2022 will be here in a few short days and the prospect makes my head spin. Where did 2021 go?!
Me, looking comfy as I casually ponder where the eff 2021 went.
As we approach the new year, I’m feeling several different emotions – the most prevalent one being gratitude.
Amid all the chaos of the past year that was filled with so many literal and figurative highs and lows, I can’t help but feel grateful for the many people and experiences that kept me calm in the storm. My family, my boyfriend, my friends, my dogs. The roof over my head. The opportunity to start a new job at a diabetes organization, which in turn reunited me with old friends and helped me make new ones. The chance to travel across the country and go on several weekend trips to closer-by destinations. And as often as I gripe about having so little time to myself, I’m also grateful to have such a jam-packed schedule that keeps my both my mind and body active and well.
With everything in the world feeling uncertain lately (oh, how unnervingly familiar it feels to merely say that), it’s helpful to remind myself of these things that make life so rich for me. I’m looking forward to carrying this reminder into 2022 with me and likewise, I can’t wait to continue connecting with the greater diabetes community in the coming year.
Happy New Year, Cactus Huggers – may you be healthy, well, and happy in 2022 and beyond!
This blog post was originally published on Hugging the Cactus on May 8, 2020. I’m sharing it again today because had I known these 3 tips when I first got my own health insurance plan, I would’ve saved myself from a whole lot of trouble – and headaches. Read on to learn more…
Just over 365 days ago, I made the switch from my parents’ health insurance plan to my own plan, provided by my employer.
In the last year, I’ve learned some important lessons about being responsible for my own healthcare coverage. Some lessons were easier to learn than others. I figured it might be helpful to others who just made the switch themselves (or who will be doing so in the near future) for me to sum up three big takeaways I’ve discovered along the way in the hopes that it makes the transition a little easier for those individuals, or at least saves them some time down the road.
Navigating the confusing world of health insurance has taught me quite a few lessons.
Take advantage of a flexible spending account (FSA), if the option is available. I grew up knowing that FSAs exist – my parents would always bring their FSA account cards to all my doctor’s appointments and pay for all of my supplies using those cards – but I had no idea what the big deal was about them until I switched to my own health insurance plan. Basically, FSAs are a great employer-sponsored benefit because they allow account holders to pay for eligible medical expenses on a pre-tax basis. So those who have an FSA are able to pay for things they need tax-free, and the money is typically available to account holders on the first day of the health insurance plan year. My current health insurance plan allows a maximum contribution of $2,300, so I was able to put up to that amount on my account for 2020. It really comes in handy because my wallet doesn’t take as much of a beating from all of my necessary (and very expensive) diabetes supplies, and unlike the last half of 2019, I’m not paying as much out of pocket after my deductible is met.
Keep records of everything. It might seem fussy to hold onto any and all receipts or transaction records, but there might come a day when one is needed. Case in point? At the end of 2019, my company announced during open enrollment that our FSA administrator was changing…which, at the time, I didn’t think was a big deal. I knew what the maximum contribution was, and I figured I’d only need to log into my FSA account sporadically to see how much money I had left for the year. Well…I was wrong about that. Back in February, I got a notification that I needed to submit verification of purchases of my regular OmniPod shipment, Dexcom sensors and transmitters, and my Humalog prescription. And you can bet your bottom dollar I didn’t have receipts for all three of those transactions because, well, my old FSA provider never once asked for receipts. As silly as it sounds now, I guess the thought never crossed my mind that my new FSA administrator would need purchase records. Long story short, I was able to submit an explanation of benefits in lieu of the receipts, but it would’ve been easier just to hold onto the original records (and I can assure you I’ve done that since this whole incident).
Don’t be afraid to ask questions when things don’t add up. I had my annual physical in January and I had quite the shock when I was billed over $300 for all of the lab work that my primary care physician had me do. The moment I got that charge, I knew something wasn’t right – never before in my life have I been charged that much for a standard battery of tests that I take for my physical. So I wrote in to my PCP’s billing department and asked about the charges. That’s when I learned that I was mistakenly charged this amount and that I needed to reach out to my health insurance provider to re-run the charges. Although it was a little annoying to have to go back and forth between my health insurance provider and my PCP’s office, it was worth it because I saved myself $300 that I never actually owed in the first place. This taught me the importance of asking questions and following up with people until I understand, well, anything that’s confusing to me when it comes to my health insurance.
I can’t believe Christmas is just a couple of days away!
It feels like the Christmas season just started, but really, I’ve had visions of sugar plums dancing in my head a whole lot longer than 23 days now.
Not just sugar plums, though. Christmas cookies. Homemade caramel sauce. Spiked hot chocolate. Reese’s trees (and bells, and nutcrackers, and any other shape Reese’s comes in)…
Conundrum: I love baking. I love Christmas cookies. I love tasting Christmas cookies that I’ve baked. As such, the above image of my Irish cream cookies is very tempting to me.
Needless to say, I feel like my sugar consumption is at an all-time high lately, no doubt due in part to the endless array of seasonal treats that seem to be readily available to me. This is partially my fault – I always have a stash of Reese’s in my home, and baking is one of my favorite hobbies (I feel obligated to try my creations before doling them out to friends and family, y’know, for quality assurance purposes). I should know better because I am very aware of the fact that I have little self-control, but said self-control is completely lacking lately.
So my conundrum is: Do I consume all the carbs this Christmastime and just have a “IDGAF” attitude about it? Or do I go ahead and enjoy all the delicious, carbohydrate-laden sweets of the season with minimal guilt?
I think the solution lies somewhere between those two extremes.
I won’t deprive myself of carbs, but I’ll be deliberate in how I go about eating them. I’ll pre-bolus so sugary spikes won’t appear as often in my Dexcom graphs. I’ll look up carb counts when I can. I’ll enjoy things in moderation, eating one treat at a time or sharing with others when I can so my carb intake gets automatically halved. And I won’t stop baking – it’s one of the things that brings me joy in life, so I know better than to cut out that entirely.
Besides, the Christmas season is so fleeting. I should indulge a little here and there and remind myself that it’s not just about the carbs and blood sugar spikes that cookies cause…it’s also about the holiday traditions associated with cookie baking and the memories made when eating them (and all the carbs). That fuzzy feeling makes me feel a whole lot better about my carb conundrum; coupled with my plan on how to approach carb consumption, I’m actually looking forward to eating many more Christmassy confections over the next few days.
This post was originally published on Hugging the Cactus on December 16, 2020. I’m sharing it again today because this was a fun and festive (if not messy) craft that I did with an insulin vial that I saved. Currently, I have about a dozen or so empty insulin vials set aside and I’m wondering what kind of craft I should do next…
I love Christmas, crafting, and some might argue that I love T1D (that’s mostly false, but when you’ve got a chronic illness, you’ve got to learn how to love some aspects of it…otherwise, you’ll be miserable).
So I recently *attempted* to combine all three of these things and do a little DIY project with an empty insulin vial.
And I learned a few things along the way…
I do not recommend messing with a glass vial without safety glasses, gloves, and a trash can nearby. I was lucky enough to avoid any major glass breakage, but some did happen, and I could totally see this craft getting wicked messy and potentially ouchie without taking the proper precautions.
Insulin vials are stable AF…they are not meant to be tampered with.
Glitter cannot be directly injected into an insulin vial. Period, bottom line, don’t even try it.
Okay, so now that I’ve got my disclaimers/lessons learned out of the way, let me tell you why I decided to fill an empty insulin vial with gold glitter.
For years, I’ve seen DIY projects floating around online involving old diabetes supplies. They range in the level commitment and skill involved, but there’s no questioning the creativity of our community when it comes to recycling supplies we’d normally throw away after using.
One project that I’ve seen over and over again is transforming an empty insulin vial into a Christmas ornament: Simply stick an ornament hook into the insulin vial’s rubber top, hang it on a Christmas tree branch, and bask in its beauty. I decided to take this concept to the next level by putting gold glitter into the vial because insulin is often referred to as “liquid gold” within the diabetes online community. What better way to represent that than to make it appear as though the contents of a vial were truly liquid gold?
In order to do this, I set aside a vial once I was finished with it/sucked every last drop of insulin out of it. Then, I made a sad attempt at combining glitter with water and using an old syringe to transfer it to the vial (needless to say, I had no luck). So I came up with a new strategy: Pierce the rubber stopper and try to funnel glitter in…and that didn’t work. It became evident that I’d have to remove the top entirely, so using my nifty new toolkit that my father just purchased for me (thanks, dad), I set about the task. I used a razor to carve the rubber stopper up and out, and then pliers to get the metal maroon covering off completely. I broke off a small piece of glass in the process – whoops – but using those tools did the trick for me…all I did after that was take the cap from a new vial of insulin and glued it to the top of the glitter vial to ensure most of its sparkly contents would remain inside.
And voila, here’s the end result:
Despite the glass breaking off, this DIY came out better than I expected.
As I held the glittery vial in front of my Christmas tree for a few photos (if I didn’t take pictures, then it didn’t happen), it occurred to me that there’s a strong likelihood that many families will have to make a difficult choice this holiday season: Give a special gift to a loved one, or use that money to pay for insulin instead. Or even more seriously, to have to choose between making this month’s mortgage/utilities payments, or getting life-saving medication.
The thought shook me, as nobody should have to make a choice like that ever.
And so I thought of something to add to my Christmas wish list: affordable insulin for all.
There is no doubt about it: My favorite candy in the entire world (in fact, one of my favorite foods ever) is the utterly irresistible Reese’s cup.
Something about the combination of smooth, salty peanut butter and sweet milk chocolate speaks to my very soul – or perhaps it’s more accurate to say my taste buds. I know that I’m not the only one who feels so passionately about Reese’s (in any shape or form) – in my immediate circle, it’s the candy of choice of my mom, my boyfriend, several coworkers, and countless of other T1Ds that I know in the community.
Oh Reese’s, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Besides the impeccable taste, what is it about Reese’s that is so appealing to people with diabetes, specifically? I pondered this as I had a conversation with one of my coworkers who does not have T1D. She mused that it could be because of the higher protein/fat content of Reese’s compared to other candies, which could make it easier to bolus for. I found myself agreeing with this notion – Reese’s doesn’t cause major spikes to my blood sugar, unlike Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, or Gummi Bears. The peanut butter in a Reese’s probably causes it to have a lower glycemic index, meaning it takes longer to process in the system. And according to the very little research I’ve done, nutritionists tend to agree that Reese’s are a relatively smart candy choice for those reasons, and in spite of their higher sugar content.
Beyond this, though, I honestly don’t know why so many people with diabetes that I know rank Reese’s as their number one candy. But I do know this: We’re definitely right about it being number one. And I can get behind any excuse to eat more Reese’s – bolusing properly for every one that I have, of course.
So it was with zero shame that when I recently picked up my 90-day supply of insulin from the pharmacy, I also added 3 bags of seasonal Reese’s shapes to my basket…they are absolutely worthy of me using that insulin on in the coming weeks!
“Gimme a sec, I’m multitasking right now…owwwwwww!”
I was talking to my boyfriend on the phone and changing my Dexcom sensor at the same time when I was caught off-guard by (and yelped in surprise at) the sharp sting of the sensor’s needle plunging into my arm. It was a sting that evolved into a burn that lasted a solid 24 hours, much to my discomfort.
Examples of just a few of the many needles that I’m constantly poking myself with.
People often ask me whether or not my diabetes devices hurt. The answer is almost always no, because I’ve grown accustomed to the constant pricks and pokes. But once in a blue moon, I have a sensor or pod insertion that hurts so badly that my eyes well up with tears or I have to deal with a night or two of uneasy sleep, because it aches any time I roll over onto the stinging site.
It doesn’t matter that I’ve had at least 30,000 (yes, I did the math) shots and site changes over the years – diabetes still hurts, sometimes, and that’s just talking about the damage it does physically.
Diabetes hurts mentally, too, though that type of scarring is a whole lot more difficult to quantify.
The bottom line? Diabetes doesn’t hurt all of the time, but on the rare occasions it does, it’s a painful reminder that this is just the way of life for people like me who’ve got no other choice than to deal with it.
I knew I wanted to write a blog post about how I forgot to change my pod last week, and I knew I wanted to give it some sort of clever title…
…so out of site, out of mind is what I came up with. After all, my pump site was completely out of sight for me, which is one reason why I forgot it.
You’d think that it’d be impossible to forget about the device I have to wear 24/7, but it’s the sort of thing you get used to pretty quickly.
You’d think that after being on the Omnipod for almost 7 years, I’d never forget that I have to change my pod every 3 days. But just like I sometimes forget to reply to a text message or take a load of laundry out of the dryer, it slipped my mind the other night until just before I went to bed.
That’s when I was faced with a choice: Should I change the pod right then and there before I went to sleep, or let it expire overnight and change it first thing in the morning?
There were pros and cons to each. If I changed the pod before bed, then I wouldn’t have to worry about a screaming pod waking me up in the wee hours of the morning (well, I would if it failed, but the chances of that happening were small). But if I waited until the morning, I would ensure that the 30+ units of insulin still left in the pod would get used up as much as possible. It would also mean that I could push back my regular pod change by one whole day, which sounded appealing – until I remembered that it would mean that I’d have to change my pod on a Saturday when I’m double-hosting family, then friends, at my home.
So I sucked it up and changed my pod before going to sleep, knowing that in an hour and a half it would go off to remind me to check my blood sugar (to make sure that the pod was functioning properly), but feeling okay about this because I’d much rather deal with a gentle reminder over an aggressive malfunction alarm.
Now to the whole reason why I decided to share this seemingly insignificant anecdote in the first place: This is just one diabetes-related decision that I had to make on this particular day. I can’t even tell you how many other choices I had to make prior to this concerning which foods I ate, how much insulin I took, when I exercised, when I ate my meals, and so forth.
Diabetes is a disease defined by decisions. Fortunately, this one about when to change my pod was an easier one to make…but unfortunately, there are many others that are much more difficult. And I think all people with diabetes deserve goddamn decision-making trophies because of the funny conundrum of having no choice but to live life by making decisions.
2021 marks the most triumphant Thanksgiving celebration of my life.
No, it wasn’t because of the accolades that my tasty apple bourbon pie received (though that was for sure among the highlights of the day). It was because, for the first time in recent memory, I avoided high blood sugar the entire day. I got up to 164 at one point, but that was a brief high point in an otherwise wonderful day of smooth blood sugar sailing.
How the heck did I do it?!
Good blood sugars all Thanksgiving-day-long makes for an extra grateful Molly.
Well, for starters, I did my best to follow the tips I outlined in this blog post. But I figured it would be helpful to describe exactly how I went about following these tips and to explain what did and didn’t work. So here’s the method behind my blood sugar success:
I started out my day with a walk and an English muffin for breakfast. The exercise made me feel slightly better about all the calories I’d be consuming later in the day, and the small breakfast kept my appetite satisfied until I sat down for my first real meal of the day. I knew exactly how many carbs were in that English muffin, too, which helped me not only dose for it perfectly but also kept my blood sugar steady in the low 100s right up until mealtime.
For my first Thanksgiving meal of the day (yes, that’s right – I was lucky enough to attend two feasts), I kept the portions on my plate small and mostly carb-free. I had a bit of turkey, a scoop of brussels sprouts, carrots, and a few pieces of cubed sweet potato. By my estimation, I had no more than 25 or so carbs on the plate, but I bolused for just under that amount because my CGM was alerting me to an oncoming low.
There was only an hour and a half between my first meal and my second, and I knew I was going to load up on carbs for my second meal. So I took my next bolus a few minutes before sitting down for food in order to give my insulin a head start. I loaded up my plate with all the good stuff – more turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, a roll, etc. I calculated that I was consuming at least 60 carbs (though I definitely ate more than that) and chose to wait an hour or two after dinner before taking more insulin because I was drinking wine and didn’t want to run the risk of the alcohol/insulin combo making me go low.
After the second meal, I spent the next couple of hours assisting with cleanup and chatting away, eyeballing my CGM every so often to ensure that my blood sugar wasn’t skyrocketing – and feeling very proud when it didn’t!
The final food event of the day was dessert at a relative’s house. Even though a few hours had lapsed between then and the second meal, I wasn’t as keen as I usually am to hit up the dessert table because there were far too many yummy looking options in front of me. I knew there was no way I could try every single item, so I settled for the two things I wanted the most: a pie of my pie and a cannoli. This time, I was aggressive with my insulin intake, bolusing for about 45 carbs for both desserts (I cut a smaller slice of pie and wound up splitting the cannoli with my boyfriend). I also decided to set a temp basal increase out of fear that my complex carbs from earlier in the day would catch up to me later in the evening.
Fortunately, my proactiveness worked like a charm and I actually went a little low by the end of the day! I couldn’t believe how well I finally executed my own advice.
All of that, and I didn’t even have any exercise after dinner or dessert. But I felt 100% in control the entire time because I chose exactly what I wanted to eat, I was familiar with all of the foods, and I didn’t make it a priority to consume as many pieces of pie as I possibly could. It felt awesome and it made me that much more grateful for the fact that I was surrounded by the people I love all day long.
And now that it’s December, I’m especially excited to see repeat success during the holiday gatherings happening throughout the month!
As a person with diabetes, I see (what feels like) a ton of doctors. It’s probably not that many more compared to most people, but in addition to seeing doctors like a primary care physician and a dentist, I also see an ophthalmologist (eye care specialist), an endocrinologist (my diabetes doctor), an allergist, and a mental health professional.
But recently, one more doctor got added to that list: a podiatrist.
A podiatrist has become the newest member of my diabetes care team.
I wrote about how the nurse practitioner at my endocrinologist’s office promised to hook me up with a referral to a podiatrist in this blog post. Long story short, I voiced my concerns to her over the calluses on my feet, and she suggested I see a podiatrist so I could get an expert’s opinion on whether or not they were something to be worried about.
Fortunately, my first meeting with the podiatrist went well as I was assured that my calluses aren’t anything to stress over…but that initial appointment turned into a series of follow-ups (I’ll be seeing him every six months) as I learned that the podiatrist wanted me to start wearing orthotics to support pronation in my feet that I never realized I had. The doctor advised me to come back every six months so the degenerative changes in my feet can continue to be monitored, even though he was very pleased to see in my X-rays that the overall health of the bones in both feet is good.
Naturally, I had mixed feelings regarding the outcome of my first two appointments with the podiatrist.
On the one hand, I was happy to hear that my diabetes wasn’t creating any complications (beyond poor circulation – my feet are always cold and according to the podiatrist, this is due to Raynaud’s). Nerve damage is always something that I fear and I was genuinely frightened that the doctor was going to tell me that I was beginning to show signs of diabetic neuropathy in my feet. Obviously, I’m so relieved that this isn’t the case.
On the other hand, I was bummed to hear that his recommendation was to wear orthotics. Orthotics? Before I’m 30?! I guess it’s just the connotation of the word (it conjures up images of elderly folks hobbling around on canes and wearing special-made sneakers to support unsteady gaits) that’s got me rattled. I never realized that my tendency to walk around on my tippy-toes was due to the way my foot is shaped…but honestly, if wearing orthotics in my shoes now will help prevent or delay hip and knee pain later on in life, then I’ll quit complaining and just get on with it, even though it means I’ve got another doctor to see semi-regularly now.
Well, we’ve arrived at the end of another November, which means National Diabetes Awareness Month is drawing to a close.
What a time it’s been.
Another NDAM has come and gone.
I don’t know about you or anyone else, but it seems like all of my social media feeds were saturated with diabetes content all month long. This is due in part to my job, for sure, but outside of that it felt like diabetes was everywhere online. And overall, that’s a really great thing! To me, it shows that our community has a great sense of pride in our ability to be advocates and to dispel myths about a largely invisible and mostly misunderstood chronic illness.
The teensy-weensy downside to all that, though, is that I felt like a bit of a failure compared to everyone else.
Like I said earlier this month, I simply didn’t have the time or bandwidth to commit to anything specific for NDAM. The desire was there, but I didn’t think it would be right to participate in any daily postings or activities if the intention behind them was lacking authenticity. In other words, I didn’t want to be going through the motions this month of being a “good” advocate, I wanted anything that I did to serve the dual purpose of coming from the heart while also making a positive impact in the diabetes awareness space.
I’d like to think that I accomplished that, but as I inevitably saw the countless other posts from all the other incredible diabetes advocates in our online community, I still couldn’t help feeling like I could’ve tried harder. I could’ve devised a plan ahead of time to do something more significant…but I didn’t.
I guess it’s beginning to dawn on me that diabetes blogs are fewer and far between than they were a mere 5 years ago. I know there are other devoted diabetes bloggers out there, but it feels a lot lonelier than it did when I first started as people turn more and more to the more visually stimulating environments of Instagram and TikTok. Because of this, I think I’m my own worst critic – because I choose to blog about diabetes instead of posting about it in any other format, I fear that I’m not having the impact that I yearned to have on our community, thereby rendering anything I have to say on here semi-pointless.
However, just because I’m experiencing these feelings, it doesn’t mean I’m ready to cease blogging or believe that my form of diabetes advocacy is unacceptable. In fact, I think that in writing this post, I’m also realizing that diabetes advocacy is just like diabetes itself – there’s no one-size-fits-all formula. It will look different on all individuals.
So maybe that’s the attitude and energy I carry away from this NDAM and into the coming year…one that allows me to embrace the kind of diabetes advocacy that I enjoy, that I (hope) am good at, and that continues to connect me with others all around our community.
Hugging the Cactus 