Shifting.

I have been managing diabetes for more than fourteen years. Over time, I’ve learned that taking care of diabetes isn’t usually that hard - the actual act of finger pricks and pressing buttons isn’t a challenge - but juggling of numbers is just excruciatingly frustrating. Numbers are not my friends. I haven’t taken math since my junior year in high school and even then my grades were less than stellar. The fact I have diabetes, which requires a life of numbers, is a cruel joke. My saving grace is the bolus wizard calculator in my insulin pump.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, I don’t enjoy making modifications to my insulin pump. I suffer through days of ridiculous blood sugars and obvious patterns before finally giving in. I don’t know why it takes such effort to make these changes. But once I do, once I raise or lower my basal or bolus ratio a notch, suddenly, everything falls back into place and it’s like I’m a whole new diabetic.

Lately, my life seems to come in sweeping changes. First, new school, new classes and new friends. Then, when that was a done, I did a completely 180-degree turn and went to the other side of the country and into a profession I had absolutely no intention of pursuing. With that came a new city, a new apartment, more new friends and new doctors. Now I’m about to make another huge change by moving into an apartment with a girl I’ve known for two weeks.

Big changes have obviously had a huge impact on my life, both physically and emotionally. I’ve noticed that with diabetes, even small changes can have a huge impact. Whether it’s a half a unit more of basal, a half an hour of exercise, or a few less carbohydrates a day, the results show almost immediately in my blood sugar readings. Suddenly the anxiety from my blood sugar readings dissipates and I’m more relaxed throughout the day. Although the changes need to happen more often than I wish, the positive - or in some cases negative - results are encouraging.

So why is it, despite my obvious willingness to take such risks in uprooting my life, that I am so stubborn in making minor changes in something that has such an immediate positive impact on my health? I don’t know the answer, but I know it needs to change.

Another change. So many changes. Makes me dizzy, sometimes, and I wonder if I’ll fall down from all the shifting.

A Postponement and an Addition

My parents and my younger brother are leaving for a week long cruise tomorrow. But I know I shouldn’t be to disappointed. This time next week, I’m supposed to be in England.

Except, I’m not going.

Turns out my plans with my friends didn’t end up going as planned, so I had to cancel my trip. But because I already purchased the tickets, I have more than $800 worth of Continental dollars to use towards another flight. While I contemplated using that to go somewhere cheaper, truth is, I really want to go to England. I purchased a guidebook and everything. So I’ve been giving it some thought and I have settled on the third week of September. This new change also gives me the opportunity to stay for longer, so I will be in England for eight days instead of four. I’m not traveling with anyone, which of course presents a whole new conundrum to this “traveling with diabetes” card I’ve been dealt. But I know plenty of people who have traveled by themselves with diabetes and lived to tell about it.

I’m confident I’ll be one of them.

I also discovered that while I’m there, the city of Bath will be holding their annual Jane Austen Festival and the city of York will be holding their annual Food and Wine Festival. I’m hoping to hit up at least one - if not both - of them. I’m hoping that my newfound independence will also give me the opportunity to meet some of our English blogger friends.

I’ve always wanted to travel somewhere exotic by myself. When I was younger, the idea of doing anything alone seemed impossible. Too dangerous, people said. But now that I’m older, more experienced and well-equipped with my insulin pump and worldwide network of friends, I feel confident that I can handle just about anything.

In addition (you knew this part was coming, right?), I’ve also added a new trip to my summer schedule. One of my clients at work, Picnik (you may have seen them as Flickr’s editing tool), is sponsoring this summer’s BlogHer conference in San Francisco. I’m going to help and to attend the conference and I’m really excited. I went to BlogHer last summer in Chicago and had a great time. I’m even more excited to go this year since I will actually know people when I get there!

The only flaw in this plan is the fact that I return from San Francisco on Sunday, July 20. Guess when I leave for CWD’s Friends for Life? Yeah. Tuesday, July 22.

Did I mention I’m moving? On August 1?

Yeah. Perhaps not my wisest plan.

Looks like moving England to September was in my favor after all!

An Informal and Inconsequential Survey

Last night, as I got ready for bed, I shut down my computer and slipped on my pajamas. I went to the bathroom and washed my face. I felt a little, well, off but it wasn’t that noticeable and I thought maybe I was just tired. I popped out my contacts and slipped on my glasses. I brushed my teeth. As I stepped out of the bathroom, that “funny feeling” shifted to that “uh-oh” feeling.

I was low.

I tested my blood sugar and rang in at 75 mg/dl. Despite my irritation at having just brushed my teeth, I drank some juice and went to bed.

I typically test my blood sugar after I change into my pajamas and go to bed because my blood sugar meter is on my nightstand and I don’t want to have to get back up again. I feel my lows pretty well, so this situation is very rare. If I do go low after I go to bed, it’s usually half an hour to an hour later.

Now, going low after the nighttime routine is not exactly an unusual situation. It’s happened many times before and it will happen many times later. My question to you is twofold:

First, do you test your blood sugar before or after you brush your teeth and second, if you do go low after you brush your teeth, do you brush them again?

Just curious. There’s no right or wrong answer. I just thought I’d get some reader feedback on this very important conundrum.

As always, your opinion is much appreciated.

Weekend in Philly

You know those weekends where everything goes terribly, horribly wrong?

People don’t show up. Traffic is terrible so the people who do show up are late. The restaurant you picked is full. The back-up restaurant has lousy service and bad food. Everyone wants to do different things so you end up spending half an hour standing in parking lot debating what to do next and you end up all going in different directions anyway. The ONLY museum you want to go to is closed and you ended up just staring at it before you wander away to the nearest Starbucks. Then you consume too much food and take too little insulin, which leaves your blood sugar hovering near the moon and you’re even more pissed.

Yeah. Those weekends suck.

This, however, was not one of those weekends.

Honestly, everything about this weekend went exactly the way it was supposed to, which makes me the happiest person in the universe.

On Saturday morning, I drove down to Philadelphia to have lunch with some of the coolest, craziest cats in the diabetes community. I arrived at a nearly empty Applebee’s, which was great because it made getting a table for nine people very easy! Soon after, Gary Scheiner arrived, followed by Emily, a friend of Kelly’s, who is studying to be a nurse and is interested in learning more about living with diabetes. So of course she was welcomed! Kelly arrived shortly after that. Then Scott and Joe arrived, along with Hannah and her husband, Matt, followed by Betty.

Getting a group of diabetics (and a handful of T3s) is always a recipe for lively discussion. We spent over three hours at Applebee’s talking about everything from health professionals who irritate us to misconceptions that work to our advantage (using diabetes to get a table faster or getting a handicap pass at an amusement park) to Kelly and Scott sharing their experiences of growing up in the early 80s with diabetes (oh the horrors!).

We laughed, we debated, and we took pictures!

(from the lower left-hand corner going clockwise) Betty, Emily, Kelly, Gary, Scott, me, Hannah and Matt.

After lunch, we all split up in various directions. Hannah, Kelly and I went back to her apartment in South Philly after making plans to meet Scott and Joe for dinner on South Street. We wandered around South Street for a bit, poking our heads into some of the cheap jewelry stores, killing time until Scott and Joe arrived. Around seven o’clock, we walked over to the Marrakesh, the Morrocan restaurant we were supposed to meet at. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Kelly rang the doorbell - no answer. We stood across the street, plotting a way to break into the restaurant (I suggested climbing through the upstairs window), when we saw Scott and Joe come around the corner. Joe went up to the door and knocked. A lady opened the door.

Apparently they just didn’t like us.

Morrocan food is amazing but it was a ton of food. A seven course meal that included chicken, lamb, salad, couscous, fruit and baklava - all accompanied by their pita bread - had us eating more carbohydrates than I typically eat in an entire day! We shared more experiences growing up with diabetes. But it wasn’t all diabetes, all the time! We were also thoroughly entertained when the bellydancer came around.

Hannah and the bellydancer.

After dinner, we waddled back to Kelly’s apartment through the Italian Market. We were so bloated with food that we felt like we were pregnant. Kelly joked that we had “food babies.” When we got back to the apartment, we quickly looked up directions to the studio where Hannah’s husband was recording with his band. We hoped in our car and made our way back to Ardmore, just a couple miles away from where we had lunch and a stone’s throw from Gary’s office (we waved as we past it). As we drove through the mean streets of Ardmore, which involved us passing our turn not once, but twice, we eventually found the studio down a little driveway off a mostly unpaved road. It wasn’t exactly the easiest place to get to, but having those few extra hours with Hannah was so much fun.

Kelly and I slept in on Sunday and after a quick breakfast, we went to check out Independence Hall, which is one of the last few historical landmarks that I hadn’t been to on the East Coast. When we arrived, we stumbled upon a sign that said “NO MORE TICKETS ON SALE TODAY” and we were immediately crestfallen. I was thwarted once again. But then! A man appeared! Okay, he didn’t appear, he was the security officer and was standing there the entire time. He asked us when we were leaving. Kelly replied, “She’s leaving today.” A woman was standing next to him and said that some people didn’t show up, ripped off two tickets from her little booklet and handed them to us. It was obviously meant to be.

I left later that afternoon, quickly stopping by Bank of America and a gas station (yes, I pumped my own gas and this time I didn’t even ask for help!). Traffic was a bit nasty so I didn’t get home until nearly four hours after leaving Kelly’s, but I also stopped at one of the service stations so it wasn’t completely traffic’s fault. I was still home before eight, which meant I had time to upload all the pictures and watch Army Wives.

404 Error. Not Found.

Some of you may not have noticed, but at least two people have emailed me this week wondering where my blog ran off to.

Well, as my father would say, it was the nut holding the keyboard.

Last week, I attempted to change the nameservers and move my blog to my host. But that failed miserably (obviously, because I was the one doing it) so I had to put the nameservers back the way they were. Then I had to redo the domain forwarding. But instead of telling Godaddy.com to point lemonade-life.com at lemonlemonade.wordpress.com, I told it to point lemonade-life.com at lemonade-life.com.

Which obviously meant it was pointing at an empty webpage.

Once I figured out that’s what I did, I went back in to fix it. But instead of telling it to go lemonlemonade.wordpress.com, I wrote lemonlemonade.com. That used to be the URL for my blog back when I was still at Blogger. So that did me no good, because lemonlemonade.com doesn’t exist anymore!

Finally, I wrote it down correctly and voila, when you type in www.lemonade-life.com, it points you right here where it should.

I like to take the simplest things and see how complicated I can make them. It’s like a game.

~*~

In other completely unrelated news:

You remember Kassie Palmer? You know, this uber-awesome mom of two boys who loves baseball more than life itself (okay, maybe not, but close, right?). Anyway, she doesn’t blog as much as she used to but she did me a huge favor by agreeing to be interviewed about being a parent with type 1 diabetes for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation website. You can read her interview here. I read a lot of stuff lately about women and pregnancy - which there used to hardly be anything - but now there seems to be a dearth of resources on parenting with diabetes. Glad Kassie can fill us in.

Also, if you have a newly diagnosed college student in your life - or heck even just a regular college student with diabetes - you might want to pass this article on being diagnosed with diabetes while in college. It’s from the perspective of being diagnosed at an older age, while in college and living away from parents. However, I think it has some pretty useful advice for living with diabetes that applies to anyone in college.

A Whole Year.

Last Saturday, I drove down to my dad’s cousin’s house for dinner after babysitting for a little girl with diabetes and her baby brother. My great aunt was also there, so we spent some time catching up on work and life. I told them about my plans for moving, talked about my job, and I found out that her daughter, my cousin lives in Israel, is going to have a baby girl soon. Then I realized that it had been exactly one year since I moved to New Jersey and I was exactly where I started. A full circle.

Today is another important date. Well, to me it is. I started my job one year ago today. I feel a little self-conscious bragging about my job and co-workers because, well, they all apparently read this. (Hello co-workers!) But needless to say, I’ve learned more about social networking and blogs than I ever did in the two years of being a blogger and I’m very, very appreciative that none of the people I work with are psychos. They are a little nuts sometimes but thankfully just the good kind.

Besides growing professionally, I also feel like this was the year I became a full-fledged adult. I pay my own rent. I have my own 401K and health insurance. I have made new friends, including some that don’t rely on artificial insulin! When I wake up in my apartment, or when I get another bill, or when I’m standing in the hallway getting a new reservoir from the closet, I still get a little thrill that this is all mine. I don’t know how long this will last… Maybe I have only a few more months before I think being a grown-up is totally overrated. Okay, occasionally I think being a grown-up is overrated, but mostly I think it’s pretty cool.

I’m excited to see where the next year leads me, especially with my impending move, and seeing how my responsibilities change both professionally and personally. I have added new freelance jobs to my resume in the past few months. In November, I signed on as a writer for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and I’m leading the JDRF Blogger Round Table, this spring I’ve been working on a new article for Diabetes Self-Management, and on my trip to Oregon, I met with the founder of SweetSpot.dm and agreed to help with publicity. I continue to enjoy exploring New Jersey, which despite the rumors is actually very nice, and the entire East Coast.

Plus I have this whole list of exciting adventures to complete.

When I moved, I knew my life was going to change dramatically. But I couldn’t imagine just how true that was going to be. Although I am living in New Jersey, a state I never imagined living in (seriously, who grows up saying “I want to move to New Jersey!”) and although I’m working at a PR agency instead of that non-profit I spent five years preparing for, I think “Allison” has still stayed the same. I try to keep the same values that I was raised with. I still hate the humidity. I think sales tax is the most annoying thing in the world. I am still frustrated that my apartment complex doesn’t support recycling. I still wish I could see Mt. Hood, I still think trees are as important as people, and I still think people need to slow down and enjoy life just a little bit more.

You can take the girl out of Oregon, but you can’t take the Oregon out of the girl.

The New Girl.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been on a mission. A mission to find a roommate. The mission began when I realized that I desperately wanted to moved out my apartment in Distant Land Away From NYC (okay, it’s not that far, but it sure feels like it sometimes) and make my way a little bit closer to, well, people who don’t have children. The town I live in is a lot like the town I grew up in, just a lot less wealthy. This town has lots of families, grocery stores, gas stations and two (!) Dunkin Donuts. It has a CVS and it has Catholic churches. It has a couple parks - one of which I live next to - and it’s cute.

What is doesn’t have is any semblance of a downtown or population anywhere close to my age.

I decided I wanted to move to Hoboken, which is this adorable little town across the Hudson from Manhattan. It’s a lot cheaper than living in the city, but it’s just as close to Greenwich or Soho as it would be if I lived on the Upper East Side, plus my apartment will be significantly bigger. I also wanted to stay somewhat close to work. Taking two subways, a NJ Transit train and a shuttle *one way* to get to work is not my idea of a good time.

However, finding a new place to live isn’t so simple. First, I can’t just pick-up and move into an already established apartment. I have a lot of stuff. I have my couch. My ironing board. A flat-screen TV, a dining table, a fully stocked kitchen and a really cute bathroom curtain of colorful butterflies. All of which I don’t want to get rid of. This meant I had to find a roommate who didn’t have any of this stuff who needed a place to live. Maybe she lived with her parents, maybe she was just graduating from college or maybe she was moving across the country.

Basically, I was looking for the me from last year.

I put an ad up on Craiglist. I said I was 22, worked in PR and looking for a roommate. I gave my pricing and a few requirements (no psychos, only nice people need apply). I received a few emails back. A couple people either were in the wrong financial bracket or they had unreasonable requests (such as boyfriend and dog spending every weekend there - uh, no. I’m moving in with you. Not you and your boyfriend.). A couple other girls seemed nice. They had steady jobs and were my age. I wrote them back and told them a little bit more about myself.

Feeling a little uneasy about the whole diabetes thing (said in a hushed voice), I quickly added at the end of the email that I wanted to let them know I had type 1 diabetes, but was fully in control (whatever, they don’t need to know the details) and that I had never had any issues whatsoever.

And guess what happened.

I never heard from them again.

Now, I know I shouldn’t be surprised or insulted by the disappearing acts of these girls. I mean, if I didn’t have diabetes and could choose to not live with a perfect stranger who had a scary chronic illness, yeah, I probably wouldn’t have written back either. But it still hurt my feelings. I debated whether or not that was really such a smart move on my part. I decided it probably wasn’t a great idea to be that up front about the diabetes especially since it didn’t give us a chance to really discuss it before they made a decision.

Finally, I received another email from a girl who lives with her parents but works in finance not too far from Hoboken. She seemed nice and we agreed to meet for dinner at Applebee’s. But I didn’t tell her about the diabetes. I figured I could eventually bring it up in conversation.

Well, it’s a lot harder to spring something like that on someone that I thought. Typically with friends and co-workers, them finding out I have diabetes never really seemed like a deal-breaker but with a roommate all of a sudden I went into panic mode.

We met for dinner during a horrible thunderstorm. Torrential downpour, lightening just miles away from us, and booming thunder that freaked me out. I came straight from work and only had my laptop bag, so I had to test my blood sugar in the car. I slipped my license and debit card into my back pocket and ran from my car inside Applebee’s using the United Nations umbrella from World Diabetes Day to shield me from becoming a wet rat (yeah, I still have it in case of emergencies - it’s nice and big).

When we sat down for dinner, we talked first about the apartment. What we liked, what we didn’t like. We talked about where we lived and what we did for a living. We talked a little bit about hobbies and what we liked to do on the weekends.

Then the Potential Roomie mentioned drinking.

“Do you like to go out and drink?” she asked.

This seemed like as good a time as any to bring up the Big D. I explained that I did drink and liked to go out, but that I didn’t drink a lot because I have type 1 diabetes. She didn’t know that much about it, so I explained that I like to keep my blood sugars pretty much under control and that I didn’t want to my roommates to feel like they had to take care of me.

“I like to be self-sufficient,” I said.

Potential Roomie didn’t know that much about diabetes, so I just explained that my body didn’t make insulin anymore that I had to take it myself. She asked me if I had that “thing” and motioned to her abdomen. A pump! She knows what a pump is! I told her I had one, and she said a girl she went to college had one too. Okay, so the girl has some experience with this. That’s good. We talked a little bit about our eating habits - turns out, she’s a vegan and probably has more restrictions than me!

After that, we talked about her dog, our favorite movies and books we were reading, and as we signed the receipts, I asked what our next steps were.

“Do you want to take some time to think about this?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said and with that, she went from Potential Roomie to The Roommate.

Sigh of relief.

Next Stop: Philadelphia!

I made a promise a little over a week ago not to go online during the weekends, so I’m writing my “one week notice” today instead of tomorrow even though our diabetes meet-up in Philadelphia isn’t until next Saturday, June 21.

If you’re looking for a great, easy way to meet some new people with diabetes in the mid-Atlantic region, I strongly urge you to send me an e-mail requesting information about our meet-up location (as previously mentioned, I do not post locations of meet-ups on the Internet. You have to contact me by e-mail.). The plan is to meet for lunch at 12:30 p.m. just outside of downtown Philadelphia, so it’s easily accessible by car. Afterwards, you are free to go, though I will probably head into town to check out Independence Hall because it’s one of the few places in Philadelphia that I haven’t been to (I stayed there for a week the summer after my freshman year in college, so I’ve seen almost all the historic sites).

You are more than welcome to bring your spouse, children, friends, whomever you think might be interested in chatting about diabetes for a couple of hours. Some people who have already RSVP’d are Hannah from Dorkabetic, Kelly from Diabetesaliciousness and Gary Scheiner from, well, he’s not a blogger (yet!) but you may have heard of this little book he wrote… it’s called Think Like a Pancreas.

Any questions? Hit me up here: amblass [@] gmail.com.

Word from the Wise.

Tip #982 for Living with Diabetes:

Just because something looks the same does not mean something is the same.

Example: I took out a can of Nestea Iced Tea from the office kitchen’s fridge this morning. I glanced down at the options and grabbed what looked like the same diet iced tea that I had yesterday.

I was wrong. I grabbed a can of regular iced tea. Even when my blood sugar rang in at 320 mg/dl, I didn’t realize the mistake because I figured the high was from my decision to eat Poptarts this morning instead of my usual Fiber One bar. It wasn’t until an hour later when I tested again and landed at 336 mg/dl that I figured something was astray. Upon closer examination of the can, I realized I was drinking out of a can with 33 grams of carbohydrate! I had been working all morning, and drinking from the can without reading the words. Both the diet can I had yesterday and this can are lemon flavored, so I think that masked my ability to taste the sugar. The cans look almost identical - one has a white background, and the other has a light silver background. We have apparently purchased new cans of iced tea with a different design and that is what threw me off. Sodas are usually more obvious. Diet Pepsi is light blue, regular Pepsi is darker. Diet Dr. Pepper is white with maroon, regular Dr. Pepper with just maroon.Check out these misleading labels at Nestea’s website.

Moral of the story: Look before you leap!

“That looks important…”

I was at the Portland International Airport early on Sunday morning. Real early. Six-thirty in the morning early. My usual routine when going to the airport is pretty simple. Check my bags in at the curbside check-in (shorter line). Walk over to security. Unhook my insulin pump and slide it into my bag, while slipping off my shoes and taking out my laptop and resting everything in at least two plastic containers. Walk right on through the security, slip and/or hook everything back together and immediately find the nearest Starbucks.

A frequently asked question I hear is, “What do you do when you fly with diabetes?”

Honestly, my answer is: Not much.

I have flown at least twice a year, every year, since I was diagnosed - sometimes more. Before 9/11, I don’t remember doing anything special with my supplies other than to keep everything in my carry-on luggage because heaven-forbid you’re separated.

After 9/11, things were a little sketchy. We kept everything in their boxes and when I flew to Paris in 2003, we brought along a doctor’s note. When the liquids ban went into effect, it didn’t bother me that much. I didn’t bring juice with me on the plane, so I did one of three things: 1) bring glucose tabs (blech!), 2) buy overpriced juice at one of the hundred Hudson newsstands or 3) trust that the flight attendant will get me juice if I need it on the plane. Usually I went with number 2.

When I first went on the pump, back in 2000, I always wore my pump clipped to my jeans pocket. About half the time, nothing happened. The other half of the time, I set of the alarm, was asked to be patted down even though I insisted, “It’s just the insulin pump, let me take it off!” but was thoroughly denied because, “OMG! That’s a medical device! Nonono…” So then I would spend five minutes being scanned by a nice lady, determining that yes, it was the insulin pump that set off the machine. I could never figure out which airport. In Seattle and Portland, I would set it off. But in San Diego and Dulles, nothing would happen. It seemed random, and very annoying.

After three or four flights, I finally said, “Screw it,” unhooked my pump, tossed it in my bag and let it go through the X-ray machine while I completely uneventfully walked through security.

And I haven’t worn it through security since.

Now, I know quite a few people who have absolutely no trouble at all with going through airport security or people who have develop tricks to prevent the pump from going off. I’ve never had an issue with my diabetes supplies going through the X-ray machine - and I even carried a 4 oz. juice box with me which proves that their caveat of “juice is permitted for diabetics” is in fact legitimate. I personally don’t think it’s worth my time to tempt fate to see whether or not the pump will set off the machine and it’s not like taking off my pump for 5 minutes will kill me. I take it off for much longer when I shower.

However, this past Sunday did not go quite as smoothly as most trips through airport security. I was standing in line, as usual, unhooking my pump, as usual, and setting it inside my carry-on bag, as usual. I took out my laptop and put it in one container, and I put my shoes and my bag in another. It was slightly tilted, not laying flat, but I thought it would probably be fine. I bounced through to the otherside like I was a trained professional, and went about collecting my things. After I slipped my shoes back on, I took my laptop and bag over to one of the chairs to get everything situated.

I reached my hand inside my bag to pull out my insulin pump. But it wasn’t there.

I look inside. Nothing.

I moved things around. Under my meter, behind my book. Nothing.

It was there before security, so it must still be there, right?

I turned around to see a woman, next to the conveyor belt, holding up my insulin pump and handing it over to one of the security guards.

I ran over.

“That’s mine!” I said breathless.

The security guard handed it over to me, and the woman, who had been saying something, said, “That looks important…”

Yes, I thought, very important…

I thought briefly that perhaps putting my insulin pump in my bag wasn’t the safest thing to do. But I have been on a plane dozens of times, with nothing ever happening, and really, the reason it fell out was because my bag wasn’t zipped and the security guard moved the bag so that it would lay flat. That’s all. So next time, I’m zipping up the bag.