Blah Blah Bklyn

Say it, don't spray it

2012-01-08T13:37:00.001-05:00

I'm fairly certain I hit the cat with this fountainous fingerstick:

Momtime #3: I feel blue!

2012-01-05T16:13:00.000-05:00

Oh, Cherise Shockley - the genius ideas you have! She brought us DSMA (Twitter chats! Live! Blog carnivals!) and Blue Fridays. Blue Fridays, you ask? What are those? From the Facebook page, which you should join:

Blue Fridays is an initiative to bring attention to World Diabetes Day, and to advocate and bring awareness for diabetes and the people living with it. Diabetes is more than a national issue; it's a world epidemic. This year, I want to rally the diabetes community to celebrate World Diabetes Day and Diabetes Awareness Month by asking people to wear blue every Friday during the Month of November and on World Diabetes Day (November 14). Please help spread the word and upload a picture of you or a loved one wearing blue.

This November, as stated in that little snippet, we were all invited to upload pictures of ourselves and/or our loved ones wearing blue on Fridays. I was psyched and managed to upload a pic for each one! (I even painted my nails blue!) What I didn't know was that doing so entered me into a prize drawing. And. I. Won. I never win! But I did this time, and it was a fantastic gift. I was SO excited about it, I managed to unwrap it to go through the goodies before I took a picture of the pretty giftbasket all done up. Still, these are the goodies I won:

Look at all the carby and poetry goodness!

Belated thanks - but HUGE and grateful thanks nonetheless - to Cherise, DSMA, and Blue Fridays!

And, for good measure, these are my Blue Friday pics (posts are linked above):

Glad you could join us, Dexcom V

2012-01-03T19:45:00.000-05:00

After the untimely death of Dexcom IV, I'm grateful to have my little friend back.

You've been missed, CGM.

Dexcom V, we few, we happy few, we band of PWD brothers are glad to have you with us. Diabetes is a bitch of a battle, and your rousing cry to fight onward can be just the thing to keep me going.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'

WELCOME, 2012.

2012-01-01T23:20:00.000-05:00

There's just something about the calendar change that makes me stop and pause - looking over the past year is important, to see where you were and how you got to where you are. But I feel like I'm always reflective and spend a solid chunk of time thinking about the past. (In fact, some might say I'm a bit preoccupied with it, as I have a wicked sentimental streak - you should see my impressive collection of ticket stubs and summer camp mail!)

In my heart of hearts, though, I'm a planner. I like to look ahead, to plot out my bearings so I can have a direction to move toward. This can be a good thing (healthy babies, savings for job transitions, plenty of extra toilet paper in the house), but it can also be a super pain-in-the-ass (the last thing we can control is the future - that old saw about making God laugh by telling him you have a plan is an old saw for a reason). Still, I can't help but do it.

So I look forward, and there's so much coming up it's easy to do: we're moving soon, L is growing by leaps and bounds, B has exciting work stuff going on, a dear friend is juuuuust about to have her little boy...lots of headlines happening. But the headlines are almost the easy things, aren't they? Joy about your daughter learning to crawl or walk, cheerleading for your oh-so-loved husband's accomplishments, warm fuzzies for a friend's growing family - looking forward to these things is a complete no-brainer. It's the minutiae I drown in. Planning for the move, packing the boxes, worrying about head control and teething fevers, writing lists for babyproofing, prepping for my first solo week with the kiddo while B's out of town for work, developing plans of attack so I can visit the new arrival in the hospital and hug his mama... I get so mired in the details that I rarely enjoy the headlines. But those broad strokes of perfection are really the point and, well, I seem to be missing it.

Know thyself, they say. And I know I'll never truly move past the minutiae. That's just who I am. I'll focus on all that nitty gritty, I'll have an agenda of the traditional new year resolutions for self-improvement (eff you, A1c), I'll plot things to a ridiculous degree. But my one real resolution for the year - the one that I'll use as a mantra, whispered to myself when I find I've gone a bit off my intended path for 2012 - is going to be focusing on those headlines, embracing the marquee events, singing praises for the big picture.

So I look toward the new year with eagerness - it's a blank notebook, after all, with gorgeous clean pages, all ready to be filled in with a life lived well. And rest assured I'll be writing in all caps, leaving no room for tiny print or footnotes.

Happy New Year everyone. May it bring good things to you and yours.

The year in review: 2011

2011-12-31T13:28:00.000-05:00

I'm not usually all about the memes over here, but I've decided to steal one from Kerri, offering up the first lines of an illustrative post per month from the year. I've never really looked back at BlahBlah this way, but 2011 has been such a monumental year that I want to take a moment to reflect on all the changes - and giant gobs of happiness - as it comes to a close.

January: "I've been seeing a lot of 2010 wrap-ups out there - it's fun to see where everyone's been for the past year, but for yours truly 2010 was a bit of a struggle."

February: "I've been so absent from this blog, and it's because I've been waiting to write this post for oh-so-very-long."

March: "For better or worse, I think Steel Magnolias becomes a part of your life once you're diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes."

April: "Last Tuesday was our second fetal echocardiogram."

May: "Nowadays, when people look at me, tilt their head, and say 'How are you feeeeeeling?' I finally have something to say other than 'chubby.' "

June: "Other than finding out an actual date for BabyH's arrival (eek!) and sobbing to the tunes of MJ, B and I have been super busy."

July: "You came screaming into the world today at 9:57am - a whopping 6lbs 8oz and 20 inches long."

August: "As promised, for those who are interested in the actual birth story, this is how the munchkin joined our family:"

September: "The JDRF Walk is coming up, and I'll be walking again as I always am."

October (Momtime): "So. Um. In other 'recent' momtime news, 11 weeks ago today Team Hoffmanderson did the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes."

November: "Do blue-and-brown stripey owl onesies count for Blue Fridays?"

December: "Oh, Kerri. I've no idea how you did it."

Thanks for everything 2011 - it's been nice knowing you.

Fun with search keywords

2011-12-30T23:02:00.000-05:00

I don't know that I could be any happier with the utterly bizarre mix of search words that bring people to BlahBlahBklyn:

Dexcom after hours

2011-12-30T11:14:00.000-05:00

Middle of the night feeds are no fun. (How could interrupting sound sleep be fun?!) But I usually take the opportunity to check my blood sugar, hit the bathroom, and drink (yet another) glass of water. Truthfully, they've been helpful - I've discovered a surprising number of not-felt lows this way in the past five months!

Last night was no different. L woke up just before 4am, I reached into my pillowcase to grab Dex for a quick idea of where I was. And where I was? "System Recovery Check Complete." Shit.

Thirty minutes later our feed-n-diaper routine was completed. I climbed back into bed, popped the now-functioning Dex back under my pillow, and settled back down to sleep.

BEEEEEEEEP. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

I pulled Dex out, and it was back to its initializing screen. Which meant it crashed again and we were headed right back to the System Recovery screen...and probably the Exclamation Point of Death. And that's when I realized I hadn't done a download in a really, really long time. Shit.

So I leapt out of bed - the clock was ticking! I scrambled to the living room, started the laptop, and rushed to get the Dexcom software up and running before the receiver was done with its system check. Once it was done, I plugged in my USB and started the download, willing that bar to move to 100% before Dexcom died for the third (and probably final) time and rendered all of my data inaccessible. Holy stressful, Batman.

C'mon database records!!

VICTORY. I got my download in. But wait. What the hell was this second bar?!

Event log?? WTH is an event log?

Wait, wait. ANOTHER bar?!

There's an error log too??

No matter. Surprise bonus bars be damned - I managed to get my download completed.

YAY!

Adrenaline pumping, I closed down the laptop with relief and headed back to bed. Popped Dex under my pillow and curled up next to B.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

Ah, Exclamation Point of Death. I'd been expecting you.

Well, at least I anticipated it. I got my download in, so I didn't lose all of my data. It still sucks - my data died with that receiver, since Dexcom's software doesn't allow multiple receivers per patient record. (More later on this pet peeve of mine.) But I had my old receiver in my meds box, a leftover from when I reupped with my insurance - an embarrassment of riches, but one I liked to have knowing how unlucky I've been with receivers. So yay! No real lag in CGM.

Or so I thought. This morning I plugged in my receiver, planning on using the old one until my replacement arrived from Dexcom. And then this happened:

You've got to be kidding me.

Yes, folks. The second Exclamation Point of Death in less than 12 hours. I'm officially Dex-cursed.

A very merry to you all

2011-12-25T11:05:00.001-05:00

Yeah. This happened.

2011-12-24T10:39:00.002-05:00

"But the baby's asleep and dad's home from work! I'll skip the Christmas crowds!" is NOT sufficient reason to go to the grocery store after 11pm. Especially not when you're sleep deprived.

And of course it was smelly minced garlic.

A few of my favorite things...

2011-12-23T00:18:00.003-05:00

You know how you get a favorite dish? The go-to dish, the one you use all the time, the one that always seems to hold the right amount of food? I had one of those.

My husband came with a delightful set of nesting Pyrex storage dishes. Nothing special - just three glass bowls with dark blue tops and wavy sides. Nice enough to drag to someone's house for a potluck, but still a pretty everyday kind of thing. My go-to was the weensy one. Perfect for leftovers, small enough to bring to work. And - because I found it indispensable - of course it fell to the ground, shattered, and broke up my perfect little storage set.

For a while, I tried to hunt down a new one. But it seems as though the "sculptured" set is no longer available, and I can't imagine a solo replacement piece for a cheap-o storage trio would be a priority in the Pyrex world anyway. So imagine my joy when I walked into my favorite local store for kitcheny goodness* and saw this sucker on a shelf:

Hello, you sexy home for leftovers.

It might not be the "Pyrex formal" wavy sided perfection of its predecessor, but I don't care. It's little two-cup self will be a welcome addition to my collection - I'm glad to have the team back together.

* I was buying a lidded jar for brown sugar. Yours truly is going to try going sweetener-free in 2012! More on this later.

L has kind of figured out toys

2011-12-20T23:37:00.000-05:00

But there's a real short distance between "Ooh! Fun! A toy!" and "I'MA GONNA EAT YOU!"

Amazon has Christmas spirit? (ed: Getcher free book here!)

2011-12-20T10:29:00.000-05:00

I'm so confused.

As I mentioned before, I've hit a bit of a wall in the ol' diabetes management slog. It's partially my diaversary, since the annual reminder of how long I've been doing this can be a little weighty. It's partially the mad craze of the holiday season, where you don't have a second to just sit and breathe. It's partially all the food of this time of year. And this year, it's a LOT about running low on sleep and time as the mother of a 5-month-old baby.

My secret d-blahs trick? In the past, I've found buying myself something for my disease can be just the kick in the pants I need to buckle down. A new binder to store my logs in, some blue nail polish, a pretty jar for reservoir storage - these little things can work wonders for motivation. This time around, I decided to get a little bookish and I finally got around to buying Gary Scheiner's Think Like a Pancreas.

What I didn't notice while ordering was that I must have clicked the thing twice - I only realized it when two copies of the book arrived in my Amazon package. Which is a drag. I'm a busy bee, and dragging the peanut to the post office around Christmastime sounds like a torture reserved for a circle of hell. Still, having two copies of the book seemed silly. So I went to Amazon, and began their little return routine. Imagine my surprise when this popped up on my screen:

They've got me covered?!

Huh? This makes absolutely no sense to me. I would have to pay for the shipping, so why is Amazon willing to eat the cost of the book? I've been mulling it and, since it seems like there IS no good reason for them to do this, Amazon just wanted to give me a Christmas present. (Or they decided "Hey, Karen, hot DAMN do you need to get your act together. Please read this book!" Which is sad and Grinchy, so I choose to believe it's a present.)

So I want to pay it forward. Leave a comment below and I'll randomly pick a number through Random.org and send you your own copy of the book! Make sure you don't just leave one as anonymous! I need to be able to get in touch.

Merry everything, guys.

UPDATE:

Congrats alexhart81@gmail.com!

Momtime #2: Team Hoffmanderson

2011-12-17T21:30:00.001-05:00

So. Um. In other "recent" momtime news, 11 weeks ago today Team Hoffmanderson did the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes. And it was amazing. Not only was it L's first Walk (!), we also crushed our fundraising goal. Team Hoffmanderson raised $7455 as of today, and I think that when corporate matches roll in we'll be well over $8000. Eight. Thousand. Dollars. It boggles my mind, and kind of makes me want to burst into tears of happiness. I'm lucky I have such incredible, generous people in my life.

Below, you'll find some pictures that capture a few highlights of the day. (Check out my exquisite biohazard DIY stroller pennant! I hope I did Lee Ann proud.) I'm already looking forward to 2012!

See that achieved section? BOO YA.

First Walk to Cure Diabetes!

Why yes, those ARE test strip flower petals!

Yay Team Hoffmanderson 2011!!

Momtime #1: 18 years, baby

2011-12-16T21:41:00.003-05:00

Oh, Kerri. I've no idea how you did it. Your Birdy was born and Six Until Me just kept chugging along as though things were exactly the same in the Sparling household. (Well, the same but with a way higher cuteness quotient, of course.) I'm impressed. These days, it seems as though just getting to work and home and back again is a feat worth a statue or two in some town square. So I've decided that old news is still news as far as I'm concerned - it's just on a different time continuum. Momtime. And in the spirit of observing and respecting the rules of Momtime, I'm just going to go ahead and post as though I'm not horrifyingly late in doing so. Whee!

Two weeks ago - December 2nd - was my 18th diaversary. The only thing I know for sure about this year's anniversary is that I was touched by the number of people who remembered it, who wished me well or asked if I'd had my annual sweet treat to commemorate the day. My diabetes is often invisible to those around me - I take care of myself, I don't ask for too many accommodations as far as food and drink go, and, I dunno, it just doesn't seem to come up. So when they remember without me breathing a word about the date, I know they've made an effort to remember something that's important to me...and that's pretty huge.

Naturally, B was one of those who remembered.

But that's about other people. That's not me. My own feelings are conflicted. Years ago, my big plan was to get a tattoo for my 15th diaversary. That year would mark my halfway point - I'd be living longer with diabetes than without it, and somehow that felt so huge to me. Then I was told I had mild retinopathy and my "Eff you, D!" attitude imploded. Once again, my body had failed me. My bad genes had kind of won out - I had complications now. It was diagnosis year all over again, and I was crushed.

So I never got that tattoo. Instead, I took stock of where I was. It wasn't where I wanted to be - no one wants complications, amiright? - but it could be a lot worse. My observation of the day became decidedly more conservative. It was no longer a 10-person outing to Serendipity for ice cream sundae dinners. Now it was an ice cream cone with B, or some friends over for snacks and movies. I was sad to lose my fearlessness, my sense of domination over a shitty hand that life dealt, but I knew there were more important things. Mild retinopathy was hardly the end of the world. It wasn't the beginning of the end. It was just life as a type 1 diabetic. You do what you can for wherever you are, and if that changes so do you.

So I shifted my focus from that halfway point and began the arduous process of prepping for the great/terrifying adventure of pregnancy with diabetes. It wasn't flipping off my disease now. It was bargaining for a year where I felt in control so I could have a healthy baby. And now I'm on the other side of that. I did something that I thought I'd be unable to do (screw you, Nan). I did it with a lot of hard work (soul-crushing, mind-numbing hard work), and I did it despite this crappy disease. I feel a bit of pride about it, absolutely. But there's also that nagging voice in the back of my head that tells me it was luck, that I dodged a bullet. The more years I get under my belt as a Type 1, the more I feel like it's just a matter of time before something else goes wrong.

And that's really effing bleak. It's the unvarnished truth, but it doesn't sit so well. I'll keep on keeping on, of course, doing all my finger sticks, doctor appointments and the like. But I don't feel so sassy about it anymore. I just feel tired. Or bored. Or just over it already. I need a diabetes vacation, and I know I'm not the only one. So until we can get ourselves one of those, I'll just have a cupcake and a bolus, and I'll salute all the other diabetics I know out there in the wide world who keep slogging through the day-to-day alongside me.

I'm a sentimental fool.

2011-12-01T16:54:00.001-05:00

Earlier this week, I noticed my Minimed had a crack on its face.

See it in the upper right corner of the display?

I had no idea if this was actually a bad thing, soooo...

And, of course, the DOC delivered! Meredith, Kim, Allison, and Jacquie all advised giving Minimed a call for a replacement pump, which turned out to be excellent advice. A crack in the case means it's no longer "waterproof."

I called Minimed, answered some silly questions ("Uhhh...has it ever been dropped? No, sir, not once in the 24/7 I've been wearing the thing since September 2009.* And no, the crack is not a result of a car accident. My last blood sugar was 134." Nosy, nosy!), and within 20 minutes of calling, a new pump was on its way to me.

I had mixed feelings about it, since I tend to become attached to inanimate objects. (See: Luxo Jr. and just TRY not to melt!) And this pump? It was fifteen years in the making. I'd been on MDI since my diagnosis, and was determined to never be on the pump. I didn't want to be tied to something, I didn't want to be reminded of my diabetes 24 hours a day, I was creeped out at the idea of a tube living under my skin, I was unable to use a lancet device and was loath to try something bigger and scarier for set insertion - basically, I had 4,000 reasons to NOT go on the pump and, with A1c ranges below 7, I figured I didn't need to. And then we decided to expand our family and the pump became the only choice. (Yes, only. As far as I'm concerned, NPH is NOT an option!)

After more than two years with this little machine, I've become more than just a little attached. I saw A1cs I haven't seen since high school. I am sporting the hard-won set scars all over my belly. I've had volcanoes of blood gushers. I've cursed it and sang its praises, but, ultimately, I'm intensely grateful I had it - and for the healthy baby girl it helped bring into the world.

So as glad as I was to receive my shiny new pump the very next day, I was terribly sad to see the old one go.

Shiny, new, and completely without memories :(

*Clearly I was crossing my fingers for this. How would ANYONE be able to say they'd never dropped or bumped their pump?

So. Incredibly. Creepy.

2011-11-30T21:41:00.001-05:00

Just listen to the lyrics:

This is an SNL sketch in the making....

Blue Friday finale!

2011-11-25T15:35:00.001-05:00

For our final Blue Friday, the Hoffmandersons kicked off the day with jammies for the Cure:

I'm sure she would have loved to rocked blue jammies, too, but this baby girl doesn't HAVE any blue jammies. Pink ones galore, but not blue!

And finished off the day with a Blue family pic:

It took waaaay too long to get this shot!

L looks worried

2011-11-18T17:13:00.000-05:00

She missed a blue Friday, after all, and she's afraid she's gonna get judged! I told her not to worry since the DOC is incredibly nice, her momma was rockin' the blue for us both (check out the nails! Thanks, @colcalli), and she's been representin' since before she was even born....

Going where no Dexcom has gone before...

2011-11-16T19:36:00.000-05:00

I went to a baby shower on Sunday. It was a lovely day, but a girl can only talk about c-sections and boobs for so long before she starts hoping to head home to veg on the couch. Of course, things didn't quite work out the way I planned. Good old Dex got tangled in the magazine I had in my purse, so when I took it out on the 34th Street platform, disaster struck:

What is that, you ask? Could it possibly be?!

Yes, yes it could. It's my poor receiver on the subway tracks.

I was dumbstruck. How could this happen?! What do you do?! The latter flabbergastatement was exactly what I said to the girl standing next to me, who replied "Um, not go down there? I'd go ask someone upstairs." So I did.

The nice booth attendant said help would be coming (after a lengthy explanation of what the hell it was that I actually lost) and I should wait on the platform next to the item. So I did. And I stood there for an hour, keeping spitters and rats away from my poor, lost Dexcom. At long last, two dudes with pinchers on a pole came to my rescue and plucked Dex from the depths of filth. I carefully - with Kleenex-protected hands - dropped it into a plastic bag I had with me, and finally headed home to give Dex a much-needed "bath" with rubbing alcohol.

A blue peanut

2011-11-14T09:54:00.001-05:00

Sassing it up in blue for her first World Diabetes Day!

Blue Friday!

2011-11-11T18:26:00.001-05:00

L's zebras are much fancier than my boring old blue hoodie...

De Quervain's - a new frontier

2011-11-05T13:56:00.001-04:00

There's nothing I love better than spending my hard-earned moolah on crap for my ailments. As such, I'm ordering some sexy new gear to my already stunning collection (which includes a pump and Dexcom, of course).

See, I've developed this excruciating pain along the tendons of my left thumb. And, as our people are predisposed to tendon issues, I've self-diagnosed de Quervain's. Yeah, yeah. "Self-diagnosed" is a problem for some people. To those people, I say: "I know my body better than you do. So there."

This fun condition is also known as "mommy thumb," since lots of new mothers get it from picking up their kiddos with their thumb extended. (This post from hand surgeon C. Noel Henley offers a great explanation, if you want more info.)

Now, I don't actually think I got it from hoisting my little peanut. TMI moment: I think I actually got it when I went back to work and was doing zillions of hand compressions while pumping breastmilk multiple times a day.

It hurts like nothing I've ever had before, and that's saying a lot - plantar fasciitis pales in comparison, and even my c-section offered a light at the end of the recovery tunnel. This sucker is going to stick around until I can get the swelling under control...and my track record for icing and de-swelling is not exactly stellar.

If you've got any great tips or have gone through this yourself, lemme know!

L wants to know...

2011-11-04T20:15:00.003-04:00

Do blue-and-brown stripey owl onesies count for Blue Fridays?

One Touch: Old skool style

2011-09-27T23:51:00.000-04:00

The JDRF Walk is coming up, and I'll be walking again as I always am. I was Gchatting about it with my little sister tonight, talking about how awesomely the fundraising is going this year. And, unsurprisingly, we also got to talking about how different my diabetes care is now from when I was diagnosed in 1993 - how exciting all the leaps and bounds in technology and medicine have been, what an improvement from how big the meters used to be, how harpoony the lancets, how craptastic the NPH and Regular... And then she compared my meter with a cell phone. Kids, I STILL HAVE that meter because I am a hoarder. It is waaaay bigger than a cell phone. Behold, in all its plastic-cased gigantic splendor: my early 90s One Touch meter!

Indestructible!

Why yes, that is a shark sticker. I was 15.

It makes a nice, satisfying clunk noise when you open it.

The Tummy Tub and unintentional hilarity

2011-09-07T20:18:00.001-04:00

If you need to work really hard to explain how your product is NOT an expensive bucket, I think you've got a bit of a marketing problem:

Blast from the past

2011-08-31T19:49:00.000-04:00

I follow the Children's Book-a-Day Almanac because I am a giant nerd, and I have no fonder memories in the world than those of the books I read and loved as a kid.

Today's post made my head explode - a book I read a ZILLION times as a kid was profiled, and I'd completely forgotten about it: Miss Nelson Is Missing!

Oh, how I love children's books. I can't wait to share them with L....

Medtronic loves me

2011-08-26T20:53:00.000-04:00

How do I know? Because I just got a voicemail (!) from them telling me how much they care, and offering a helpful list of ways to make sure I'm prepared for the onslaught of Irene. Don't forget your pump! Or infusion sets! Or the inserter! Or your meter!

I reveled in the love for the first 20 seconds...and then I deleted it while the recording was still rambling on.

The How She Came Into the World post

2011-08-24T18:11:00.001-04:00

As promised, for those who are interested in the actual birth story, this is how the munchkin joined our family:

We had a c-section scheduled for 8 a.m. on July 22nd. My complete placenta previa never moved so, as expected, the date stuck. B and I arrived at 6 a.m. - which meant a luscious wake-up at 3:30 to get to the hospital on time - and then began our wait.

It was a very long and boring wait.

The insane record-breaking heat from that week had put a lot of ladies into labor, and our 8 a.m. start time came and went. When we finally went into triage for surgery prep, everyone seemed to bustle right in and out of our little curtained room. Our doctor wanted us in the OR without delay, to make sure we got in somewhat close to our actual slated time - they were already at the point of rescheduling women with inductions that day.

I was put in an ill-fitting hospital gown (no room for giant pregnant belly AND my tush, so there was a lot of unpleasant gaping) and hooked up to machines to monitor both my heart rate and the baby's. They did a pre-surgery BG (117, thank you diabetes gods) and measured my blood pressure over and over and over.

I clearly hated being in the gown.

Not phoning home. Measuring heart rate!

My OB stopped by to explain how things were going to proceed, and why we'd been waiting so long. She also reiterated the placenta previa risks involved in the upcoming surgery (the bleeding, and the remote concern about a hysterectomy), as well as informing me she had 4 bags of blood on hand should she need it. Scary, yes, but she made sure to conclude that she didn't think we'd run into any worst-case-scenarios - the blood was a safety precaution, and she was confident that any bleeding that did occur could be controlled with drugs.

A whirlwind of people kept stopping by to ask questions ranging from confirming standard personal info to my experience with drugs and anesthesia. I had two IVs inserted - for drugs, fluids, and for easy access should a transfusion become necessary. Now, I hate IVs and I get REALLY worked up about them. (Hell, I'm not even really good with blood tests. One's veins should remain puncture-free as far as I'm concerned.) This time was no different. After Preteen Nurse inserted IV #1 and skipped off someplace else, I started breathing weirdly, the focus of the room went all wonky, my ears felt stuffed with cotton, and I began sweating like crazy. I spent the next five to ten minutes working really hard on not fainting. This is important info, kids.

This is my "trying not to barf or faint" face - you can see the evil left-hand IV.

When we finally got the go-ahead, my medical-professional entourage grabbed me and my IV racks and slowly guided me to the OR. Ben was left behind to change into scrubs, and I was brought into the brightest, scariest room I'd ever seen - it's just like the movies.

Now, I'll spare you all the gory details of the surgery itself, but I'm happy to give the highlights I would have wanted to know ahead of time:

• If you are the kind of person who gets woozy at blood tests, TELL THE ANESTHESIOLOGIST.
Once I'd entered the OR, they sat me on the table and had me lean over and expose my back to the anesthesiologist. Kelly, the world's nicest med student, held my shoulders to balance me and make sure I stayed in the correct position, and they started injecting a numbing agent into my back so they could insert the needle into my spine. Naturally, I started right back down the swimmy, tunnel-visioned road to barfing/fainting. No sooner had I death-gripped Kelly's wrists and told him I felt lightheaded than a slew of alarms went off and people started hollering about my blood pressure and yelling to check the baby's vitals. I was unceremoniously pushed over until I was stretched out on my side, and they put some fabulous miracle drug in my IV to fix my blood pressure...which had plummeted to 50-something over waaaaay less than that. Our second attempt was much more successful, as they kept me horizontal.

• Your arms will be splayed to the sides and tied down.
It will be intense for your partner to see, but it doesn't hurt - it's a safety precaution and allows for ready access to your IVs.

• Spinal blocks actually work!
Deep down, I didn't believe there was a drug on the face of the earth that would keep a person from feeling their abdomen and uterus getting cut open, or a little baby removed from said area, but that medication is some intense stuff. I couldn't move anything - doctors and nurses had to haul my legs into position once I'd been injected - and the most I felt was the sensation of being touched. No pain, but kind of like you can feel things on your skin when your arm falls asleep. Note: Talking and laughing also felt super bizarre, as the drugs affect all your abdominal muscles which, during pregnancy, have kicked in to help you breathe around the giant fetus. Have you ever swam for a long while in water where you can't touch and it feels kind of tiring to breathe? It's a similar sensation. It's not that you can't breathe, just that it feels bizarre.

• They squeeze the baby out of you like toothpaste out of a tube.
Once the incisions are completed, they push and pull on your belly to get the baby out. Your whole body will move with the force that is exerted. Again, no pain, but it is surreal.

• I wasn't totally out of it, but the drugs made my memory a little hazy.
I remember my daughter's first cries with crystal clarity, and can perfectly recall what she looked like and how it felt when I burst into tears upon first seeing her tiny little self, but most of the surgery feels a bit like a dream sequence. Or maybe like I'd had a few too many beers.

• Just because they keep the baby with you does not mean you're out of the woods yet.
I was beside myself with joy because L was kept with me while I was stitched up and cleaned after the surgery - I thought that meant everything was perfect, and she'd be headed with us to recovery. Turns out a low blood sugar doesn't happen instantly...

• The baby of a Type 1 mom is likely to have a low blood sugar after birth.
L's was 18. They gave her a bottle of formula and she didn't come up enough, so they whisked her off to the NICU to my teary dismay. I felt like a horrible failure, like my diabetes had a victory despite all my hard work, and now my poor just-born tiny daughter was suffering because of me - brutal heel sticks and IVs and being separated from her parents, all because I was a "bad diabetic" and didn't get my numbers right. And then an endocrinologist stopped by during rounds two days later and offhandedly mentioned that, try as they might, babies of Type 1 moms almost always have a blood sugar drop after being born. I wish I had known going in that a low blood sugar could be typical, that it's the perfect blood sugar that's the anomaly. I wouldn't have had a sobbing breakdown the first night had I known it wasn't my fault that L was in the NICU.

• Your doctor will tell you how things went, but might not give you all the details.
I did end up having previa-related bleeding during surgery. My OB said she was happy with the way things turned out, as they managed all my bleeding with medication and obviously didn't end up needing a transfusion. Sounds perfect, yes? And then my night nurse on the maternity ward said I should drink lots of fluid since I'd lost a lot of blood. "Wait, what? A lot of blood? But the doctor said..." Turns out I'd lost an additional one and a half liters of blood. They'd managed the bleeding with two doses of medication and prevented need of a transfusion, but that was a helluva lot of blood I was missing and I didn't even know it.

• Getting out of bed to pee for the first time was just plain awful.
You shuffle like an ancient person and can't stand up straight. And it hurts, even with pain meds. You'll survive, but anticipate suckiness.

• Wear the mesh panties.
My nurses called them "Victoria's Other Secret," and they're beyond ugly...but they won't hurt your incision. I took a stack of them home to boot, just because I was afraid to put real underwear (well, the granny panties I bought to substitute for real underwear) on again.

• My basals were freaky-low after delivery.
Seriously. My endo had set me up with numbers that were HALF of my pre-pregnancy rates. I'd thought "You're kidding me. I'm going to be cruising at 500 with these basals!" But my numbers were amazing, and I was low only once during my four days in the hospital - and even that one low was because of a poor carb count by yours truly.

• As much as I worried, as scared as I felt, seeing, hearing, and holding that baby was something so amazing that it's impossible to describe. It eclipsed everything else.
I had been terrified of the surgery, and Big Nan had done a number on my confidence about diabetic pregnancies in general. I had been a nutcase since I'd gotten the positive pregnancy test, and I'd obsessed about numbers and fetal echocardiograms and amniotic fluid and everything else for months. (Oh, B, I'm so sorry. You're a hero, always always always.) But the minute I heard L scream, the second I saw her, I was so overwhelmed - so filled with relief and gratitude and love - that it was all forgotten and it just became about her coming into the world and joining our little family.

* * *

All in all, the c-section was not as awful as I had imagined it being. I'd wanted to avoid a low blood sugar for L, and we got one anyway. I'd planned on breastfeeding exclusively, but she got formula in the NICU for her first 36 hours after being born. In a nutshell, nothing worked out exactly like I'd hoped or imagined, but L is here safe and sound, and she's thriving more than four weeks later. B and I couldn't be happier. Or luckier.

A week already?!

2011-07-31T18:11:00.000-04:00

I know I've left people hanging since last Friday's post - clearly, I've been busy adjusting to life as a mom (I'm actually a mom! SO. WEIRD.) but it would have been nice to leave a "We're all alive and well!" update here for folks. A girl shouldn't mention the NICU and leave it at that.

So here it is: We're all alive and well!

Day 3 of parenthood! I still look incredibly puffy.

There's a story to be told, of course, for those who want to know how the c-section went, why she was in the NICU, and all the stuff in between. I found such first-person accounts incredibly helpful (and reassuring) when I was pregnant, and I hope to pay that forward. That post will be coming later.

In the meantime, B and I are a little sleep-deprived and a LOT happy. She's here, and everyone is safe and healthy.

Welcome, baby girl.

2011-07-22T19:47:00.000-04:00

You came screaming into the world today at 9:57am - a whopping 6lbs 8oz and 20 inches long. I can't wait for you to be out of the NICU so I can hold you again. The separation is killing me.

The Year of the Rabbit (and also BabyH)

2011-07-16T11:58:00.000-04:00

I have a deep and abiding love for stationery and sending people mail. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing more beautiful in the world than a full mailbox - even the inclusion of bills cannot hamper my love for a giant pile of mail.

Naturally, buying thank you cards for baby gifts was a BIG source of entertainment for me. (I went a bit overboard, I think. I have a frightening amount left over.) I had a wide variety, and was super excited to get a not-babyish-but-still-baby-related stamp to go with them:

From the back of the stamp sheet:

Millions of people around the world will celebrate the Year of the Rabbit beginning February 3, 2011. The rabbit is the fourth of twelve animals associated with the Chinese lunar calendar. People born in the Year of the Rabbit are said to be sensitive, cautious, and lucky. The Year of the Rabbit ends on January 22, 2012.

The image is a pair of kumquats, which are "given as gifts and eaten for luck at this time of renewed hope for the future." Even more fun? The artist, Kam Mak, grew up in New York City's Chinatown and now lives in Brooklyn. (Bklyn represent!)

Six more days until our little bunny's arrival. Tick tock!

Last days and (almost) new beginnings

2011-07-13T21:58:00.000-04:00

See the giant red box? It was a big moment worth a Sharpie.

Today was my last day in the office until October, when I return from my maternity leave. I'm also taking a bit of vacation before the 22nd in hopes of avoiding any drama with the placenta previa, and to try to mitigate the size of my ever-swelling feet and ankles. (Note: New York City in July is NOT the best place for a pregnant woman to be shuffling around to work and back.)

It was really, really weird and I didn't think I'd be quite so affected by it. I spent hours tying up loose ends, writing memos, transferring files, and packing my desk up for the office-wide move that will be taking place in September while I'm out.

Doesn't it look so sad and empty?!

It felt a little bit like the last day at camp, saying goodbye to your friends, everyone asking to stay in touch ("And send pictures of the little one!!"), packing up all your stuff...

Obviously I'm so very excited about welcoming our daughter to the world. I'm also nervous and anxious and full of about a thousand different conflicting emotions - I've never been a mom before! I've no idea what it's going to be like, the ways it's going to change my life. I've wanted this for years and, now that it's finally right around the corner, I find myself completely overwhelmed by the giant unknownness of it.

I've never been a carefree gal (thanks, diabetes). I'm an obsessive planner, a to-do list taskmaster, an overthinker - the unknown and I are not exactly bosom buddies. But I've got B in my foxhole, and it's beyond reassuring to know we've taken this leap of faith, this giant open-armed "What will be will be" step into an utter question mark of a future, together.

So come on, baby girl. Your momma might be an anxious mess when we meet, but it's all going to work out just fine. Can't wait to meet you next Friday.

Why I love using Etsy

2011-06-30T13:35:00.000-04:00

Knowing a gift was made (or found or restored or whatever) with care and craftsmanship is important to me. Seeing that I'm supporting someone's passion is even more important. And having a personal connection - no matter how fleeting - is irreplaceable.

Babies are not just about delivery

2011-06-29T13:36:00.000-04:00

Other than finding out an actual date for BabyH's arrival (eek!) and sobbing to the tunes of MJ, B and I have been super busy. Our doc stepped our scans up to two a week now to check amniotic fluid, baby heart rate and movement, and the placenta - all the parts that make up my OB's "thriving" test. Three of these scans in, and oh my goodness am I tired of them already.

Who does this in a doctor's waiting room?!

I've also

• Visited the best ophthalmologist in the universe, who said my eyeballs are holding steady and have no bleedy changes. At this point, I will take any good news or compliments people want to give me. You think my hair looks shiny? Say so. Does my maternity top look extra flowy today? Tell me. I look like I deserve a cupcake? Shout it from the rooftops.

• Filled out incredibly daunting FMLA paperwork. I'm taking vacation prior to delivery to make sure we make it to the 22nd. (Bleeding might be cause to move our c-section up to the 36-week date of July 15th. I'm doing everything in my power to sit on my tush and avoid causing any sort of said bleeding.) As such, my last day in the office is July 13th! Ack! That is in no time at all....

• Suffered from horribly gnarly edema-related cankles:

• Had a prenatal appointment with our pediatrician, who I already adore. How can you not love a doc who mentions another T1 family in her practice that wants to breastfeed exclusively to see if that helps with the fears and hopes behind The Thought? Or doesn't think it's crazy to discuss Vitamin D's possible connection to incidents of Type 1? I left feeling happy and reassured...and way too young to be meeting with pediatricians.

• Enjoyed a baby shower! Nothing like good friends, adorable baby clothes, and delicious chocolate cake to celebrate impending parenthood. I felt loved, and incredibly lucky.

I'm still dreaming about this cake!

It's been an incredibly busy few weeks, and I have a sneaking suspicion life is not going to slow down in the near future. Rest assured, my DOC darlings, I miss you all but am doing my darndest to lurk on Twitter and keep up with all your posts on my Google reader.

xoxoxo

Purse Guy knows - so you should, too!

2011-06-28T13:43:00.000-04:00

Every morning on my way in to work, Purse Guy is at my Brooklyn Q stop hawking his "designer bags." (For the record, the likelihood of buying a true designer bag at a Q train stop in Brooklyn is just as good as you're imagining right now.) And every morning since my belly became readily apparent, Purse Guy has something to say - nothing rude or anything, but always something for "Mama." Today it was "So when is this baby comin' anyway?!" And that's when I realized I've not yet posted about this very thing.

So, friends, the (mostly) official announcement: BabyH is due to join the Hoffmanderson household on Friday, July 22nd.

For those of you keeping score at home, that is three weeks earlier than my original August 12 due date. And no, I haven't contacted a psychic or had any crazy premonitions about delivering the baby girl. Sadly (but not too sadly), we've got a c-section scheduled for the day. My freakin' placenta previa has not budged one iota.

So why sadly but not too sadly? Sadly because clearly I got into this whole thing with my brain stuck on my diabetes. Since day one, it's been going on the pump, logging food and insulin, doing everything I could to prepare my body for a healthy pregnancy. It was always about the D. And then I get the bad luck of some random crappy placental placement - which has nothing to do with anything in my life, other than reassuring me I'm smart for avoiding gambling as a hobby. I'm bummed that there's a monkey wrench despite all of my hard work and planning.

But I'm not too bummed. How could I be? I am grateful I live where and when I do - and that I have access to the medical care I've received - so that they caught the complication before it became a threat to anyone's life. Women and babies still die during childbirth. I'm lucky that I know about my condition so my doctors can do everything in their power to avoid that threat.

The other not-so-cheerful thing to hear at that appointment was the reason she's giving us until the 22nd, which is the later 37-week c-section option. Apparently, normals with complete placenta previa are usually delivered at 36 weeks to avoid the possibility of premature labor and delivery, which could have some pretty dramatic consequences. (See paragraph directly above.) But because I'm diabetic, she wants to extend it - babies of diabetic moms have lungs that develop more slowly, and she wants to allow for that extra week of development if possible.

I did not handle the appointment too well. We left the office for the train, and I burst into tears on the street. Logically, I know we didn't get any bad news and weren't told anything we didn't already know. But hearing it all out loud at once was terribly overwhelming so...instant sobbing pity-party on 168th Street. Which continued to the A train. And persisted throughout the "Michael Blackson" dance routine on the train, complete with boombox and moonwalking.

(Side note: NYC is such a strange place. Can you imagine being on the A train, going about your business, while some giantly pregnant woman sobs across the aisle from you while some dude in a costume dances around to Michael Jackson songs and collects tips?!)

I'm more settled about the news now, of course. I know a healthy and safe delivery is worth any amount of monkey wrenches or guilt about a disease you can't help having. And I just keep thinking about how excited we both our to meet this little kicky baby. Eyes on the prize, kids, eyes on the prize.

I love you, baristas

2011-06-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

How else could they be sure I get my preggo decaf-with-splash-of-regular order just the way I want it?

Jack, the Boppy body pillow is for humans.

2011-06-15T09:51:00.000-04:00

He clearly disagrees.

But this is my cat fort!

So cute it's making my eyes bleed

2011-06-09T16:05:00.000-04:00

My cube is way more adorable now than it was five minutes ago.

Lab bloods are drawn!

2011-06-09T13:40:00.000-04:00

Are we taking any bets on whether or not the A1c will match Monday's finger-stick test?

Back to our regularly scheduled programming: Visit with the CDE!

2011-06-09T11:06:00.000-04:00

Monday marked the first time I've been in the same room with anyone from my endo team since November. "But you're pregnant" I'm sure someone is spluttering out there, agog that I could be so cavalier about prenatal Type 1 care. Truth is, I'm a lucky lady and 99% of my endocrinology work - all the basal rates and I:C ratios and food logging I've been doing - has been monitored and exchanged with my CDE and endo through Kevin's kick-ass log and Medtronic's Carelink.

That being said, I'm not sure how the Center makes money this way, so I try to go in for an actual billable appointment every once in a while.

Waiting to be a billable patient!

My goals for the visit - since going over numbers wasn't going to happen, as I send those in every two to three days - were bigger picture stuff:

1. OB mentioned the "protocol" for delivery, but was super dodgy about what it actually is. GOAL: find out what the heck is going to happen to me, my pump, my insulin for delivery.

2. OB is really, really weird about her expectations for my BGs: "Your fasting BG is around 90, right? And you're keeping your post-prandial under 120?" Uhhhh...you do know I'm Type 1, right? GOAL: Find out what the heck her problem is and whether or not my BGs are actually a problem.

3. My basals are nearly double what they were in November, and all my rates are all over the place. What's going to happen after delivery?! GOAL: Learn what to expect post-delivery and during breastfeeding.

I don't know that I got super-concrete answers, but I got enough information that I have a different set of expectations for this whole process:

The protocol that's in place is going to depend largely on whether or not I have a c-section. (Finding out next Thursday!) Actual labor is apparently a real bitch on blood sugars - not surprising, of course - but I won't need to do that if I'm getting surgery. All of my pump rates and insulin IV decisions will come from the Berrie-affiliated endo team that's at the hospital at that time. They will work with my endo/CDE to come up with the basal rates I should have for the procedure and afterward, using the pattern function ahead of time so we're not fiddling around with my pump while my daughter's being born. So, still technically waiting on the actual numbers for the protocol, but I know a lot more about how that's conducted and I'm relieved to know the Berrie Center will be the source of those decisions.

As for my OB's insane expectations? That's just what happens. Whether it's because endocrinology just isn't her specialty or that she's just used to patients with gestational diabetes numbers I don't know, but per the CDE "Oh, I KNOW - OBs drive all our Type 1s crazy." She said I'm doing just great and that I should keep doing what I'm doing - that part of the reason she hasn't had me come in is that I'm sailing along so well that I didn't need an in-person appointment. I'd assumed things were okay (she does see my logs all the time, after all), but it was still nice to hear her say the OB is nuts and I'm doing just fine. [Caveat: My finger-stick A1c, for those of you waiting to see how Dex stacked up, was 6.2. I went up a tenth of a point, which is just hard to see as BabyH kicks around in my belly. I'm getting an actual blood draw A1c today, though - will be interesting to see how consistent the numbers are!]

Lastly, post-delivery and breastfeeding? Sounds like it's much like the protocol. I'll have rates that will be set up before I leave the hospital by the endo team, and they'll be rates that'll most likely leave me a little high at first so that I'm not in danger from serious hypoglycemia. Rates will just be adjusted from there. Again, not a concrete answer...and certainly one that leaves me scratching my head: "Um, I don't think I'll have time to do all the logging I've been doing for the past year and a half!" But still good to know there's some sort of plan in place, even if it's not fleshed out enough for my Type A personality.

All in all, I was happy I went to see her, and feel a bit calmer about all the questions bouncing around my head. Not actually calm, of course, but we're moving forward!

Dear Connie

2011-06-06T20:32:00.000-04:00

The following is in reference to a comment I received this morning on an earlier post and which I've chosen not to publish.

You're right. My blog is absolutely not the right forum for this. Your anonymous comment, lacking any and all contact or identifying information, was shocking in its impropriety. But, as you felt comfortable with the venue and the method, I'm just going to follow your example.

I have not had a direct conversation with my father since my sixteenth birthday, and I have not laid eyes on him since family court more than a decade ago. Similarly, I have not been in contact with my grandmother since 1996 - not only do I have no idea how to get in touch with her for whatever important information you think I deserve to know, I have no desire to do so.

I am unclear what you hoped to achieve with this morning's middleman-brokered message. I am sorry your husband is sick - as this is what I assume must be happening - but believe me when I say that has no bearing on my life now. I'm a grown woman with a loving family that is present for me every day of my life. As far as I am concerned, my family circle exists unbroken.

I wish you and Paul the best, and can only hope that you do the same for me - and that in so doing, you cease googling me or whatever brought you to my space on the internet, and respect our distance.

Rrrrrock the Dexcom, ROCK the Dexcom

2011-06-03T11:47:00.000-04:00

The Hoffmandersons bought a new laptop not too long ago, and last night I decided I was way overdue for a download of my Dexcom receiver. Sadly, I decided this at 10:00 pm. I thought it would be a matter of just plugging that bad boy in and letting everything work its magic while I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed - no such luck.

Instead, I needed to download the DM3 software. And then I needed to export all my old patient records from the old laptop - 4 of them, of course, since in their infinite wisdom Dexcom doesn't allow patients to just edit their receiver number and keep all their data in one file...and I'm on receiver #4. And then I needed to import them into my new database. Finally, an hour later, I was ready to go! Dex was plugged in, I clicked my Karen box, and...the transfer was canceled.

Well, this is new, I thought. So I restarted the transfer. It died again. Wash, rinse, repeat. The transfer would go for varying lengths of time and then croak. B - my usual computer wunderkind, my go-to nerd-whisperer - had nothing to offer, other than the dreaded "Maybe it's a compatibility issue with Windows 7." Not what I wanted to hear as it was nearing midnight, and by now I was a mix of screamingly frustrated and incredibly overtired. And, as most PWDs know, these data management programs often look like they're done in crayon, they don't always provide the most elegant methods for data analysis, and we all consider ourselves extremely lucky if we can get them to work on a Mac - all resounding arguments for "Shit. I bet it tanks with the newer operating systems."

So I prepared to go to bed. Shut off all the programs, prepared to close the computer, and thought "Aw, hell. One more try." Lo and behold, it worked! I don't know why it would work, since I've never had such a problem before, but I was grateful I got it to work at all. (See above: as most PWDs know....)

As it was midnight, I didn't get to do my usual fine-tooth comb data ogling. I did, however, do a quick look-see to get an idea of how my past two weeks have been going. Folks, I restarted the program because I didn't think it could possibly be right - per my Dexcom, my BG average is 125 (little higher than I'd like, of course, but that could put me in the running for an A1c of 6.0 next week), more than 60% of my BGs are in my 70-140 target range, and my SD is in the low 40s. While I wish I had a more thorough idea of how my numbers have played out, for a pregnant lady battling third trimester insulin resistance, ever-increasing insulin dosages, and just general body spazzing at every single thing that goes in my mouth I'd say those numbers are not too freakin' shabby...

Bite me, JerkNurse.

2011-05-26T11:44:00.000-04:00

In general, I've been very happy with my MFM OB's office. The people there have been spectacularly nice and, aside from the weird placenta confusion (not that my placenta is confused, which would be weird, but that the details of its position kept getting miscommunicated), I feel comfortable with my care and confident in their competence.

Except for JerkNurse.

For the record, I'm one of those people who - to my detriment, most times - constantly makes excuses for other people's errant behavior. I believe the best of people, and it often means people take advantage of me. For years, B has said I'm a terrible judge of character (truth)...but watch the eff out if I hate someone. If I am able to say bad things without backpedaling, if I have developed a complete irreversible allergy for a person, they will prove to be a craphead. And JerkNurse, ladies and gentlemen, is a craphead.

At my very first prenatal appointment, JN weighed me. I felt weird about it, because all the books told me I'd already gained too much for the first trimester. (My butt also told me this.) So I did some nervous laughy thing when she asked me for my prepregnancy weight and she saw I'd gained 11lbs since then. Direct quote, "You're KIDDING. Did you just eat everything in sight?"

Now, she couldn't possibly have known my history with disordered eating. But this is an OB office, yo. I cannot be the first preggo who's sensitive about the weight gain, amiright? When I said "Well, I've been eating a lot more carbs than usual, and I've been treating a lot of lows" she cut me off with an "OHHHH...so you're the one who's been overcompensating."

She hasn't improved, folks. She's a jerk whenever she calls, she's a jerk whenever we see her in the office, and when I called yesterday to see if my anemia results were in she proceeded to ask me - while my chart was presumably sitting right in front of her - if I'd been scheduled for my glucose tolerance test. Crickets chirped, I barely managed to avoid banging my head against my desk, and I said "Ummmm. No. As I'm Type 1 diabetic, I'm quite certain I don't need to take that test."

What's a girl supposed to do with this?! Currently, I just keep telling myself "It's only 9 more weeks, it's only 9 more weeks" but jeez.

Dammit, I'm a PWD not a fiddler, Jim!

2011-05-25T14:55:00.000-04:00

Everyone always said that insulin needs would increase with pregnancy. I didn't think they were lying, of course, but I certainly didn't think it would be unending fiddling with everything in my routine. Not just increased total daily dose, but constant tweaks to I/C ratios, insulin sensitivity, food enemy status (CHEESE has joined this list, and it is a horrific new relationship), and always, ALWAYS basals.

The basal tweaks are driving me batshit crazy. One day it's mornings that don't work. The next it's dinner time. Two days later, midnight starts sucking it. And then the 3am shift starts imploding. I feel like I'm trying to keep a little dinghy afloat, but leaks keep squirting up everywhere. The last aggressive rage-basal tweak, however, seems to have plugged all those leaks for the time being:

The Diary of Anais Nin, by Anais Nin

2011-05-23T10:30:00.000-04:00

"When I cannot bear outer pressures anymore, I begin to put order in my belongings....As if unable to organize and control my life, I seek to exert this on the world of objects."

I saw this quotation in Real Simple's June issue. Man, oh man, if that just doesn't perfectly capture my current OMG WHY IS OUR HOUSE SUCH A DISASTER?! desperate obsessing over cleaning and getting the house in tip-top shape for BabyH's rapidly approaching arrival.

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert (Davis translation)

2011-05-23T10:27:00.000-04:00

"Ah," he thought, "Madame Bovary is much prettier than she is, and fresher. Virginie is definitely beginning to grow fat. She's so tiresome with her enthusiasms. And what a passion she has for prawns!"

Previa shmevia

2011-05-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

So we had our follow-up scan yesterday. The verdict? The Jeffersons would be highly disappointed in my placenta, but I don't think it's the placenta's fault.

I did not finally get a piece of the pie.

Apparently there was some sort of miscommunication at the scan in March - it turns out I have (and have always had) complete placenta previa, not partial. Not a gigantic difference in what I had to do for the past four weeks, but certainly a different prognosis. Obviously, it's less likely a placenta will move from totally covering a cervix to 2cm away from it than a placenta that's just covering a smidge of the cervix, right? It would have been nice to know the truth, if only to manage my "Maybe it'll move!!" expectations.

At any rate, this means that our OB is pretty damned positive we'll be doing a c-section. Like, so positive that - even though she was all "We'll confirm at the next scan in four weeks" - she told us we might want to consider canceling our birth class to save a few hundred bucks since "you won't need to know it" and suggested just taking a breastfeeding class instead.

We also discussed the timing of the c-section. Between the previa and the threat of bleeding that it poses AND the diabetes and the degrading placenta it can cause, Dr. D said she tends to schedule the section for weeks 36 or 37 to make sure the baby will be safe. They'll be watching me like hawks (2 scans per week after week 32!) to make sure she isn't in distress until the surgery, of course, but no one wants to hear their uterus described as some sort of ticking time bomb of doom.

She also encouraged us to find a pediatrician and make an appointment for shortly after the birth - there was some level of urgency to her suggestion, which freaked me out. Why would the baby need to be seen so soon? Is it because she'll be so early, or because of the diabetes, or...? I'll get clarification at the next visit, but yo doc. Could you keep the freaking me out to a reasonable level for one visit?

I remembered to take a picture of the waiting room!

The only happy news (and really, the thing I'm most concerned about) is that baby girl is just peachy. She's clocking in at 2lbs, 8oz - 43rd percentile for growth, so smack dab in the middle of the curve and exactly where we want her to be. I was thrilled of course, since I always have that dreaded macrosomia living in the back of my mind. She has a cute button nose, and had her leg up over her head for some acrobatic moves during the entire scan.

So. I'm still trying to wrap my head around everything. I'm disappointed about the previa, of course. It's hard to hear that you're probably going to be one of the very rare women (1 to 2 percent) who end up having the birth affected by the previa - those odds make me roll my eyes at my craptastic luck. I'm also a bit anxious about the c-section, as I've never had real surgery beyond getting my impacted wisdom teeth removed. I'm also totally weirded out that I may very well know my daughter's birthday in less than four weeks - nothing is stranger than scheduling delivering your baby like you would schedule a lunch date with a friend. And I don't even want to begin to describe the instant "OMG NOTHING IS READY!" panic state my brain jumped to when Dr. D started talking dates - all of this got real in a hurry, let me tell you. I mean, I know it's not that much difference in actual time. But my "Oh, I'm due in August!" instantly became "Oh, she'll be here in July!" and that just feels like such a big shift!

In the end, I know we'll get it all done before her arrival. (Well, at least she'll have a crib, clothes, diapers, and all the basics ready to roll.) B will do his damndest, as usual, to keep me as sane and calm as he possibly can whenever I start to freak out too badly. I have faith in my medical team keeping me and baby girl safe as houses for the c-section and all the uterine stalking leading up to it. And if you told me I had to pick between the potentially-scary-but-maybe-just-inconvenient complete placenta previa OR a totally healthy baby at the end of a type 1 diabetic pregnancy, you can bet your ass I'd choose the healthy little girl every single time.

My RLS bouquet

2011-05-11T13:46:00.000-04:00

Nowadays, when people look at me, tilt their head, and say "How are you feeeeeeling?" I finally have something to say other than "chubby." My friends, we have begun the Omigod, How Do People Have More Than One Child? phase of pregnancy.

Aside from waiting with baited breath to find out if I have an upwardly mobile placenta (scan next Thursday! Keep those fingers crossed), I'm also rockin' quite a few other side effects from playing hostess to BabyH's swinging bachelorette pad.

*** I have sausage fingers. Medical types like to call it "edema," but I'm not quite so high-falutin'. All I know is

my fingers look like they would do well on a hoagie next to some peppers and onions
it's hard as hell to do a finger-stick (have you ever tried that with water-retentive fingers? It's like squeezing blood from bloated alien-cow udders)
my paranoia has me wearing my wedding rings on a necklace chain, since I'd be devastated if they had to get cut off

*** My legs have a mind of their own. Every night without fail, all of a sudden one of my legs will freak the hell out - kind of like when you're falling asleep and your body gives one big jerk and wakes you right up. This started weeks ago as a sign that it was time to head to bed. I'd thought it was just my body saying "You're TIRED. Stop fighting it." But now it has evolved into some boogie-woogie leg-jitterbug that keeps me awake for hours, tossing and turning on top of my boppy, my B, and two very irate cats. Handily, my What to Expect daily newsletter has informed me that restless leg syndrome can indeed be a symptom of pregnancy. Of course, B feels terrible that the Hoffmanderson house-papoose isn't sleeping so well, so today I got this delivered to my cube at the office:

My RLS bouquet

From everything I've read and heard, I've had an incredibly easy time of it for the pregnancy. (Well, you know, aside from all the Evil Nan / diabetes stuff.) I knew my lucky streak couldn't possibly last forever! And I'm okay with it. Or I will be in August....

Seen on my way in to work today

2011-04-15T09:33:00.000-04:00

They spent all that money on a pretty sign...and no one corrected them on "fashion." Maybe they should have paid a little less attention to the hokey extra e in Olde?

It is irrefutably spring in Brooklyn when these trees start blooming! How could you argue with all the pink flowers?! "No, no, you're right. It's cold, tree, but it's definitely spring."

And another one gone, and another one gone, another one bites the dust!

2011-04-13T09:00:00.001-04:00

Last Tuesday was our second fetal echocardiogram. Yes, second. We were asked to come back to essentially confirm findings from our first test in March. Like our first anatomy scan, it was scheduled so early in the pregnancy that not everything was big enough to be seen perfectly - better safe than sorry is our maternal-fetal OB's mantra, and I'm okay with that.

So we went in for test number two. I'd love to draw it all out in big, ER-dramatic fashion, but these tests are remarkably boring. The images are close-ups, so you don't get a lot of "Look! Baby!" shots. You can see the heart beating, but it's so out of context that it kind of looks like something jiggling in a petri dish on the Discovery Channel. They take the same pictures over and over again, so you watch the petri dish blob shift position and - for added flair - sometimes it's in color (i.e., there are red and blue blobs wiggling on top of the original petri dish blob). For an hour or so, this is all you see. You're completely clueless about what you're looking at, you can't talk for fear of making the picture jiggle, the room is dark, and the machine hums quietly and soothingly the entire time. Once again, B and I were fighting naptime waiting for the good doctor to tell us her verdict.

Said verdict was as clean a bill of fetal heart health as could be given - she found nothing that the echocardiogram could have shown her, and that is excellent news indeed.

Once again, relief is the emotion of the day. That, and a little "Now what?" I've been so focused on getting through these exams that it's as though I don't know what to worry about next. I know macrosomia could be looming out there (and I really wish I had more energy for the gym, let me tell you), and there's always the partial placenta previa. There's also a whole host of pregnancy stuff that normals worry about, I'm sure. But for right now, I think I'm going to take a couple weeks off the Neuroses Train and focus the majority of my worrying powers on watching my BGs (more to come on that later) and finally picking a name for the poor kid. "BabyH" would be a problem for her in high school, don't you think?

Nothing beats strip delivery day!

2011-04-12T09:50:00.000-04:00

It's 80 degrees out in NYC

2011-04-11T16:51:00.000-04:00

Which means it's time for my first iced coffee of the season:

And what could possibly be better than my first (decaf) iced coffee of the season? Hmm? The barista getting my name right! Yay!

"I'm not dead yet!"

2011-03-31T16:01:00.000-04:00

I do hope you all read the post title in an English accent....

I've been really, really quiet here, I know. Bob would say that's okay because I'm not getting paid, but I still feel like I should be posting more often. There's been a lot of non-D, non-preggo stuff going on that's keeping me busy - freelance (to save up for the bambino), feeling kind of tired all the time, jury duty, work drama, and my birthday tomorrow - but it all pales in comparison to the D and preggo drama I'm focused on right now.

We had our second anatomy scan on March 24th. (Still a girl!) With Nan's creepy book in the back of my mind, I was a bundle of nerves beforehand and spent the entire exam with one pair of fingers crossed under my head. It must have worked, because they found nothing wrong - as far as they're concerned, she's perfect, right-on-target for size, and I haven't harmed her in any way with my high-risk Type 1 status (well, that's what I took away from it). I'm not going to relax until fetal echo #2 next week, but I was relieved to hear good news...even if it's not yet all the news.

But - there's always a but, isn't there? - the other shoe I'd been waiting for did actually drop. BabyH is safe and healthy, but I have "partial placenta previa". The dictionary defines it as:

an abnormal implantation of the placenta at or near the internal opening of the uterine cervix so that it tends to precede the child at birth usually causing severe maternal hemorrhage

This is all the horrifying 18th-century-bloody-birth sounding stuff B and I googled in between the scan and our OB appointment to go over said scan. (Which, ugh - a vaginal ultrasound to confirm. B offered to leave the room, but I figured this preggo road is only going to get more gross and awkward, so we'd better just suck it up and get down to brass tacks. Still. Ew.)

Note to self: never, ever google a condition like that again. Why? Because it may not be as bad as MayoClinic.com makes it sound.

Apparently, I'm in the small minority of women who, at 20 weeks or so, have the placenta attached too close to the cervix for everyone's comfort. At this point, it could still move - as the uterus expands and BabyH grows, the placenta could shift up much like a scar on your forehead would "move" as you grow from a child into an adult - and then there wouldn't be any problem at all. But if it doesn't? Well, that's potential for bleeding, a definite C-section, probable bed-rest, and it means everyone's going to be extra super cautious during delivery lest we have hemorrhaging and other awful complications.

Clearly, we're rooting for a very upwardly mobile placenta.

They'll check again in 7 weeks. In the meantime, in order to avoid prompting any bleeding, I'm under orders to take it easy - no strenuous exercise, no heavy lifting, no sex. It's like I'm back in Victorian times when pregnant women were seen as basically fragile and useless, and it kind of hurts my brain.

People have asked me how I feel about the whole thing, how I'm handling it. (It sounds really scary, right?) Knowing that at this point it's just a maybe-problem that could still go away has colored my response, I'm sure. But I find my overwhelming feeling is, weirdly, one of relief. I entered into this whole pregnancy fully expecting some sort of disaster to occur, but not being sure I could cope with it once it happened. How do you deal with the idea that your disease - one you've struggled with for years and years, but have pretty much accepted as your life - has caused problems for someone else? Bad enough feeling like a burden on B and all the other T3s in my life...but my unborn baby?

And yet that didn't happen. Once again, my daughter is a healthy little jellybean. I've done nothing to harm her and I have managed to tame my diabetes to the best of my ability. But me? My health? I'm used to having something wrong. I know I can deal with anything that's thrown at me - hell, diabetes itself has made me that tough person! So it's relief I feel. Relief that she's okay, relief that Nan is STILL in the wrong (suck it, Nan!), relief that I know I can be strong, that I'm able to take care of myself, that I have an incredible team of doctors working with me, and that I have B and an amazing support network.

The Steel Magnolias effect

2011-03-11T17:03:00.000-05:00

For better or worse, I think Steel Magnolias becomes a part of your life once you're diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. You all know the scene. Shelby's sitting in the beauty parlor chair getting an updo, when her incredibly dramatic low kicks in and she starts freaking out and shaking like she's having a seizure:

"Drink your juice, Shelby"

Then she has a baby and she dies. Or that's how it seems most non-PWDs and non-T3s remember the movie.

Steel Magnolias came out in 1989, a mere four years before my diagnosis. Back then, I'd get a lot of "Oh! Like that movie!" reactions when people heard I had diabetes, and it drove me absolutely bananas. Yes, I have lows but what you saw was a movie "reenactment" - I've felt like crap, I've shaken like a leaf, I've sweat and lost my temper, I've had alllll the symptoms...but I've never had a low like Shelby did.

I've also had a lot of people assume I'd never be able to have children thanks to that movie. Big Nan, of course, was a naysayer but even otherwise-supportive friends and family can't get Shelby's death out of their heads. For the record, folks: diabetic women can have healthy pregnancies and can deliver healthy babies. YDMV, naturally, and complications (like my mild non-proliferative background retinopathy) can make pregnancy more difficult and, yes, even unsafe - just like Shelby's was.

The fact is that - like most things in life - every person is different and these are always a case-by-case situation. But uneducated people often make incorrect assumptions, and I kind of dreaded "coming out" with my pregnancy for this very reason. I figured it would be the food police times a bajillion, and cringed whenever I thought of the pity-head-tilts or exclamations of surprise/horror/shaming that people would give when they knew I was diabetic and pregnant.

So, knowing how anxious I was about it, B was his usual amazing self and got me my very first baby gift:

Update: If you aren't Shelby either, click here!

So keep your head-tilt to yourself, buck-o, and stop judging me and my life by 80s movies. Shelby's life, her choices, her disease have nothing to do with mine. I'm not Shelby, because I'm me.

Awww. Love you too, Dexcom!

2011-03-08T11:21:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the reminder, guys!

Paging Doctor X! And Y! And Z!

2011-03-02T16:55:00.000-05:00

I mentioned all the doctor appointments that seem to be bunching up with BabyH on the way. This week was a banner one, with half of both Monday and Tuesday spent waaaaay uptown at the facility where my medical family lives. I failed to get waiting room photos each day, if you can believe it - I'm gonna plead for mercy, as my mind was just churning about the appointments themselves.

Monday wasn't too worrisome, as it was a visit with my ophthalmologist and I LOVE him - he was amazing when my first microaneurysms were found and I completely came apart in his office. Cool as a cucumber, warm and reassuring, I won the doc-lotto when I found this guy.

The point of the visit was mostly for a second trimester check-in to establish that everything was still all okay, and to plan my third trimester appointment. According to my doc, sometimes retinopathy can be completely unpredictable during pregnancy - they're not sure if it's hormones, blood pressure, fluid, or a butterfly flapping its wings in Omaha, of course, but for one reason or another it can escalate pretty quickly. As a natural worrywart, I was happy for the check-in and even happier after my dilation when I was told everything was holding steady: "You're actually down to just one dot in each eye, but I'm going to say you're the same since it wasn't a significant change."

Next up: the fetal echocardiogram. Per the American Heart Association, "some pregnant women are at increased risk of giving birth to a baby with congenital heart disease." Type 1 women fall into that category, so our OB referred us for the fetal echo. As gaping holes in a fetal heart were one of the lovely images in my head courtesy of Big Nan, the echo was a source of much angst and worry in the Hoffmanderson household the past few weeks - I'd been both dreading it and anxious for it to come so it could be over and we'd have answers.

We arrived at exactly our appointment time (curse you, A train!). The entire floor was insane - like nothing I've ever seen before. Such a high-end spa atmosphere that I felt like I should be wearing a fluffy white robe and drinking cucumber water, on the way to my massage in some private, quiet room! After the usual paperwork - which included a very informative brochure about what fetal echos actually are - we were lead to our scan room...which had a giant mounted flatscreen TV so we could watch the scan along with the doctor. A flatscreen, I kid you not - very unlike our OB's office, let me tell you.

On my end, the actual scan was basically like a typical ultrasound - the wand, the gel, the belly, the darkened room, the blobby picture of the fetus. The big difference is that the doctor occasionally used color to see blood flow, and she also recorded the actual heartbeats. From what I could tell, she was measuring peaks and valleys in the beats and taking pictures of the heart and the brain to make sure blood was flowing where and how it needed to be - still, I'm not a doctor, and she didn't get into the nitty gritty of what she was actually doing. We just spent an hour watching her do it on the screen. A looooong hour. You'd think it would be exciting to watch your unborn baby's heart beating, but at some point it just becomes a super close-up of a grainy, moving blob on the screen that occasionally pulses red or blue. And after 20 minutes, that darkened room becomes a tempting place for a nap....

In the end, we got the same nonanswer answers we got at our anatomy scan last week. They were looking for thickened heart walls or giant holes - the typical issues for a Type 1 pregnancy - and they found none BUT I'm not far enough along yet to see everything they need to see so we have to come back in 4 to 6 weeks for another exam before we're officially cleared. To clarify, and because I needed to heart these wonderfully warm specialists say it out loud, I actually asked them "So as far as you can tell, my diabetes hasn't damaged her heart so far?!" and they said no. I still get a wave of relief when I remember their no.

So, once again, I walked away with enough of an answer to feel relieved that the very worst didn't happen. We're not totally out of the woods yet, as we have another anatomy scan in three weeks and our second fetal echo in April, but those woods are becoming decidedly less dark and scary.

See? Totally less scary. There's a path and everything.

Feelin' the love

2011-03-01T10:39:00.000-05:00

Every Sunday, B and I have breakfast at The Usual, the diner up the street from our apartment. What started as a "ZOMG, I want some eggs!" trip for greasy goodness has become a beloved ritual, not least of all because of the two brothers, Mike and Johnny, who own and run the place and live directly upstairs from the restaurant.

As regulars ("Usualers," dontcha know) we're greeted with waves and hellos the minute we walk through the door. Mike comes over with our coffees (me, decaf with half-and-half and Splenda; B, high-octane black) before we're even done taking off our coats, and we're never given menus. He's quick with a joke or a story, usually naughty or about Canada (from which he hails). Not-Sundays, we get big waves and hellos whenever we walk by, or run into him or his wife as they come back from walking their dog or walking in Prospect Park. I often wave when I walk by in the morning on my way to work.

In short, these guys, this restaurant, have become part of our neighborhood family. I've never been in love with New York City - I'm a small-town upstater at heart, and I don't know that I'll ever transcend that. But it's people like Mike and Johnny, places like The Usual, that make me feel a part of things, like I belong, happy and content with our little community wrapped around us.

This morning, this warm-and-cozy feeling went to 11 when I was scurrying to the subway and heard "HEY, HON!" bellowed from behind me. I stopped, turned, and there was Mike chasing me down the street. "I saw you coming, and you looked like you needed this! Half-and-half and two Splendas":

I took this little gift, this gesture that was somehow SO BIG while being a mere 10oz, gave Mike a big kiss on his cheek, and went off to the Q feeling a bit misty-eyed and a whole lot loved and happy and just so grateful for my life.

The proverbial cat...

2011-02-28T15:51:00.000-05:00

It's done! That darn cat is out of the bag all over the place - the happy/scary/big news is finally shared with family, friends, DOC, Twitter, Facebook...and the office.

I've been positively dreading telling my supervisor. Not that she's some sort of evil ogre Overseer of Doom or anything, of course. But my job, while not rocket-science, is incredibly deadline-driven and I'm the only one who does it. Taking time off requires nimble planning during lulls in the workload, and I wasn't sure how the whole maternity leave thing would work out. I know someone will end up getting royally screwed in the deal, and I feel incredibly responsible for that. Not to mention the fact that, in publishing, having a baby is often synonymous with taking maternity leave and then giving notice - I wanted to make sure everyone knew I wanted to come back, and that I want to make sure the transition is as easy and smooth as possible.

Weirdly, the actual telling was rather anticlimactic. She clapped and seemed excited for me, said that "we'll work all that other stuff out later!" - apparently, I'm the first pregnant direct report she's ever had so this is all new to her, too. I informed her about upcoming doctor appoinments (had one this morning, one tomorrow, one on the 24th...they're endless!) and said I'd try to come in early and leave late to make up time. Good person that she is, she said not to tax myself and to just do whatever it is I need to do. My brain just kept yelling "This is it?! No judgy looks or sighs or anything?!"

I'm incredibly happy with the way it ended up. (Or is relieved a better word?) I'm looking forward to seeing how the next few months unfold, and hope we figure out something out that eases everyone's mind. Especially mine, because I'm a crazy worry wart.

Longest. Post. Ever: The ugly, the bad, the good

2011-02-24T18:47:00.000-05:00

I've been so absent from this blog, and it's because I've been waiting to write this post for oh-so-very-long. Now that I'm finally doing so, though, I find myself at a complete loss as to how I should even begin. It's all just so much to wrap my head around, as so many Big Things are.

So I'll start at the darkest, but probably truest beginning - the aftermath of my 1993 diagnosis. Big Nan (the pediatric RN/CDE who was my first teacher in the ways of the D) had decided we needed to have a discussion about The Future When I'd Be an Adult, because she wouldn't always be the person in charge of educating me about my disease and how to live with it. Part of this instruction was, of course, about having children. Now, I was diagnosed shortly after the DCCT ended. It wasn't quite the diabetes dark ages, but people were certainly still incredibly misinformed about how well someone could live with the D. So Big Nan told me horror stories of deformities, of the suffering that came from being in the body of a Type 1 diabetic. She even showed me pictures. Me, a recently diagnosed, terrified 15-year-old girl. I honestly don't know if this was an attempt to scare me about sex as a teenager in general or if she legitimately thought I should not have children because all attempts to do so would end in horrible tragedy. What I do know is that I was so incredibly scarred by this meeting that I ultimately stopped seeing her, and was utterly convinced that I would never be able to have children.

The next beginning - WAY more cheerful - is a shorter story. I met someone, we loved each other, we married. He believed in me and my ability to take care of myself, trusted in my dedication and downright stubbornness, and somehow taking the next steps of going on the pump and getting down to brass tacks to start our own family didn't seem so futile.

The real beginning came in early December, when I took a pregnancy test early one Saturday morning and blearily had to do a double-take: it was positive. And that launched a bit of a downward spiral. I wish I had been all happiness and excitement, but I was just all terror and doom. All I could think of were those horrific pictures from Big Nan's book. Every bite of food I ate was like a bite of poison, every out-of-range BG was a source of anxiety. All I could feel was dread and guilt, counting down the days until our first OB appointment in late January when I was sure I would be told something had gone horribly wrong and it was all my fault. There was a lot of sobbing fits in the shower, and poor B was at a loss - I couldn't find excitement in myself and, since we were waiting to tell anyone until the end of the first trimester was safely over, he was stuck being the sole, lonely voice of happiness. The appointment came and went, a reassuring whirl of hearing an actual heartbeat, watching the fetus move, and taking home an excellent ultrasound photo. But I was still scared, of course. I'd look at that little picture and all I could think was "Oh, please don't let me be hurting you."

So the happiest beginning is probably today, of course. It starts with this:

The waiting room at my maternal-fetal OB's office.

Today was the day we found out the new addition to Team Hoffmanderson is a girl. More important - and the reason today was the happiest beginning - is this is the first time since I've known I was pregnant that I was actually able to feel the first, tiniest glimmer of hope that I, as a 17-year veteran of Type 1 diabetes, just might be able to have a healthy baby. All of my tests have been normal, my kidneys are doing well, my heart is fine, my thyroid levels and A1cs are in range, and best of all? We had an anatomy scan and my MFM OB found the results "incredibly reassuring" - at 15 weeks and 6 days, we're too early to be cleared for heart, spine, and face, but nothing catastrophic was found and anything found later is going to be "less severe." It sounds bleak, I'm sure, but it's all sunshine and puppies as far as I'm concerned - we're not out of the woods, but we're on the way out. I'm still scared, still nervous about the fetal echocardiogram, still worried about that next anatomy scan in four weeks. But simply knowing that there's a very worst to put behind us is a huge weight off my shoulders.

So on to the joyousness! It's a girl! A Hoffmanderson to add to the clan, a little girl who's bound to be a spitfire, who I already know will hate candy-pink, and who will look just righteously adorable in a pair of stripey leggings and this gift from her aunt:

It's here!!

2011-02-11T12:25:00.000-05:00

My shiny new Dexcom Seven+Plus system has arrived:

My old one fell out of warranty, and my insurance - oh, bless my insurance - replaced it. I'm going to use system #1 until it croaks, of course, but it's awesome because now there will be no lag in my Dexing AND that means I have a spare receiver and transmitter on hand. And, since I'm on receiver number 4, it can't hurt to have one sitting in my proverbial back pocket, y'know? I go through them like Kleenex.

MORE exciting than all that? (And what could possibly be more exciting, you ask?) This time, my system came with a new fancier zipped case AND one of those little rubber outfits for the receiver AND now I have a spare charger for work!!!

The world is good.

Justine, by Lawrence Durrell

2011-02-10T20:51:00.000-05:00

"A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants."

I would like one of these at the 57th St. stop, please.

2011-01-28T11:54:00.001-05:00

The diabetes fairy left me a present!!

2011-01-12T11:55:00.000-05:00

Welcome, Dexcom the Fourth

2011-01-11T17:48:00.000-05:00

May you last way, way, way longer than your predecessors did....

Sometimes, not knowing hurts your brain

2011-01-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

I made the mistake of wondering aloud this morning how many books we could possibly have in our house:

B: We have approximately 852 books in our house, not counting the donation box. Please bring home 148 books.

Rassafrassin' frakkin' Dexcom

2011-01-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

Well, kids, looks like I'm moving on to receiver #4:

I woke up Sunday morning to Dex freaking out in the bed next to me - lots of BEEEEEPING and buzzing, followed by a "System recovery check complete." After two of those messages, Dex threw the Exclamation Point of Death....and this is all roughly 3 weeks before my warranty is up. Silver lining?

D365: Day 4 - gettin' my LIP on.

2011-01-04T22:45:00.000-05:00

My first trip to the gym with Dex didn't work out quite the way I'd expected - this is going to take some fancy math skills, I think. Any tips to stabilize BGs for a workout with temp basals, etc? I'd rather avoid a pre-gym snack, since exercising with food in my belly always makes me feel a bit ill.

Song in My Head: Ronnie and Clyde

2011-01-04T11:29:00.000-05:00

Also: Rihanna, you're so very pretty.

Done and done

2011-01-04T09:51:00.000-05:00

2011 is off to a great start, kids. I bit the bullet and joined NYSC yesterday. Dex and I will be hitting the recumbent bike tonight and doing some pretty intense graph work, lemme tell ya.

Kickoff to 2011, or my new LIPs!

2011-01-01T13:57:00.000-05:00

I've been seeing a lot of 2010 wrap-ups out there - it's fun to see where everyone's been for the past year, but for yours truly 2010 was a bit of a struggle. I was still new to the pump, began logging and working the BGs in earnest, struggled through classes and working full-time, and slogged through the most craptastic October I can remember. Frankly, I'm thrilled to see the ass end of 2010.

So, in order to make 2011 as amazing as it can be, I've got some life-improvement projects I've been eyeing. Let's not call them "resolutions," though - using words like that with a Type-A perfectionist is a recipe for disaster.

My LIPs for the coming year (oh, how I love a good acronym!):
1) Cook more: The whole diabetic vegetarian thing makes meal-planning a little tricky - balancing my carb and protein intake has never been so complicated! By the end of the year, I want to feel confident cooking at least 20 new veggie meals (beyond my chili, quinoa, and diabetic pasta staples).

We tried this Spinach-Cheese bake recipe for Christmas - DELICIOUS.

2) Join a gym: Clichéd? Absolutely. But in the past month, I've seen my daily basal rate increase by more than 10% and that trend just can't be allowed to continue unabated. I'm hoping to keep an iron-fisted grip on my insulin efficacy...and I'm ridiculously, nerdily excited about watching Dex during and after a workout.

3) Read more: My overstuffed bookshelves will thank me. It may be a job hazard, but that doesn't mean it's okay to act like a hoarder.

And these are just two of the five we have....

4) Write more: I don't know that I'm a daily poster (you would all be bored to tears if I wrote that often), but I do need to write more consistently. Hmm. Perhaps following in Holly's footsteps with D365 would be a nice place to start!

5) Karen dates: I am never happier, calmer, or more grounded than when I'm between freelance jobs and not in a deadline crunch at work - and what makes me feel like that? Having the free time to read what I want, bake something for B to bring to work, putter around the house, gab on the phone with my mom or sister, paint my toenails, dust the living room, browse around Target...any one of a million things that seem inconsequential until you find you don't have the time to enjoy them. If I carve out time to spend futzing around and hanging out with myself, it'll pay me back with interest.

I have more LIPs on the back-burner, of course, which I'm sure you'll be hearing all about in excruciating detail. But for now, five seems like a nice solid number to start the year off right....

Welcome, 2011! I'm so very glad to meet you.

Ho ho ho, etc.

2010-12-22T13:58:00.000-05:00

I made these for coworkers last night, to pass out with Christmas cards:

Maybe I should have brought some in to work for me today. Now I want one.

I managed to only eat TWO of them while they were still warm. I'm thinking I deserve a small medal - or a blue ribbon? - for such epic self-restraint.

All's been mostly quiet on the blogging front, I'm afraid. Not a lot going on for me to report to the wider world. (Except cookie baking, of course. Happy to report that.) Our office closes down for the holiday, so today's my last day of work until 2011. I'll be at #dsma tonight, but probably won't "talk" to most of you until I'm back at the office - B and I are doing a staycation Christmas in Brooklyn! There will be lots of pajamas (my new ones arrived Monday!), lots of cooking (anyone got a good vegetarian recipe for main-course Christmas?!), and hopefully some Grinch-watching.

Hope you and yours have a very merry, and a most wonderful start to the New Year!

I love when a good plan comes together

2010-12-15T15:55:00.000-05:00

Unclipped!

2010-12-08T11:32:00.000-05:00

I ALWAYS use my pump clip (unless I'm in a dress and rockin' my awesome thigh holster). This morning, in my usual ohmygodhurryhurryRUSH! spaz to get out the door on time, I completely forgot to put on the clip. And lemme tell ya, my pump hates to be all warm and snuggly close to my skin. Every time I use my holster or tuck that puppy into a pocket, my BGs float up and stubbornly refuse to budge out of the 140s range.

My office solution to keep the pump secure and cool as a cucumber? Ta-dah:

Why yes, that IS a pump rubber-banded to the arm of my chair.

Necessity is most certainly the mother of invention....

Yay Diaversary presents!!

2010-12-02T12:52:00.000-05:00

Happy Diaversary to Me!

2010-12-02T10:12:00.000-05:00

Today marks the 17th anniversary of my diagnosis - 17 whole years, kids! Years of all the stabbing, poking, and bloodletting involved in the maintenance of my Type 1 jalopy. Years of battling the food 5-0, keeping up with advances in medical technology, and becoming more engaged in the D community. Years in which I somehow shifted from a 15-year-old kid whammied by the fickle finger of fate to a self-sufficient adult who might be a little more cyborg than she'd like.

Oh, how I loved Laugh-In.

How in the hell has so much time passed?! It feels like just yesterday I was sobbing in Hannaford's jelly aisle, totally overwhelmed at all the sugar in the foods I loved to eat, completely unable to wrap my head around my brand-new disease, and feeling oh-so-alone and incapable of handling things. And now here I am, writing a dblog post while plugged in to my pump and Dexcom, smugly pleased that the cheese I just noshed should have zero effect on my current smooth-sailing CGM graph.

I love cheese WAY more than Laugh-In. Mmm. Cheese.

Every December 2nd is like my diabetes New Year. I take some time to sit back and reflect on where I am and where I'd like to be, to count my lucky stars for the insurance I have, to toss out a big fat thanks to the cosmos for having people who love me and want me to be healthy and happy. (B, I'm looking at you, dude.) This year, I'm going to embrace the New Year and resolve to:

1. Not beat myself up so much. It's counterproductive, and I'd like to avoid bursting into tears at my next endo appointment when I get good news. (Bad news? No promises. But good news?! That's just ridiculous.)

2. Test more often, and more randomly. My meter is a solid 10-20 points higher than Dex because I test more often when I'm trying to bludgeon my BG down into a normal range.

3. Prioritize staying in touch with you crazy, wonderful, cupcake- and bacon-obsessed DOC folks. It's important. It keeps me focused...but not stalker- or serial killer-level focused. More like a relaxed, calm person who's in control but not insane about it focused.

4. Move more. My BGs will thank me for it.

5. Buy new gear: an updated medical ID tag, and a less fugly meter case.

Now don't get all worried about the woo-woo level here. You'll be relieved to know it's not all about hand-holding, singing kumbaya, and getting in touch with my feelings. Every December I also like to throw myself a little "It's my party and I'll be high if I want to" gathering - sometimes it's a trip to an ice-cream place, sometimes it's a date with appalling quantities of pizza, and sometimes it's a multicourse dessert potluck at home. But whatever it is, the point of the diaversary celebration is the same. It's my chance to flip the bird at my D, at that fickle finger of fate, and say SCREW YOU, DISEASE! I'm still okay. Sometimes it's uphill, sometimes I get lucky, but I'm doing perfectly okay. So bite me. And pass a spoon.

Has it really been five weeks?!

2010-11-17T00:02:00.000-05:00

October started off with the intense awesomeness of Team Hoffmanderson's record-busting turn at the JDRF Walk...and then it took a deep nosedive into Month from Hell territory.

A crapfest of late hours to meet deadlines at work, on top of the load of papers and presentations for my classes, meant the D got moved to the back burner. The waaaaaaay back burner. For the first time since April, I stopped logging. Dinners became popcorn or Luna bars or some leftover Halloween candy someone brought into the office - and those were the good, healthy meals. My meter averages and daily insulin totals skyrocketed, and I was running temp basals half the day to cover blood sugars that didn't want to stay under 140. I went back to full caffeine, worked 12-hour days, fell off the DOC wagon, slept 5 or 6 hours a night, and spontaneously burst into tears one evening while sitting at the computer working on a class project.

Clearly, I was stretched too thin, and taking care of myself dropped to the abysmal bottom of my lengthy to-do list. I know it happens to everyone - not just me, not just PWDs, but truly everyone. But what really pisses me off is just how bad it got. It is tantrum-inducingly unfair that there are repercussions to just living your life, that losing my laserlike focus on diabetes means stewing in my own toxic sludge blood until I get everything under control.

I spent the past five weeks knowing that I wasn't taking care of myself, self-lecturing about getting a grip, and completely dreading yesterday's endo and ophthalmology appointment. How could this be anything but a self-loathing shamefest about how far I'd fallen from my 6.2 in July?

Well, folks, somehow I managed to pull a 5.6 A1C out of the disastrous past 5 weeks. I cried when she told me. Not tears of joy, mind you - more like the kind of emotional freakout you have when you just barely avoid a car accident. Because I know she's all "yay! nice work!" and all I can think is that it can't be right. Or if it is right, it's dishonest. I know what kind of work I was doing, what my Dex graphs looked like, and how I was eating, and it all smacked terribly of pretty dark places I've been before: the aforementioned self-loathing shamefest.

The SLSF - both past and present - is something for another post, though. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it, to figure out what it means and how I can possibly short-circuit it. In the meantime, though, the Month from Hell is over now. I'm dusting off @kahoffman and I'm actually posting to this ol' blog - if I've learned nothing else in my weeks away, it's that my connection to the DOC is incredibly important and dreadfully underestimated by yours truly. Knowing you're all out there - doing #bgwed, talking about gushers, trading tips, and wishing for cupcakes just like I am - does more for me than logging and endos and all the "being good" in the world.

Team Hoffmanderson rocks the JDRF Walk

2010-10-11T10:53:00.000-04:00

Last weekend was the JDRF's Manhattan Walk to Cure Diabetes. I've been walking since I moved to New York (10 years of fundraising!) and B's been on the team since we met in 2005. Every year, we raise a bit more money and every year I am just completely mushed by the generosity and complete amazingness of the people in our lives. Coworkers, families, and friends always answer our pleas for donations with open hearts and wallets, and it's touching to see what happens when everyone gets together for a good cause:

Pump? Check. Dexcom? Check. Amazing friends, family, husband? Check.

On Walk day itself, Team Hoffmanderson had raised a whopping $5,633 - you can tell by the obnoxious DayGlo signs I made and carried around! It was a HUGE amount, and a jaw-dropping record for us. (We even crushed the record set from our wedding registry fundraising, and I never thought we'd get there.) At press time, the Team has raised more than $6,000, and I imagine we'll have even more once corporate matches come in.

But it's not just about the donations. The money's important, of course, and that's why we do the Walk year after year. It's not why I love doing the Walk, though. If you have diabetes, you know that we all wear our disease a little differently. Some of us are full-on advocates, some of us blog about the D right with the latest book we're reading or the antics of our yoga class. We run the gamut from full-frontal tubing to discreet spots in which to tuck our pump, from telling anyone and everyone we're a PWD to keeping it private. Me? I'm a little bit of both. I wear my gear loud and proud, and most everyone who knows me knows I'm Type 1. No one's ever called me shy. But like Karen over at Bitter-Sweet, I'm a liar liar pants on fire. I don't really talk with people about how awful diabetes is, or how scared I am of complications, or how much work keeping myself alive is - I don't like to talk about the bad stuff because I don't want to be seen as sick.

But every fall, I do talk about it. I talk about the complications, the staggering number of us with diabetes, the number of kids getting diagnosed every day, the sheer magnitude of finger sticks and set changes and other stabby moments in the day of a PWD. I talk about these things and it makes my skin itch - I'm hugely uncomfortable with it, and I have to set my jaw and do it anyway because it's important.

And every year, the outpouring of support just knocks me over. I'm lucky in so very many ways, and the JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes reminds me of that. Thanks to everyone who donated or wished us luck, and extra thanks to the members of Team Hoffmanderson:

Team Hoffmanderson!

P.S. More Walk day photos can be found here

I fought Chinese food...

2010-09-30T09:55:00.000-04:00

and the Chinese food won:

Holy Dex mountain, batman!

I think I need to start doing a 40/60 dual wave - the MEF backlash always happens because I tank shortly after eating my meal...and then have to chug some juice and stop my square 3-hour delivery for fear of killing myself. Right around midnight I start to pay for my error. And then, of course, I aggressively correct that sucker upon waking and end up low on the subway.

Tinkering, tinkering, forever tinkering!

CGM: The Third Revolution. (And my bestest friend.)

2010-09-29T10:58:00.000-04:00

Today's Google reader yielded up a lot of food for thought from the DOC.

The first was Holly's post over at Arnold and Me about her changing basal rates as autumn kicks in. I've been seeing a running theme on Twitter about basal increases the past couple weeks, and so it's already been kicking around my head. I'm not having the same issue (at least not yet), but I find myself completely intrigued by the idea. What could possibly cause such a thing?! Logically - and we all know the D has very little to do with logic - you'd think the cooler weather would be better for insulin efficacy, site adhesion, and all the rest of that. Seems it isn't so, though. Could it be a slight change in diet (more cooked foods, less cold salads and whatnot)? Being a tiny bit more sedentary (warm blankets and the couch instead of being outside)? Or do our bodies actually do a change in hormones for the season/change in light? Like I said, I can't stop wondering. It's like poking at a loose tooth.

The second interesting post, for me at least, was at Diabetesmine: Beyond Fingersticks: Airing CGM’s Dirty Little Secrets. The brief book review was great, but it was the "CGM as the Third Revolution in diabetes management" (after insulin and home glucose monitoring) that really stuck with me.

I know that my Dexcom has completely and totally changed the way I approach my diabetes management. I've been doing this for 16 years, have seen countless CDEs and endocrinologists, read all the literature, filled out endless logbooks, counted carbs, injected/bolused insulin, grappled with the aftereffects of high and low blood sugars, and even found small bleeds in my eyes - and nothing in all of that has made me more hyperaware of what living with this disease looks like minute by minute.

When I'm not hooked up to a sensor, it's easy to ignore my diabetes - if only for 5 minutes. I can watch a TV show, take a shower, sleep, whatever and not give more than a passing I should do a blood sugar soon thought. But now that I use Dex, I have learned a great deal about how much I was "cheating" the rules and have adjusted a lot of the ways I take care of myself.

Is it weird to want to hug electronic equipment?

For the first time, I'm actually doing my insulin 15-30 minutes before eating so that I can avoid that giant Dex mountain I discovered back in February. For years I've been told to do this, but a thrice-daily "Holy CRAP, look at that postprandial hump!" does wonders to underscore the fact that the doctors were actually right.

I've become more careful about the foods I eat, since I now see how they move my blood sugar, both in speed of rise and change of number. Pizza has always been a MEF, but I'm finding a lot of foods who are secretly in that enemy camp and require devious strategizing to defeat.

I feel safer going about my day knowing that I have the secret insider's scoop about which way my blood sugar is heading.

I'm much more cognizant of how my body is a finely-tuned machine (all those teeny tiny basal changes!), and that's engendered a bit more respect for it than I've had since 1993. This is no small feat. I, like so many in the DOC, have struggled - and will struggle - with food and a sense of deep betrayal. That I feel anything but anger or disappointment or any of the hundreds of bad feelings I've always had about my body and health is an immense shift. I'm not all the way there, but these are baby steps toward a better disposition and I think my regimen changes have a lot to do with it.

CGM has absolutely been my own Third Revolution, after Humalog/Lantus (eat me, NPH!) and the pump. For me, Dexcom is a complete game-changer, welcome eye-opener, and wonderful-if-annoying prod for accountability. I feel naked without it and rely on it to the point of near obsessiveness. Most amazing of all, though, it gives me hope for what advances might be next and the desire to be as healthy as possible for when they arrive.

Welcome, Dexcom the Third

2010-09-24T13:05:00.000-04:00

He arrived at noon:

A third! Do we think this Dexcom needs a monocle or something?

I immediately plugged the him into the wall, shut my door, and put in a new sensor (in my thigh! for the first time!). For the record, kids, if you're using the Dexcom write down your transmitter number someplace. That way, when you have 3 days left on a sensor and you have to replace your receiver, you can just restart the damned thing instead of putting in a new one so you can see what your ID number is. Like I had to do.

Unlike my last go round with Dex Jr. - I'm an old pro at this now! Being on receiver #3 since February will do that to a girl - my new gear came with a new item:

It TOTALLY looks like a pee cup.

I was confused for just a moment, and then I realized they didn't want me to send them urine. They wanted their used sensor back. (Ew.) I had to have B fish that little sucker out of the garbage at home (ew, again), but it shall be sent off to California on Monday.

Let's see if we can get more than a handful of months out of this one, hmm?

'Betes, bridesmaiding, and the roller coaster of gloom

2010-09-23T11:32:00.000-04:00

Last weekend, B and I took off upstate for one of my best friend's weddings. (We've been friends since 8th grade!) Not only was I ridiculously excited to be heading to home territory, I was also going to be in the wedding party AND would get to see B in his brand-new foxy suit. The weekend was bound to be amazing.

And it was! For the most part, everything was pretty smooth sailing:

The tailor put a hidey-hole "pocket" in my dress that was completely invisible but allowed for easy access to the pump clipped to my Spanx. (Alas, no true pocket - the matte satin and cut of the dress simply did not allow for pump bulge.) I'd been nervous about trusting my cuff for all the dancing and walking down aisles I had on my agenda, and I think this was the perfect solution. If only I could afford to have her put faux pockets in all my dresses
I remembered all my supplies. Well, except for the Dexcom charger. Which sucked, since it would have been nice to have that information during a weekend of different eating habits and restricted access to food and meter.
My hair and makeup - while quite over the top for me - didn't make me look like some strange Barbie version of myself. It did, apparently, make me look like a "naughty librarian" though. Oh, the laughing from our table mates when we heard THAT one from another guest...
The mushroom tart I had for dinner was AMAZING. (Although there was a bit of a disaster post-ceremony where I accidentally ate something with crab in it and thought I was going to projectile vomit all over the pretty wedding party.)
So many of the people I'd met over the past few months, and the new ones I met for the weekend, were great. A lot of folks I thought "I could be friends with this person if I met them at home." Not surprising that someone I love so much has a lot of wonderful people in her life, but it still made me really happy to see.

All those wonderful things, though, and I couldn't help but feel a little sad that it couldn't just be normal. That I had to get a pocket sewn into my dress, that I worried about my pump and the sweat from dancing, that I had to carry the biggest purse around for my meter and other D-necessaries, that I kept checking for VPL (Visible Pump Lump), that I was too shamed by my all-over BGs and eating to send the logs from the weekend to my CDE, that I even HAD to log while I was sitting in the bridal suite waiting for my turn with the makeup artist, that my numbers kept climbing because of all the excitement about the wedding and my stress about tripping while walking down the aisle (full-length gowns are no joke!), that my diabetes - as usual - took precedence over everything and I couldn't just enjoy the event like everyone else.

So I returned to Brooklyn - my poor, tornado-damaged borough - on Saturday with a bit of a heavy heart. My numbers, as is always the case, reflected my doom and gloom, making mountains and valleys on my log graph and making me feel like I got run over by an MTA bus.

And then Monday happened: happy news from my CDE about the logs from the previous week. Immediately, I was in love with the world again. Working 12-hour days? Pshaw. They loved my numbers! Missed deadlines because of coworkers? No matter - think of that email! I've spent the week swishing and twirling, thrilled at the change in circumstances (and the end of my self-flagellation - I mean, c'mon. She LOVED MY NUMBERS)...until this morning happened: Dex Jr. inexplicably kicked the bucket, shrieking and seizing his way to death as I exited the Q train.

Rough week for Karen and the 'betes - the emotional roller coaster is as bad as the simultaneous BG ups and downs that have accompanied it. I know I'll come back up (always do!), but damned if those dips aren't brutal.

Another dearly departed?

2010-09-23T09:05:00.000-04:00

I think Dex Jr. just kicked the bucket. And he was such a recent addition to the family! SO. AGGRAVATING.

My bookshelf: The Hunger Games

2010-09-14T22:46:00.000-04:00

I started Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games Monday morning. I cracked that little guy open - an oh-so-perfectly squat, sturdy hardcover - on the Q train platform, and was completely hooked by the time I arrived in midtown. I flew through the pages during my return to Brooklyn, impatiently finished my freelance work, and then leapt into bed to find out what happens to Katniss.

It's been a long while since I've had a book that makes me scurry to the train, and I'm heartbroken now that I'm finished with Book One. (Yes, in less than 36 hours. Yes, I went to work.) I just couldn't put that chubby little book down, and I'm ashamed I didn't pick up the series sooner - what's not to love about a book that's a little 1984, a little Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," a little Stephen King's "The Long Walk"?

To some, I know the fervor with which people love these YA-crossover novels seems a bit...odd. After all, don't we have an overwhelming number of novels available for grownups? Aren't there enough adult stories to be devoured and loved? I'd answer that with a resounding yes, but I'd also say that kind of misses the point. Rarely does an adult novel read like Harry Potter or Twilight - a story intended for adults can be well-paced and exciting, of course, but it doesn't seem to breathlessly gallop across the pages like a YA novel does. I read these crossover novels with my fists clenched, holding my breath and cheering on the protagonists. Adult novels can stir great emotion, but YA novels bring me right back to my teenage years and the uncontrollable, buzzing energy of that age. I don't want to just feel when I read these. I want to shout at the pages, hoot with happiness and howl with rage as the occasion requires.

For a few hundred pages, I remember what it's like to read without a lit criticism class swirling in my head, without 16 years of experience telling me how the real world works, without having a perspective that's already pretty formed and solidly reinforced by life. I remember how it feels to read for the pure joy of reading - not because you should check out more works in translation or "Gosh, I never did read Anna Karenina" or some reviewer in the Times raved about the latest doorstopper tome, but because it's exciting to live someone else's life, to try on a new perspective, to visit a new where or when. Reading these novels makes me appreciate my love of reading, and reminds me why it's there in the first place.

Hot damn, I can't wait to start Book Two.

Ahem: MeMeMeMe!

2010-09-10T10:20:00.000-04:00

I'm not practicing for my aria - I'm just prepping for the blog meme Kerri and other D-OC members have rolling around the interwebs. It's been a busy week for yours truly, and this couldn't have come at a better time. So, without further ado:

What type of diabetes do you have: Type 1

When were you diagnosed: December 2, 1993. My 17th diaversary is coming up! As it's my favorite number, I'm going to need to come up with some form of celebration....

What's your current blood sugar: Meter says 126, Dex Jr. says 119

What kind of meter do you use: One Touch UltraLink for my pump

What's a "high" number for you: More than 140 mg/dl, now that I'm trying to get the Holy Grail of a sub-6.0 A1c

What's do you consider "low": Less than 65 mg/dl

What's your favorite low blood sugar reaction treater: Apple juice when I'm home, but Lifesavers or Sweetarts if I'm at work

Describe your dream endo: A doc who

listens to me
actually answers my questions
understands that they might know medicine but I know my body and what it's like to live with this disease
who treats me like I'm an active participant in my own management - that I don't just want to be told what to do, but WHY I'm doing it so that I can take care of myself better and better

What's your biggest diabetes achievement: Going on the pump a year ago. I have a sheer terror of automated medical stuff (for the life of me still can't use any devices for lancets - it's all manual), and I had to summon all my bravery to take that step.

What's your biggest diabetes-related fear: For me personally, blindness. I've already got minimal retinopathy, and I get sick thinking about it getting worse. For others: I want to have kids at some point, and I know I'm going to be a wreck while pregnant (what if my BGs boil the baby?!?) and after (when will B lose me? Will I see my kids grow up?).

Who's on your support team: 1) B's my biggest cheerleader, a source of strength, and the only person I know who routinely makes jokes about my loser/failure pancreas. (Please picture me having to defend the thing. "It's not its fault! It was my overachieving immune system!") I couldn't do half of what I do without him on my team. 2) My other biggie is the D-OC. Cheesy, maybe, but it's been revelatory to "meet" so many people who live with diabetes every day. I didn't go to any camps growing up, didn't know any other T1s. It's only been the past year or two that's brought me into this community and it's been an incredible comfort.

Do you think there will be a cure in your lifetime: No. I think there will be more tech advancements, and we'll get more tools to help us live healthier, longer lives. But I don't think there will be a cure - and if there is, it won't be available to us veterans. Still, preventing others from getting this disease that's such an albatross? I'd be down with that.

What is a "cure" to you: My body being able to regulate its own blood sugars without math, injections, food weighing, finger sticking, sweatbetes, glucose tabs, or anything else from me.

The most annoying thing people say to you about your diabetes is: Oh, GAWD. How can I narrow it down?!?

"But you're not fat!"
"You have it really bad, huh?"
"Are you sure you should eat that?"
"You have diabetes? My grandma/aunt/coworker did, and they died/lost their leg/went blind..."

What is the most common misconception about diabetes:

For people who have it: That it's no big deal. I know too many people who don't take their meds, don't take care of themselves, ignore their disease because it takes sooooo long for those complications to rear their ugly heads. I wish 32-year-old me could go back to 18-year-old me and say "Dude. Don't fuck up in college. That 13 A1c you're gonna get? Yeah. That's going to damage your eyes." I'm sure a lot of suffering people wish they could go back and shake their younger selves.
For people who don't: That it's no big deal. That it's not as deadly as cancer or AIDS, that we all brought it on ourselves, and so it doesn't warrant attention or funding or research. That we should all just stop eating cake and quit our whining.

If you could say one thing to your pancreas, what would it be: I'm sorry my bully immune system murdered you.

Scene from an elevator

2010-08-31T19:32:00.000-04:00

SCENE

(Karen gets on the elevator, already occupied by a very tall, very lean man. He leers at her, ostensibly looking her up and down. Her discomfort and "C'mon 24th floor!" thought-bubble are nearly palpable.)

MAN

(locking in with intense eye contact)

Sooo. You're on an insulin pump.

KAREN

(confused, but grateful for familiar territory)

Yes. Yes, I'm on an insulin pump.

MAN

(still staring, still unnerving)

I'm diabetic, too.

(pause)

I don't have a pump.

KAREN

(wondering if he's interested in the pump or judging)

Uh. Yeah? And are...you're on shots?

MAN

Yessss. The poor man's pump.

KAREN

(feeling incredibly guilty, like she was showing off)

Oh. Um. Well, I just started last September? I was on shots for years before that.

MAN

(exiting the now-open doors)

Well, if you ever need any juice, I'm on 20.

END SCENE

Dex, Jr. has arrived!

2010-08-31T11:36:00.000-04:00

The padding is quite impressive, isn't it? It looks a bit like an inflatable pool lounge:

I wish I were lounging on one of these right now.

Or maybe even a monster:

I'm gonna eat your diabetes! Grawr!

! = not an awesome way to start out a trip

2010-08-30T19:16:00.000-04:00

B and I were headed upstate yesterday morning for an overnight family outing. We piled into our little Zipcar and hit the road at the bleary-eyed hour of 7:30 for the drive. Somewhere in Queens, however, my usually-silent little friend spoke up:

Dex: BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, buzz buzz buzz

Huh. The screen was completely blank. Had I sat on it and accidentally shut it off? I restarted, heard the familiar shrill initialization shriek, and kept on driving.

Dex: BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, buzz buzz buzz

Um. Okay, crankypants. Maybe I'm out of range or something? So I hit clear, and then stuck him between my back and the seat.

Dex: BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, buzz buzz buzz

Time to call in reinforcements. "B, can you please see what the hell Dex is screaming about?"

Now, neither of us had ever seen this screen before and, as I was going upstate for less than 48 hours, I hadn't packed my instruction book. So! Time to call Dexcom for translation services....survey says: Dex was now the dearly departed. (Sadly, no results from the autopsy will be forthcoming.) Within 10 minutes, our friendly Dexcom customer service rep had put in an order for a new receiver to be delivered to my office.

This should have been a happy ending, I know this, but I was completely stressed out. How was I going to do the next 8 hours of grazing without that receiver by my side? I wouldn't be able to re-up until Tuesday afternoon at the very earliest - that's days of missing data, and heaven knows how many unnecessary (and unaddressed) issues with basals or bolusing or any of the other million things that can go wrong in a day with diabetes. And all right smack-dab in the midst of my attempts to have the tightest numbers I've had since high school!

I felt stranded and a little exposed - like being in the middle of a dream and realizing you're not wearing any pants. And that upset me. How reliant have I become on this little piece of technology? I've only had it 7 months, and yet I started panicking the minute I had to face the idea of not having it. What does it mean for me that I depend so much on it? That I don't feel comfortable or at ease when I'm not "plugged in," that I find myself reaching for it when I'm sleeping or heading to the bathroom, checking to see where I am and to make sure Dex can see me?

As for the actual D, I did what anyone would do, of course. I tested a bit more and tried to keep well on top of everything. My BGs seem fine (those snapshots on my meter, naturally - who knows about the in-betweenies!) for the most part, and I'm really looking forward to being in the office tomorrow morning to start another sensor. In short, this too shall pass.

But I can't stop thinking about my reaction to Dex, Sr.'s death. I'm reliant enough on insulin, Synthroid, my pump, my glucose tabs, all of those things that HAVE to be taken. Do I really need to be dependent on the extracurriculars, too?

Matchy-matchy

2010-08-26T11:45:00.000-04:00

This doesn't happen often enough:

Mamet does diabetes

2010-08-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

me: my avg bg since monday is 100

B: when karen locks it down, karen locks it down. i feel like you should send your graphs with a note that just says "what's my name? fuck YOU! that's my name! you see this graph? this graph cost more than your car!"...because the world needs more diabetes-related references to glengarry glen ross.

Reclaiming my throne

2010-08-23T13:40:00.000-04:00

Last Monday, I had an appointment with my CDE. As I'm sure you know, such an appointment comes with a little baggage. Not only is she the recipient of all my food/insuling/BG logs (insert dirty, scowling look here), she's also the person I rely on for basal tweaking and nutrition information. I haven't been so thrilled with this interaction as of late, so I'd been dreading the visit. And I'm talking the kind of sheer dread that had my BGs hanging out - sticky, unmoving - in the 180s until dinner time.

I came armed with logs and Dexcom graphs. She - once again - lowered my frakking basal rates. I - once again - felt confused and disappointed, since I knew that lowering them would result in higher average blood sugars for the next three days. She said stay the course, try these new rates, and send my logs in on Friday - she'd share them with my endo, and maybe I'd get my coveted little head pat after that. So I listened to her. After all, she's the professional, right?

Fast forward to Friday. I send her all my logs and this email:

Attached are my logs and Dexcom graphs since we saw each other on Monday.

The two things of note are the BG mountain on Thursday (which is a correction mountain that's the direct result of the graham crackers I overtreated with after over-bolusing for the pasta - I give myself an F and declare to only treat with juice for the rest of my life now) and the weird jump I had last night between midnight and 4 a.m. I had a horrific nightmare that woke me up around 3. I got up, got a drink to shake it off and went to bed. 30 minutes later, my high alarm is going off and I'd jumped from around 80 to 140. Have you ever heard of nightmares doing that before?! So lame!

Anyway, here they are. Please, oh please, tell me something happy!

Her response?

Ok, let’s make these changes:
Change time of 6 am basal to 6:30
Change 9 am to .35
Change 10 pm to .40

I don't know that I can accurately convey how upset I was. No mention of the endo, no explanation of why she's making these reductions in my basals (again!!), no nothing. In the end, I tried to get her to explain exactly what she was trying to achieve with these basal tweaks, and was told she's working on the early morning rather than the overnights. Which was confusing, really, since she was reducing my insulin and I hadn't noticed any lows in the early morning. If anything, I had elevated blood sugars at that time because of my getting-ready-spike. So I, again, asked for clarification. I didn't think it was odd to want to understand the motivations and end goals behind all these basal tweaks...but apparently she did. All I got as a response was "Ok, leave everything the same." Ummm. She wanted to change my basals until I asked her about it? There was a problem with my regimen until I asked for clarification? How in the hell does that make any sense?

Needless to say, I was furious. Still am, in fact. Enough so that I'm on the cusp of staging my own little revolution to reclaim my Diabetes Queendom. No one knows my body like I do. No one knows where I cheat, where I'm SWAGing, where I had a stressful meeting or didn't wait quite long enough between bolus and eating. For that matter, no one else seems to care about these subtleties. So I'm done. I'll send my logs, I'll do my due diligence, but I'll no longer passively accept changes to my regimen. It's been nearly a year since I started on the pump, and it's time I stepped up and stopped letting other people be the boss of me.

JDRF Walk for the Cure! And B. Always, always B.

2010-08-16T13:49:00.000-04:00

The JDRF's Manhattan walk is coming up on October 3rd!

B and I have been participating together since we started dating back in 2005, and our Team Hoffmanderson will be doing it again this year (with pump in tow for the first time!). Personally, I've been active here in New York City since 2001, but it's been a lot more fun since my other half became, well, my other half. He gets really into it, and this year is no different:

For the record, I'm wearing a Halloween costume. I was a disco nap.

Every year, I look forward to reading the donation email he sends out to coworkers, friends, and family. The note is often sweet and always funny, but more than that, it's eye-opening to see his gut reaction to something that affects his life in the way it does. He can't have ownership of my disease, obviously, and is often forced to just be patient and offer support (or laughs or cheerleading or pictures of the gatos) when I need it...without being TOO supportive, if you know what I mean. He's good at it - better than anyone else in my life, truly - and walks that very fine line like an expert tightrope walker. Still, I'm never quite sure what all of this looks like through his eyes.

His annual plea for donations, the doggedness with which he pursues them, and the words he chooses (frankly, words even I - with all my knowledge and terrors of what the future might hold for me and my health - find a little on the level of "Whoa! Harsh! Don't freak people out!") give me a glimpse, though, and enough of one to realize my heart probably doesn't want to see much more than that.

I know we'll never truly understand what it's like for the other, how each of us manages life with a disease that takes up a significant spot in our little family. But I do know that we're both a bit scared, a bit angry, a bit (dare I say it?) hopeful, a lot tough...and, more than any of that, we're on the same team.

Bloody foot!

2010-08-04T17:08:00.000-04:00

Being a PWD, I wish I could say I was cursing like a Brit. Alas, it's an actual bloody foot. Cue the panic:

I was in the kitchen last night and felt something under my bare foot. Assuming it was a small piece of dried cat food - realistic, as the slobby gatos are forever getting their food all over the place - I just kind of wiped my foot to the side to dislodge it. And felt a sharp stab of pain. A bad sharp stabbing that instantly set my heart aflutter.

A small shard of glass had magically appeared in the middle of my kitchen floor from some alternate evil universe...and damned if it didn't puncture the bottom of my foot. I hobbled to the bathroom with blood running down my sole, mopped up, slapped on some hydrogen peroxide, checked to see if there were any remaining chunks stuck in the new hole in my foot, and then popped a band-aid on it.

That sounds like a calm, rational reaction but the reality was far from that. I've been well-trained by endos and CDEs over the years, and so I do not take foot wounds lightly. And by that I mean I kind of spaz out, flapping my arms around, thinking "My foot! My foot! I cut my foot! OMIGOD I CUT MY FOOT!!! BLOOOOOOOOOD!!!"

Nothing is red or pus-filled today, so I'm going to just hope I got it cleaned out and everything's hunky-dory. Um. Well, and more than likely take deep breaths to stay calm, obsessively check the bottom of my foot, probably buy another vat of hydrogen peroxide, and routinely ask B look at it to make sure he doesn't see any red streaks either. Our little sojourn to Pittsburgh should make this all a lot more fun for everyone, but my timing sucks in most things.

And for the record, the wonder Band-Aid? The one that's stuck to the sole of my foot since this morning, through a flip-flopping commute to Manhattan on the Q train? Well that would be the Rite-Aid brand clear dots - the very same I use on my belly to cover infusion set holes.

Beating the heat with D-friendly summer desserts

2010-08-02T14:48:00.000-04:00

I don't know about you, but right about July I start getting a little tired of popsicles. It's not that I can't have ice cream - I can and I do, but it ain't easy if you're trying to go easy on the carbs or MEF factor. (Ice cream and pizza, sitting in a tree....) Other desserts taste great, but nothing quite hits the spot on a hot summer day like some icy cold treat.

I saw this post on The Kitchn today and thought it would be super easy to tweak, not to mention offering a pretty exact carb count:

D-friendly Graham Crackers & Whipped Cream sandwich: In lieu of ice cream, press a small amount of whipped cream between two crackers, wrap in plastic or parchment and freeze! Whipped cream can be something like Cool Whip lite, or the more simple version of heavy whipping cream and a packet of Splenda.

This post also included frozen rice pudding, fruit, and soda - all of which could be sugar free and diabetic friendly. I can't wait to try it out!

Not very confidence inspiring....

2010-07-29T11:49:00.000-04:00

I submitted a boatload of logs and Dexcom graphs to my CDE yesterday, including the horror show from the bridal shower. Our exchange:

CDE: Looks good, let’s try to fix that persistent later day low…what are your current carb ratios?

Me: We're currently at 12:00a - 11, 12:00p - 10, and 5p - 12

Also, could you take a peek at the hourly trend Dexcom report? At 7am, my median is 90...and from 8am to 9am it's way up around 132 and 139 and then it drops again. It's the highest my median goes and it's driving me bonkers - I get this spike every weekday, but I'm not eating anything, it's not from unhooking for a shower, and it doesn't happen on the weekend. I'm assuming it's a stress reaction to rushing around to getting to work, so it probably can't be eliminated, but I wonder if you have any tips to manage the spike? Currently, I do a .3 pre-shower bolus and then put my temp basal on 112% for an hour when I hook back in 20 minutes later. This morning, I had to do an extra .6 bolus after my shower...and I still went from 71 at 7:30am to 146 right before 9:00. That's a 75 point jump! I'd consider that a failed meal bolus, so I'd love to wrangle it down. Any tips you have would be awesome.

CDE: Ok, change the 5 pm to 11 as well…I think this is driving those lows!

Me: Mmmm....so shouldn't I raise the ratio to 13 if I want to do less insulin?

CDE: Oh geez, I meant 13!

Looks like I need to just suck it up, read my Pumping Insulin book, and start making my own changes. I don't want to do this on my own, but people just don't quite seem to be listening or paying as much attention as I am.

Kitchen Sink Karenoa: because #Dfeast day should happen more often!

2010-07-27T15:37:00.000-04:00

I wanted to post this recipe for Dfeast day in addition to my splendiferous mac 'n' cheese and diabetic pastas, but I got a bit busy and never got to do it. Doesn't mean I can't share now, however!

Since I stopped eating meat, I've been basically relearning how to eat as a PWD. Lots more carbs and a lot more work to ensure I get enough protein and other nutrients. Enter quinoa. This magic food is the best thing that's happened to my taste buds and/or kitchen since my French press -- versatile as all get-out (good for savory OR sweet dishes, it can be used as pilaf, salad, breakfast cereal, whatever!), this fancy-pants grain is high in protein, iron, and fiber, is gluten-free, and has balanced amino acids for us veggie types. Wonderfood, amiright?

Also, for those of us without massive heaps of kitchen skillz, it's also super easy to prepare. My method below is a little loosey-goosey, but I honestly don't think you can mess this stuff up. It's like a more resilient and flexible kitchen-sink pasta dish!

Ingredients (for the Kitchen Sink Karenoa pictured):
1c quinoa
1 3/4c water
chopped frozen spinach
1/2 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
kosher salt
pepper
olive oil

Quinoa:
1) Put quinoa and water into a pot -- 1 cup of grain for every 2 cups of water (I actually skimp and do 1 3/4 cups of water, as I like it a little more nutty/chewy than wet) -- and bring to a boil.
2) Add 1 tsp of olive oil to prevent sticking, cover, reduce heat, and leave to simmer while you go take care of veggies. Quinoa will absorb water and get the fancy curlicues in approximately 15 minutes.
3) Stir occasionally, and remove from heat once water is absorbed.
Note: You can also add bouillon or use broth -- I prefer to add flavor with my add-ins.

Veggies:
1) Defrost/heat your spinach in the microwave while you sautee your onion and garlic in olive oil.
2) Once the onions go translucent, add spinach to your sauteed tastiness.
3) Dump the cooked goodness into the quinoa.
Note: You can also use fresh spinach, and wilt by adding to the onions and garlic.

Whole shebang:
1) Toss well, adding kosher salt (or sea salt) and pepper to taste.
2) Fluff with a fork before serving.

This stuff is seriously amazing. I've also used vegan bouillon and added mixed veggies, tweaked with lemon juice, did a version with chunks of bell peppers -- the possibilities are endless. The only thing that seemed to consistently matter was the texture of the quinoa, and that has everything to do with making sure you don't use too much water.

Give it a whirl! Carb counts will vary with the veggie/quinoa ratio, but this crazy website (wealth of data here, folks) puts it at 39g of carbs per cup of grain.

It finally happened.

2010-07-26T14:07:00.000-04:00

I've had diabetes for more than 16 years. In all those years, my D has been mostly a long-running show of daily baloney (shots, infusion sets, what-have-you) that I could handle on my own or routine doctor visits to get my A1c, an eye exam, or something else rather run of the mill for your average PWD.

I've heard other people's horror stories of lows where they couldn't take care of themselves, glucagon kits being used, waking up in the hospital, 911 calls, on and on with all the terrible things that we all worry about and try to prepare for. And I, too, have done the worrying and the preparation. I have glucagon kits, I wear my Dexcom religiously, I do fingersticks before driving or going to sleep -- I take all those steps. In the back of my head, though, since I've never come close to having something terribly scary happen, I always wondered "What cataclysmic event would need to occur for that to happen to me?" You see, since I'd gone 16 years without a life-threatening D episode, I guess I figured I'd just keep dodging that bullet -- I was a lucky PWD, apparently, and this wasn't something that would actually ever happen.

And then there was yesterday.

I spent the majority of the day at a bridal shower for a dear friend of mine -- lots of celebrating, lots of food, lots of prosecco. Unfortunately, there was also a rather persistent mountain on my Dexcom. My BG was coasting for hours in the mid and upper 200s and, instead of waiting patiently for the insulin on board to do its job, I made the stupid mistake of rage bolusing...in a stack.

At the end of the party, I'd become rather weepy -- I'd chalked it up to the high emotion of the event, but everyone else was rather sure I was drunk. My slurring and inability to walk in a straight line probably confirmed their suspicions, and even I'd have said I was feeling a little tipsy. Not drunk, of course, but tipsy. And that should have been my clue that something wasn't right. Everyone was acting like I was far more drunk than my actual prosecco consumption warranted, but I just decided they were being silly and I left with my ride for the train station. Without doing a blood sugar beforehand.

I don't know what my blood sugar was when I got in the car. I don't know what it was for the first ten minutes of that ride. I was just fighting to stay awake, thinking maybe I was a little more tipsy than I thought. When my poor brain finally thought "Hmm. This is BAD. Maybe we should do a blood sugar," I was at 39. Trying to stay upright, trying not to scare the poor girl who got stuck driving me to the train station, I scarfed tabs as quickly as I could without gagging. Fifteen minutes later, I was at 35. More scarfing, and now I'm panicked because I'm just so very sleepy and those tabs are gross and all I wanted to do was close my eyes. But part of my brain knew that would be a very bad idea. So I tested again -- 39 -- and, out of tabs now, started scraping frosting off the cupcake I'd brought home for B. At this point, my friend is worried and asks if she should drive me to the hospital. Obviously, since I'm not a PWD who needs the hospital, I say no, I'll be fine, let's just get to the station.

It's all very hazy now, of course. I remember that drive in little bits, like a dream that's just on the edge of your memory when you wake up. I know I was dropped off at the station, I know I bought apple juice, I know I called B all upset, I know I got on the right train and exited at Grand Central. I don't remember how I did those things, I just know I did.

I also know that B was waiting for me when I arrived in Manhattan, and I couldn't stop crying when he found me. I'd narrowly avoided something horrible -- I felt that in my bones -- and I was scared.

I have rerun the scenario in my head a thousand times now, and I know there were countless opportunities to prevent what happened. I made huge mistakes yesterday, and have learned a valuable lesson from the whole episode: I'm not a PWD who doesn't need the hospital -- I'm just a PWD who hasn't needed the hospital yet.

Dfeast Recipe: Mac and Cheese....with a twist!

2010-07-23T09:51:00.000-04:00

I've become a nesting fool, and Real Simple magazine is one of the ways I scratch that itch. A couple winters ago they published a series of recipes for comfort foods with a healthy twist -- ways to make the foods you love to eat a little less bad for you. The one I tried and loved -- B did, too! -- was Macaroni and Cheese with Cauliflower.

Not that this is a diet recipe, of course -- there's plenty of cheese for us cheese hounds, and warm deliciousness for when the weather goes to crap. But it was nice to use whole wheat macaroni and slide some veggies into a dish that wasn't born that way.

I've provided the text below and the link above (commenters offered a couple tweaks I've yet to try). My own tweaks? I used ready-made breadcrumbs rather than bread, thereby eliminating step #2 of the recipe as well as a need for fresh parsley, bread, and a food processor (which I don't own). Also, I think I'd only use half the recommended Dijon the next time I make it - the mustard gave a nice tang, but I found it a bit overpowering.

* * *

Quick tip: Using extra-sharp Cheddar lets you use less cheese without giving up flavor. Tender cauliflower adds fiber and vitamin C.
Serves 6
Hands-On Time: 15m
Total Time: 45m

Ingredients
12 ounces multigrain elbow macaroni
1 head cauliflower, roughly chopped (I used frozen - our urban stores aren't so good for fresh)
4 slices multigrain bread, torn (maybe optional, if you use ready-made breadcrumbs)
1/2 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (maybe optional, if you use ready-made breadcrumbs)
3 tablespoons olive oil (maybe less, if you use ready-made breadcrumbs)
kosher salt and black pepper
1 onion, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups grated extra-sharp Cheddar (6 ounces)
1 1/2 cups reduced-fat sour cream
1/2 cup 1 percent milk
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Directions
1) Heat oven to 400° F. Cook the pasta according to the package directions, adding the cauliflower during the last 3 minutes of cooking time; drain.

2) Meanwhile, pulse the bread in a food processor until coarse crumbs form. Add the parsley, 2 tablespoons of the oil, and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper and pulse to combine; set aside. (Optional step - you can use ready-made breadcrumbs.)

3) Return the pasta pot to medium heat and add the remaining tablespoon of oil. Add the onion, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, just until soft, 5 to 7 minutes. Mix in the pasta, cauliflower, cheese, sour cream, milk, and mustard.

4) Transfer to a shallow 3-quart baking dish, sprinkle with the bread crumbs, and bake until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes.

Speaking of that A1c...

2010-07-23T09:16:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned earlier this week, I had an endo appointment on Monday. I went to the center armed with lists, questions, and - I hoped - the gumption to tell my doctor what's what when it comes to my diabetes management.

We got off to a rocky start -- she had to hunt me down in the office. My BG had tanked down to the 40s and I'd had to abandon my spot in the waiting room to grab some crackers. (Shame on me for only having one glucose tab in my purse.) Obviously my endo's office is the best place in the world to have a tanking blood sugar, but it was still a little awkward. My mouth was all full of cracker when she found me, I was stuttering and losing my train of thought, I dropped all of my Dexcom graphs on the floor of her office, and I felt embarrassed -- not to mention a little less "Listen to me!" full of authority and self-confidence than I'd wanted for this particular appointment.

It turned out all the flustered low ridiculousness -- and all my preparation -- was besides the point. My A1c came back at 6.2. She gave an "explanation" for where that .6 went from my June blood draw, but it sounded like a bunch of hooey about test sensitivities blahblahblah. Not that I was going to complain about a .6 drop in my number - I was pleased, and even more so when she said that meant we were basically where we wanted to be. Just one last leeeetle tweak for the next few weeks: overnights.

Apparently, I sleep a lot. ("Not that that's bad," she hastened to add when my expression turned to one of shock and horror at such a statement.) And all those hours in sleepyland with BGs that aren't awesome means an uptick in my A1c. My numbers are steady throughout the day -- "impressively steady" enough that she can't tweak them down any more -- so all my work has to be done on my overnights.

Like any PWD, I knew where the work needed to be done. I live with my numbers day in and day out, and I knew where I had to be a little more rigid. My marching orders now are to implement that rigidity -- the doc said they try really hard to be accommodating and make life for PWDs as normal as possible, but "This is not the time for that" for me. So that's my new mantra. I'll be putting little sticky notes up all over the place to remind me of that, to help underscore the fact that there's a goal I'm working toward and this maniacal level of attention paid to my disease is not going to last forever. But until that goal is hit, there's Karen's New Night Regime, which includes

mantras on Post-its
iron-clad rules about how late I'm eating and what I'm eating late
submission of Dexcom overnight graphs to see what my BGs are doing
rounds of 3 a.m. fingersticks to make sure my basals are all aces

I'm sure KNNR will grow and adapt as time goes on, but it's nice to have a proactive plan again. Just like I'd been all prepared to demand in the first place.

My husband: hilarious sender of flowers and my very favorite T3

2010-07-22T12:48:00.000-04:00

I've been struggling with my morning bump lately - it drives me freakin' crazy. This morning was a successful experiment, and our IM conversation from this morning pretty much sums up why he's so awesome to have around:

me: ninety fucking two!! ninety fucking two! i kept it flat! i kept it flat!

B: you are a god damn amazement. 272 points [awarded]!

me: apparently, a good waking BG around 100 + .3 pre-shower bolus + a one hour temp basal of 110% = 92. would have been nice to know this trick 6 months ago....

B: absolutely. though i'll take it now....

....30 minutes later....

me: flat line! flat line! flat line! sorry. i think i'm actually more excited about that than my a1c

B: you and your people are the only ones who are happy when a medical device flat lines :-)

Flat line! Flat line!

Obvious freaking out = outpouring of support

2010-07-20T11:59:00.000-04:00

I may have been a little overly freaked out about my appointment yesterday. Poor B felt the most of it, and responded to my bitchy snappiness as only he would:

I am lucky, lucky, lucky.