Sleep Testing?

Last night may or may not have been one of the strangest nights of my life. This morning I was told that I had been sleep walking around my entire floor in residence. I do have a couple past incidences of sleep walking, it is not a regular occurrence. I wound up going to bed in a friend of mines room because I had managed to lock myself out of my own and conveniently my room mate wasn't home.

This morning I went to add my blood sugars from yesterday into my log book and I noticed that I had tested my blood sugar at 3:37am. Definitely while I was still in zombie mode. Fortunately it happened to be a lovely 6.2 mmol/L. Not quite sure how I managed to do something so fiddly while still asleep though. I get frustrated with all the little bits trying to test during the day.

I know people can do some pretty strange things while sleep walking. It makes me wonder if this has happened to anyone else? I guess it's good to know that my subconscious is still concerned about my health even at all hours of the day.

And They Say You Won't See Changes Immediately...

"It takes 4 weeks for you to start noticing your body changing, 8 weeks for your friends and family, and 12 weeks for everybody else. So keep pushing."

     The above quote is something I see posted all over the fitness board in Pinterest and on all the health blogs I read. While I admit it's a great motivational quote where weight loss is concerned, for me I started seeing results right away.

     I had a little bit of a break in my exams this week so I decided it would be the perfect time to start making use of the free gym membership I have at my university. I have been on a real health kick for the past couple months and I decided that I needed to get back into a regular exercise routine. 

     This week my blood sugars have been almost perfect. I would like to think that if I had a CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) that I could be part of the "Flatliners Club".

      I feel absolutely amazing every time I leave the gym. It's an "I feel accomplished"/ "I'm so sore that I want to fall on my face"/ "Tired and refreshed" sort of feeling. And its great!!!!! Exercise is a fantastic stress reliever so I've been a lot less anxious about my midterms. 

So yes. You can see changes immediately.

Shaming Myself + Update

You know how you hate those bloggers who go for ages without writing a post? Yeah.....haha......Me too.....

WHOOPS!!!
I realized the other day that, at one point, this blog was a huge part of my life and just how much I miss it now. Writing posts was an outlet in which I could share my feelings, opinions, doubts, and life moments where it concerned diabetes.

Now, a year and a half into my diagnosis, things are a little different. I am not yet a seasoned pro but no longer a newbie either. I have come to terms that life can never go back to the way it was before but I have also learned that changes are natural and inevitable. Is it possible that this roadblock is actually helping me to better deal with other changes that I will have to face later on? I am still learning everyday about what is going on inside my body and how to best deal with this strange condition. Thank the heavens that diabetes fascinates me because I do enjoy being a diabetes nerd. 

UPDATE TIME

1.) As you may have been able to guess from my last post, YES, I finally started on an insulin pump. I chose the pink OneTouch Ping and I couldn't be happier. His name is Otis and he is my soul mate. ❤️ Being on a pump is making life so much easier and carefree. It has allowed me so many freedoms that I wouldn't have using the alternative. I also just caught drift that Dexcom is going to be available in Canada (actually this time) around November or Deceomber. Christmas present maybe??? Mum? Dad?

2.) I started university at the beginning of September and am pursuing a double major in linguistics and drama. I got way too excited after finding out that there is another type 1 who lives on my floor and I'm doing my best not to scare her away hahaha.

3.) I switched to Apidra and am LOVING IT.

4.) I own a fish named Cisco and he is the coolest.

I LOVE YOU ALL! And I promise that you will hear from me soon. xoxox

Oh My Lantus! A Goodbye Letter

Dear Lantus,

We both knew this was coming for awhile now. You'd seen me spend hours on end browsing the Internet and looking at insulin pumps. It was inevitable. Lets skip the tears, I don't want this to be harder than it already is.

Don't get me wrong Lantus, you are a great insulin. You were my rebound after my falling out with NPH, you gave me the freedoms that he never could. You made me feel steady. You never had mood swings where you would suddenly have a peak at an inopportune time, and you made my a1c so much better. Despite the fact that you always burned just a little bit, you are the best long acting insulin I have ever known.

Now hear me when I say that I am not leaving you for Levemir. You don't deserve that. I just feel that  I don't need a long acting insulin in my life right now. It's not you, it's me.

I know we've been in a bit of a love triangle with Humalog in the mix. And you guys always worked so well together. I'm going to miss the three of us. Although don't tell Humalog, but I'm considering leaving him for Apidra. I just need to start fresh I think.

I'm sure we'll meet again Lantus. Ping and I are bound to have fights and not see eye to reservoir. I am going to need a shoulder to cry on or a jab in the stomach, and it will be you I come to. This is not the end Lantus.

All my love,
Hanna

When You Just Can't Count The Carbs + Favorite Salad EVER!

So I'm usually pretty good about counting my carbs. I always carry my Calorie King book around with me to make sure that I know exactly what I'm eating. When dining out, sometimes it can be a little difficult to figure out the carb count when you order not-so-typical dishes.

My family and I are currently in Florida on vacation and we went out to a great seafood restaurant called Barnacle Bill's. Now, as a vegetarian I obviously wasn't going to eat any of their fish entrees, so I scouted out the menu for some yummy veggie dishes. I eventually decided on a side of mashed potatoes and a caprese style salad for my main dishes (yes this is the salad that I shall be raving about in a moment). Those were easy enough to calculate. The salad had virtually no carbohydrates while the potatoes were pretty standard. What was not easy to figure out was my appetizer. Black bean hummus! It came topped with bruschetta style tomatoes and served with these yummy sesame crackers, and all shaped like a flower! These guys are really good on presentation. So good.....but so horrible to my brain in terms of carbo-calculations. How many black beans did they use? What the hallelujah was the carb count in those crackers? In the end I wound up guestimating. I wasn't about to go bugging the waitress or the kitchen staff plus my family was already halfway finished their food.

All in all it turned out to be fine in the end. I went a little high after dinner but that might have just been a spike from the potatoes.

Now......salad time. Holyyy gucamoleeee. Heirloom tomatoes, whole milk mozarella, basil, and olive oil, all topped on yummy leafy greens (can you tell I'm a vegetarian yet?) Anyway, I'm geeking out a little bit. Caprese salads are my favorite. I could go on about it forever but I'll just show you a couple photos.....

Sorry. No photo of the hummus. I devoured it before I thought to take a picture.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm soooo good

One potato, two potato, three potato, four.

Yum yum. They put some delicious crispy potato

chip concoction on top. Mmmm.

Intro to Pumping Class on Thursday + Choosing My Pump

        Yes my little sugar free niblets, I am officially on the road to becoming a pumper of insulin. On Thursday I am scheduled in an introduction to pumping class at the children's hospital in my area. It's pretty ridiculous how excited I am. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I did a complete turnaround in my stance on insulin pumps. I hated the idea of being connected to something. I quickly got over that though when I saw all the benefits (oh yeah and all the cool kick butt features some of them have). So below I decided to include the pros and cons of the insulin pumps available in Canada right now that I considered and why I'm choosing the one I am.

OMNIPOD

Pros:
-No tubing
-Sophisticated PDM (personal diabetes manager)
-Don't have to see needle
-Cheaper than many other pumps

Cons:
-Wasted insulin if the "pod" fails
-Inability to disconnect
-Stranded if the PDM is lost
-Bulky under tight clothing/ no ability to relocate pump once attached


MEDTRONIC VEO

Pros:
-Integrated CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring)
-Customizable Skins
-Carelink

Cons:
-Not waterproof
-Low Resolution Screen


ANIMAS PING

Pros:
-Waterproof
-Meter-Remote (ability to deliver insulin using glucose meter without needing to remove pump from wherever it is stashed)
-Colour Screen (in Canada there is a high resolution colour screen on both the pump and meter remote)
-Carb database (store foods along with their carb values in the meter. Eliminates guesswork when calculating carbs)
-Customizable alert songs (that's just cool)
-Company will lend you a spare pump if you go on vacation in case something happens to yours

Cons:
-No CGM
-Limited options for skins


So by what I've written you can probably hazard a guess as to which one I've decided on. Animas Ping baby! For a while it was a little bit of a toss up between the Veo and the Ping (Sorry Omnipod, but I knew you weren't going to work for me after about five minutes). I really like the idea of continuous glucose monitoring especially since I will be at university next year. I would love to be able to catch any possible nighttime lows and know my BG and any given time. But in the end, I could just see myself using more of the features on the Ping (e.x I'm a lifeguard/ swimming instructor. The waterproof feature was kind of a no brainer.) I'm still hoping and crossing my fingers too that the stand alone cgm system Dexcom will be made available in Canada soon. Happy pumping everyone!!!

I'm a Slacker, Hate Me if You Will.../ Why I Blog?

So I have been seriously slacking on my blog writing.........It's been months. This is why keeping a diary never worked out for me as a little girl. I always put it off and then never got around to it. I also didn't really have any secrets I needed a diary for haha. I was always sort of an open book.

Back on topic though, I have made it my goal to write AT MINIMUM one blog post a week. Call it my New Years resolution if you will (one of my many).

Blog writing for me is highly beneficial. As soon as I was diagnosed back in April, I found myself spending ridiculous amounts of time researching diabetes, diabetes gadgets, pumps, cgm....see the trend? <-------(my Verio IQ meter does..........yeah haha lame joke). I found myself wishing that that I could find an all in one hub of answers for the questions I had. And whilst I don't claim to have all the answers, or even a handful of them, I hope my blog can help other T1D's out there. I love posting my stories and cool diabetes findings and networking with other pwd. That my dear pancreatically inept friends, is why I blog.