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Memory Monday: The Shattered Insulin Vial

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One Monday per month, I’ll take a trip down memory lane and reflect on how much my diabetes thoughts, feelings, and experiences have unfolded over the years. Today, I remember…

…the insulin vial that my mother and I accidentally broke in the bathroom of a restaurant, many years ago. R.I.P., tiny vial of Humalog.

This goes back to the days of having to scurry off to the restroom soon after ordering our meals to check blood sugars and inject insulin. And it was a pain. We wanted to be considerate of other diners around us in the restaurant, so doing our diabetes things at the table wasn’t an option. That left us with the most logical choice, the bathroom.

On the night of the broken vial, we were having dinner at a local restaurant. Once our dinner orders were placed, we headed off to complete our routine. And it went just as expected: We knew our blood sugar levels and did the mental math necessary for figuring out our insulin intakes. If memory serves correctly, I was still at an age where I wasn’t totally comfortable with injecting myself yet and would ask my parents to help me whenever we were in a public place (I felt better about self-injecting at home, my literal comfort zone). So my mom ushered me into a stall and went about filling her syringe, then mine. Soon after she stuck me with the needle, it happened…the vial fell. I don’t know if it was my hand or her elbow that knocked it off from its perch, but something caused it to tumble down to meet its end.

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It was a dramatic moment. If a slo-mo camera had captured the ordeal, I’m sure it would’ve shown my mother and I donning identical, horrified expressions as the vial smashed into smithereens on the tiled bathroom floor.

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t the end of the world; after all, we’d just taken our shots before the incident, and the vial wasn’t completely full. But it was just full enough that we were upset about all the wasted insulin that formed a small puddle on the floor.

I remember my mom gingerly picking up the pieces of the fractured vial and disposing of them, sighing as she went about the task. That whole experience resulted in a few things. 1) We made sure to get a vial protector soon after it happened to help cushion future insulin vials that were accidentally dropped and 2) We got insulin pens a bit further down the road, which proved to be much more durable and portable than vials. In fact, they made it so we could do injections at the dinner table, in the car, and just about anywhere with ease and discretion.

But this incident remains etched in my memory because it instilled always being careful with my diabetes supplies from that moment on. All of my diabetes stuff is expensive and extremely precious because of what it does for me, my mom, and millions of other people on a daily basis – it’s got to be treated carefully, always.

6 Holiday Gift Ideas for T1Ds

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Holiday shopping can be hard. Especially if you’ve got a long list of people to shop for, and you’d like to give them thoughtful, practical gifts.

While I don’t have tips and tricks on how to pick out the perfect present for everyone on your list, I do have some ideas as to what you can get that special T1D in your life. The following six items can make fun stocking stuffers or gifts that your beloved T1D is sure to appreciate.

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  1. Pump Peelz – Is your T1D’s meter or pump in need of a makeover? A fresh stack of Pump Peelz can take care of that. Consider stocking up on prints and patterns that your T1D will love. You can even create your own one-of-a-kind design on the Pump Peelz site!
  2. T1D clothing – There are SO MANY styles out there these days, and they’re all extremely creative! Beyond t-shirts, I’ve seen sports bras, leggings, sweatshirts, and dresses all specially designed to either cater to a T1D’s medical gear or raise diabetes awareness. Whether you want to find a style that captures your T1D’s sense of humor or one that they’ll proudly don along with an insulin pump, you’re sure to come across T1D clothing that is funny, functional, and fashionable.
  3. Fun patches and pins – Okay, so maybe your T1D has a more subtle sense of style and doesn’t want to literally wear diabetes on their sleeve. No problem! Perhaps some cute T1D-related patches or pins are more their thing. Personally, I’m a big fan of the ones available on the T1D Lyf shop – they’re absolutely adorable and make a bold statement using a tiny surface.
  4. Myabetic gear – I admit that I went ahead and bought myself an early Christmas gift this year: a frosty pink Myabetic backpack. I’ve started carrying it around instead of a purse and I love it! Myabetic designs all of their wallets, bags, and other gear with diabetes in mind. Every pouch and pocket has a specific purpose that makes carrying diabetes supplies around much easier. I’ve got a Marie crossbody, Banting wallet, and now a Brandy backpack, so clearly, I’m no stranger to their awesome products. You can definitely find something that suits your T1D’s style on the Myabetic website.
  5. The Diabetic Health Journal by Lauren Bongiorno – Instagram introduced me to Lauren last year, and let me tell you, this girl is a powerhouse. As a diabetic health coach and a fitness guru, she knows what she’s talking about in her journal, which is designed to help people with T1D lower A1c, gain insight on blood sugar patterns, boost mood/energy levels, and so much more. This could make a great gift for a T1D who enjoys writing, or someone who is including diabetes in their New Year’s resolution goals.
  6. Vial Safe Insulin Protector – Alright, this sounds totally boring, but it’s one of the most practical gifts you could get a T1D who might be a little, er, clumsy. I’ve certainly shattered an insulin vial or two back in the day, and it’s a really crummy feeling when all that insulin is wasted. But these protective casings can help your T1D avoid the risk of breaking precious insulin vials, which are infinitely valuable. Look them up on Amazon for more information!

Of course, these are all just some suggestions. If you’re still stumped, I often stumble across amazing products just for T1Ds on Instagram. Who would’ve known that there’s virtually an endless array of goodies for T1Ds out there? With a little research and thoughtfulness, the T1D in your life is bound to be grateful for not just your gift to them, but also for your support in the fight against diabetes.

 

Disclosure: I am not paid to promote any of these products. The intent of sharing these items is to provide useful information to readers of my blog. Please visit the links I’ve shared to learn more about the products featured in this post.

Sugary or Sugar-Free Soda? Find out Using This Trick!

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Have you ever ordered a diet soda, sipped it, and immediately doubted whether it was truly diet? Then you might find this little tip useful.

Whenever you’re not certain that your drink is diet or regular, try grabbing your glucometer, putting a test strip in it, dipping your finger in the drink, and wiping it onto the strip – just like you would do when checking your blood sugar. If the drink is diet, then you’ll know because your meter will display an “extreme low” result, or something to that effect. The key is to not panic and remember that it isn’t your blood sugar you’re looking at, it’s the sugar levels in the drink! It’s just the opposite in the case that your drink is regular/sugary – you’ll get a “high” reading that’ll make it obvious that your beverage isn’t what you ordered.

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Photographic evidence of my soda test results.

This trick has come in handy several times for me. Most recently, I was doing some Christmas shopping at the mall with my boyfriend when we decided to stop at the food court for some lunch. We split a chicken tender meal from Arby’s, which came with a medium soda that we could fill on our own.

I took on the task while he waited for our food, and was excited to see that they had Diet Dr. Pepper on tap (seriously, that’s rare for most fast food joints). I filled up the cup, fitted a lid on top, stuck a straw in, and took a sip. Hmm…it tasted sweeter than I thought it should. I mentioned this to my boyfriend as he picked up our food and we made our way to a table. I told him that I definitely got it from a tap that was labeled “diet”, but we both knew that just because the label says it is, it doesn’t guarantee that the right soda bib is hooked up to the proper line. (Our shared experience working at a movie theater several years ago clued us in to the fact that employees can make mistakes with this.)

He expressed his doubts, as well, and then it occurred to me to do the old soda test strip check. So I did, snapping a picture of the results and feeling reassured by the factual evidence that I was drinking a sugar-free – not sugary – beverage.

Why Backup Supplies are Important to a T1D

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“It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.”

Growing up, this mantra was frequently repeated by my mother regarding my diabetes supplies. More often than not, I’d roll my eyes at the saying – not because I was annoyed with her, but because the prospect of carrying extra supplies “just in case” felt very inconvenient. My purse/backpack/overnight bag would already be crammed to maximum capacity, so squeezing in backup needles or insulin was practically impossible. But typically, I’d cave and make it all work somehow, because the fear of not having something essential when I was away from home was strong enough.

I’ve kept up this practice in my adulthood, as overnight travel and increased distance from home have become more common. And I was reminded why it’s a good idea very recently.

I was staying at a friends’ place for the night. They live about 45 minutes away from my house, which isn’t far, but it was far enough for me to want to make sure I had extra supplies. I definitely did not want to have to make that drive twice in one night, and I knew it wouldn’t even be a realistic option, because chances were good that I’d be drinking alcohol – it was game night, after all.

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If you have T1D, always be prepared.

Pizza, beers, and laughs were had, and before we knew it, it was one in the morning. We all headed off to bed, and just as I do every night, I checked my blood sugar before I got totally settled.

I was wicked high – the mid-300s, actually.

I was worried, because I thought I’d been on top of my blood sugar for most of the night. I gave myself an extended bolus for the three slices of pizza I ate, limited my beer intake (too many carbs), and kept a watchful eye on my CGM. While I did know that my blood sugar was climbing, I thought that I was staying on top of it with correction doses. Apparently not.

No matter, I figured. The best I could do was take more insulin, drink some water, and try to relax a bit before bed. I didn’t want to sleep until I knew my numbers were coming down, but I also knew that my willpower to stay awake was fading. So I set an alarm on my phone to wake up in an hour and check my blood sugar again.

When I did, I was 377! I couldn’t believe it. I followed the same process again – bolused, drank water, set an alarm to wake up in another hour – and hoped for the best. But when my alarm blared again at 3 A.M. and I discovered that I was STILL stuck at 377, something told me that there was more to the story here. I lifted up my shirt to check my pod, which should’ve been securely stuck to my belly…except it wasn’t. The end with the cannula was sticking up, revealing that the cannula was not underneath the surface of my skin.

I felt simultaneously pissed off and relieved. I was mad because I’d just changed my pod earlier that day, so it should not have come off so easily. But I was relieved because finally, I had an explanation behind the super-high, super-stagnant blood sugars.

And I was seriously relieved that I’d thought to pack my insulin, a spare pod, and an alcohol swab in my overnight bag.

So there I was, changing my pod at 3 A.M. Far from fun, but it was necessary. I even wound up giving myself an injection with a syringe – yet another diabetes supply that I don’t really need to carry but had stowed away in my kit (just in case) – to ensure that my system had insulin in it to bring my blood sugar back down.

From there, it was a long night (morning!) as I set numerous alarms for the next few hours to wake up, check my blood sugar, and bolus more as needed. I couldn’t rely on my CGM for readings, because guess what? It got torn right off my arm as I tossed and turned in bed. Go figure, right? (I didn’t have a backup sensor because the CGM is one thing that isn’t exactly necessary. It makes life a helluva lot easier, but for a single overnight trip, an extra sensor wasn’t needed.)

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What a long night…

I probably only got three hours of sleep that night, and I was pretty damn defeated looking at a shitty CGM graph the next day. But you know what? The whole incident serves as a stark reminder that it’s important to ALWAYS have backup supplies: You never know when you might depend on them.

Beyond Diabetes

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This November, I participated in the #HappyDiabeticChallenge on Instagram. This challenge centered around daily prompts to respond to via an Instagram post or story. I’ve decided to spread the challenge to my blog for the last couple days of National Diabetes Awareness Month. As a result, today’s post topic is beyond diabetes.

I can’t believe that today is the final day of November, A.K.A. National Diabetes Awareness Month. In a way, I’m relieved. After all, diabetes advocacy can be exhausting. I’ve kept up daily Instagram posts, in one way or another, in response to the #HappyDiabeticChallenge. I’ve tried to keep all of my blog posts this month on theme. I even participated in a fundraising live stream on YouTube, which was an anxiety-provoking yet exhilarating event all on its own.

Needless to say, I’m looking forward to dialing it back down, temporarily, for the month of December. I won’t stop advocating, but I will take a small step back from it so I can recover and process everything from the month in my own time.

It’ll be a good way of reminding myself that I’m more. More than just this stupid chronic disease. There’s so much more to me than diabetes: I’m a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, a best friend. I’m a dog lover (despite being allergic to most of them). I’m a young professional. I’m a millennial (who proudly owns the moniker). I’m a Disney fanatic and Harry Potter obsessive. I’m a creative and passionate person who cares about a lot of different people, things, and projects.

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I am more than my diabetes.

I’m beyond my diabetes. I prove that to myself each day by living my life unencumbered by it. When it knocks me down, I always get back up to remind it that I’m the boss.

Beyond National Diabetes Awareness Month is a broader realization that I’m a bit burnt out by this hardcore advocacy. And that’s okay. I’ll take a breather and remember to enjoy life more, because I know that I’m beyond diabetes.

Diabetes and Technology

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This November, I participated in the #HappyDiabeticChallenge on Instagram. This challenge centered around daily prompts to respond to via an Instagram post or story. I’ve decided to spread the challenge to my blog for the last couple days of National Diabetes Awareness Month. As a result, today’s post will be about diabetes and technology.

Diabetes and technology: a pair as iconic as peanut butter and jelly, Lucy and Desi, and Han Solo and Chewbacca. I can’t imagine managing my diabetes without all the technical tools and devices I have in my arsenal.

I’m grateful for all the tools we have at our disposal these days, because I know that this wasn’t always the case. I didn’t have to experience a time without a test kit. I didn’t have to deal with checking my blood sugar only once or twice daily using a complicated urinalysis system. Though I chose to take insulin via manual injections for many years, I had the option to try an insulin pump whenever I was ready. And when the CGM came around, approximately ten years after my diagnosis, I was able to start using this new technology.

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Just a few of the key technological components in my diabetes toolkit.

So I guess that diabetes and technology makes me think of two, somewhat contradictory, concepts: privilege and freedom.

It’s a privilege that I have a wide array of technology available to me. I’m lucky that I’m able to use it, because I know that many people with diabetes in this world cannot afford it or do not have access to it. It makes me upset to think about how diabetes might be harder for these individuals due to a lack of treatment and care options, but in that way, it reinforces how freeing diabetes technology has been for me. I have the freedom to bolus quickly and easily as needed. I’m free from annoying tubing, thanks to my OmniPod pump. I’m free to live a life less interrupted by diabetes, because my technology helps me manage it with greater finesse than if I were doing it 100% on my own.

That being said, I won’t ever take my access to diabetes technology for granted.

I can only hope that, as technology innovations continue to improve the quality of life for people with diabetes, technology accessibility becomes more widespread, as well.

Memory Monday: That Time a Classmate Said That Having Diabetes Means You’re Screwed

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One Monday per month, I’ll take a trip down memory lane and reflect on how much my diabetes thoughts, feelings, and experiences have unfolded over the years. Today, I remember…

…that one time in college when some random kid sitting near me in class said that having diabetes means “you’re screwed”. In other words, you can’t live with it, it’s a death sentence.

Before I talk about how I responded to that, I’ll provide some context. It was my freshman or sophomore year of college. I was in a discussion group for my Nutrition 101 seminar. It was early enough in my college career that I still felt painfully shy around most of my classmates, unless they happened to live in my dorm or I had known them in high school (even though I went to a college with an undergraduate population of more than 20,000, I’d still occasionally encounter a high school classmate – it’s a small world after all).

But when it comes to diabetes…well, I have a reputation for not being able to shut up about it. So when it inevitably came up over the course of the Nutrition class, and the teacher’s assistant asked us to define it, I felt a natural impulse to say everything I knew about it. I had to suppress it, though, because my fear of raising my hand in class was stronger than my desire to spew out an overly in-depth definition of diabetes.

So I let someone else answer the question, noting what was right and wrong about the response. As the T.A. launched into her notes on diabetes and nutrition, I overheard a muttered, ignorant comment from the kid next to me:

If you have diabetes, that means you’re screwed!

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As you might imagine, I didn’t take too kindly to his words.

While the dude sitting next to him laughed, I felt instant rage surge throughout my body. Without even thinking, I blurted out loud, just audibly enough for him to hear, “No, having diabetes does not mean you’re screwed. Whether you have type 1 or type 2, you can live a perfectly normal life with it. I would know, I have type 1.” I felt my face flush as I turned my attention back to the oblivious T.A. in the front of the room. In the corner of my eye, I saw that the kid was sitting there, mouth slightly agape, probably surprised that the quiet girl in discussion group spoke up to shut down his idiotic way of thinking.

It’s been several years since I was in this particular class, and I don’t remember much of the materials that were taught in it. But I do remember this exchange. It stands out to me because it’s a reminder of how far we’ve got to go as a society to defeat diabetes stigma and prove that you can do more than survive with diabetes – you can thrive with it.