposes, so he’s been renamed.)

I’m sleepless in NJ this morning (it was a bad diabetic night…4 juice runs and one desperation cookie…his sugar just would not stay up) and I’m getting a cold. There will be no NyQuil until Friday night, when Hubs will be home, however, so I just have to tough it out.

joe cool coffee cup
My favorite mug, because who doesn’t love Joe Cool? Photo copyright 2015 Barb Szyszkiewicz. All rights reserved.

I gave up homemade lattes for Lent, and I won’t be having one today–time to just stick to tea in my mug. It feels good on the throat.

Here’s what DID work this week, so far:

1. We enjoyed our Easter dinner with all 3 kids on Saturday, because Hubs had to be at the airport before dinnertime Sunday (and he spent the rest of the day with the younger 2 kids, visiting his mom at the nursing home)

2. Big Brother brought his new octave mandolin and played with the folk group for Easter Mass. I miss having him here to play with us every Sunday!

3. Big Brother dropped Hubs off at the airport on his way back home.

4. I took The Kid up to the Great White North and we stayed with my parents for 2 days. We got to see my brother’s family and my great-aunt, who taught all the kids a card game that she plays with the other seniors at her apartment complex.

micke-corner-workstation-brown__0208687_PE362524_S4
Micke Desk: Ikea

5. We got home yesterday in plenty of time for folk group practice. Today will be spent at my Adoration hour and assembling some kit furniture: a new desk for The Kid. The 20+-year-old desk he was using is falling apart. He is excited to have a new desk that he chose for himself. We got it at Ikea. The back of the hutch is a magnetic whiteboard, which I think is a great feature. I can write his chore list every day on there <insert evil laughter>

Shall we take bets on how long it’ll take me to put this bad boy together?

Share your Small Successes at CatholicMom.com by joining the linkup in the bottom of today’s post. No blog? List yours in the comments box!

© 2015 Barb Szyszkiewicz

Crying It Out

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Those tears I should have cried 16 months ago are trying to leak out now, at the most inopportune moments.

Some of the stuff The Kid carries everyplace he goes. Because diabetes.
Some of the stuff The Kid carries everyplace he goes. Because diabetes.

I guess I’ve found the limit of how long I can pretend to be strong.

Ever since Saturday, I am struggling to keep the tears back. We spent much of the day at an event for families of diabetic children, sponsored by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the JDRF. That event has outgrown its venue, which is good in one way because more people can learn important strategies to help their kids manage diabetes, but bad in another because it means that there are very, very many kids who have to learn to manage diabetes.

On Saturday morning, everyone at the conference was jam-packed into a hotel ballroom, where someone had played a game of “How Many Skinny, Uncomfortable Chairs Can You Pack Into One Conference Room” and each and every person in the audience was the loser. As it got more crowded, I got more tense and upset until I couldn’t stand being in there anymore. My heart was racing and my eyes were filling with tears and I felt like I couldn’t breathe in there. Well, hello, panic attack! How nice of you to come at such an inconvenient moment!

I missed most of the keynote address because I was hiding in the bathroom battling back the tears, then sipping a (decaf) mocha in the lobby, where the chairs were far away from each other. I managed to calm down enough to make it through the day, but I haven’t really decompressed completely since then, so I almost broke down this morning in the school parking lot, during Mass, and in ShopRite.

Besides the (very reasonable under the circumstances) claustrophobia, I think a lot of this is because I never did cry when The Kid was diagnosed with diabetes. I had to jump right into management mode, because there’s no luxury of time to do anything else. We went straight from diagnosis into a 3-day boot camp, then home to deal with it all on our own.

I’m pretty sure that’s part of the reason that every time we go to a Diabetes Convention, where the focus is All Diabetes, All The Time, I break down. Last year it wasn’t as bad; I just couldn’t manage sitting at the lunch table talking diabetes with other parents, so I wandered around the exhibit hall. That seemed to head it all off at the pass. I also don’t deal well when we go to things like cast parties or school events, where I freak out at all the unlabeled food, though we’ve done fairly well at counting carbs at such times.

I’ve been too busy being the mom and trying to stay competent and, you know, keep my kid alive. I haven’t had time to cry.

Also, if I let myself cry, does that mean that this has beaten me?

The thing is, I look around at the crosses all these other people are bearing, and I feel ashamed that I am being brought to my knees by what seems to be comparatively small stuff. I should just be able to roll with it and handle this, right?

Small Success: Serenity Edition

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Small Success dark blue outline 800x800 Thursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes! (Don’t you love the new logo? CatholicMom.com has some amazing artists working on these behind the scenes.)

How’s the week going for you?

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Yesterday we took TheKid to his endocrinologist for his 3,000-mile checkup. Despite a wacky few weeks (hello, adolescent growth spurt that kicked off a need for extra insulin) he has a hemoglobin A1C of 5.7. That’s a FANTASTIC number in diabetes land. If he keeps it under 7, his chances of later-in-life complications is drastically reduced.

serenity now-2-

My desk has stayed clean for another week (yay!) but I did add a piece of art. I didn’t intend to keep this on the desk when I bought it, but I do like looking at this picture. The other day when I was frustrated by some computer issues (some on my end, some not) I turned it into a meme.

She looks so calm. Wish I were.

I can’t keep this lovely matted print on my desk forever (it’s standing up thanks to a binder clip) so I’ll have to find someplace else in the house for this. Maybe the kitchen. She looks like a good Kitchen Madonna.

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I learned how to make a handy-dandy FAQ page, where all the questions are on top and when you click on one, you jump to the answer, farther down on the same page. I was ridiculously excited when it worked.

god first family then notre dameI’m looking forward to tonight’s NCAA basketball game: my Fighting Irish are in the Sweet 16! I’m already dressed for the occasion and am claiming the best spot on the couch. Is this T-shirt great or what? I can even wear it to church! Priorities…

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© 2015 Barb Szyszkiewicz
Art: “The Virgin” by Joseph Stella, 1926. My copy purchased from Joslyn Art Museum. Modification mine.

Small Success: Sleep Deprived

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Small-Success-Thursday-400pxThursdays at CatholicMom.com begin with a look at the past week’s Small Successes!

The older I get, the less well I handle the lack of a good night’s sleep. Since Hubs has always been one of those people who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat and wake up refreshed no matter what, he’s always done the Night Shift when the kids were little.

That didn’t change when The Kid developed diabetes. The thing with diabetes is that you can have a low blood sugar during the night–and never know about it. This can kill you.

dexcom g4We are blessed that there’s technology in the form of a continuous glucose monitor that sets off an alarm on Hubs’ cell phone when The Kid’s blood sugar goes too low.

Tuesday night, it was alarm after alarm after alarm. And I woke up at midnight and couldn’t go back to sleep, so from midnight to 3 I took the Night Shift. He had 12 oz. of juice during that time but his blood sugar just wouldn’t stay within the safe level.

I’m really glad that I have the sort of job where I can pick and choose what task to do at what time. Normally my best time of day to do work that requires concentration is in the morning. But not yesterday. So here’s how I succeeded:

1. I didn’t try to schedule things I couldn’t handle until there had been sufficient caffeine intake.

2. I got some overdue housework done. The bathrooms are clean and the floors have been mopped. While I cleaned, I listened to the Good Things Radio podcast. Girlfriend chat, while scrubbing the tub.

3. I made a short grocery list and went to Shop Rite, where they had doo-wop music on the radio and I might or might not have had a little extra spring in my step because of that. I wasn’t the only person dancing in Shop Rite.

4. By the time I got home, I was feeling good and awake and I was able to get a good chunk of work done!

5. And in case you’re keeping track, it’s been 2 weeks and my desk is still clean!

This morning, I’m grateful for the good night’s sleep I got. Hubs was not so lucky. He made a lot of juice runs again, overnight.

Share your Small Successes at CatholicMom.com by joining the linkup in the bottom of today’s post. No blog? List yours in the comments box!

© 2015 Barb Szyszkiewicz