Living by the numbers

I have changed my diabetic basal rates, bolus ratios and correction numbers as of yesterday. As a reminder, the basal rates I take are the insulin I need for just walking around. The extra insulin I take to counteract food is a bolus. And if my blood sugar is too high, I need to know how much my blood sugar will lower for each unit of insulin I take. All these settings are stored in my insulin pump but I have to set them up in the first place. I also have to tell them all to my doctors with each visit (which most of the time involves my stammering and looking them up in the pump, particularly now as they change over time).

Since this little guy in my belly has been making my blood sugars crazy for about a week, I had enough data to try to fix them. I've changed my basal from 1 unit of insulin per hour to 1.3 units of insulin per hour. I changed my bolus ratio from one unit for every 13 grams to one unit for every 10 grams of carbohydrates. And I changed my correction settings to give one unit for each 40mg/dL I want my sugar to drop down from 50. It's a lot of changes and I'm a bit tentative I may have overdone it. But those numbers were conservative considering how many corrections I was having to take all day.

So far my sugars have been much better today. It's barely crested 150 all day and only a smidge low after a huge dinner. It was a little creepy, though, to dial up what seemed like a huge amount of insulin compared to yesterday. Sometimes I have a hard time trusting the technology.

This afternoon, my sensor alarmed in a meeting, telling me I was at 204 and climbing. I checked my blood and it said I was only 130. Hmm. I calibrated the sensor and went about my business. An hour later, I felt a little fuzzy headed and the sensor said my sugar was 120 and dropping. Figuring it was off earlier, I wondered if I was low. I checked my blood at it was 183. Hunh?! I checked immediately again (using blood from the same finger and needle prick) and it said 153. Oh for Pete's sake!

I just put the meter away and told the sensor to shut up and trusted how I felt. And today, I feel pretty okay.

High fiber and protein foods that don't taste like ass

Food and I have had a tough relationship lately. There are some things I eat that taste so good, I feel like I'm experiencing them for the very first time every time. And other things I eat just to put nutrients in my system. I waffle between starving and completely uninterested in anything. One of those things that wasn't necessarily in the pregnancy brochure is the need for extra fiber to keep ones system from shutting down. However, my dietitian harps on protein and ignores anything I say about fiber. If I eat nothing but steak and cheese for the protein, though, I may not survive. (Side note: I've always figured that those people who eat nothing but cheese must have bowel movements that are more like a menstrual cycle where they get all bloated and cranky beforehand but only poop once a month or so.)

So since I had to go to the grocery store anyways, I decided to share some of my favorite high fiber and protein foods of late. As always, I'm open to suggestions.

Quaker High Fiber oatmeal

I eat this every morning for breakfast with a hard-boiled egg. It has 10g of fiber in it! It's also got 4g of protein, so add that to the 6g for my egg and it's not too shabby.

Kashi Go Lean bars

I stumbled upon these in the Power Bar aisle and they're way tastier. They hold up well to living in ones purse or laptop bag for weeks at a time and they have enough protein and fiber to make the pretty versatile (8g of protein and 5g of fiber). They make a good breakfast on the go or snack. The blue box of cinnamon coffee cake is THE BOMB but they're really hard to find.

Fiber Plus and Active Lifestyle chewy bars

I first found the Fiber Plus bars and they're pretty tasty. Then I stumbled upon the Active Lifestyle bars in Kroger and they're a bit more tasty and less heavy. Both brands have a whopping 9g of fiber in them but only 2g of protein.

Frosted Mini Wheats and Fiber One raisin bran clusters

These are my two favorite cereals of late. The mini wheats have 5g of fiber per serving and a respectable 5g of protein, while the Fiber One earns its name with 11g of fiber (!) and 4g of protein. I had low blood sugar last night (31mg/dL) and ate three servings of Fiber One cereal to fix it. It was delicious.

Other random snacks to mix and match

Pretty much every day I have something from this photo. The apple and fiber selects have a decent amount of fiber in them (5g per serving) and the peanut butter, cheese and yogurt all have good levels of protein (7g, 5g and 6g respectively). After some of those high fiber things I've listed before, I can manage a bit of cheddar cheese and live to tell the tale. Oh, and fuji apples are the best, hands down. Our child's middle name may be Fuji.

This bear is apparently flying on a trapeze

I've spent about $200 for test strips since Friday. Since the beginning of the month, I've been trying to get my test strips from Liberty Medical (yeah, Wilford Brimley's place) with no luck. I bought 50 strips on Friday hoping they would last me until my refills came. Yesterday I had to buy another hundred. I called Liberty today to find out what the hold up is only to find out that they claim to be waiting on doctor's orders. I've been diabetic for 24 years yet I have to have an annual doctor's notes saying it's okay for me to have supplies that I'm going to pay for. It's like needing a hall pass for a disease.

I'm running out of CGM sensors and I've been out of test strips for weeks. If I run out of sensors, I'll be going through test strips even more than I already have. Even with the sensor, I tested my sugar 15 times today (at $1.20 each from our local Rite Aid).

As luck would have it, I've reached my 23rd week of pregnancy and as the ultrasound technician was kind enough to explain to me, this is when the placenta starts really growing with speed and it trashes my blood sugars.

Every day it's like wrestling a bear to get my blood sugars down with only sporadic success. Without sensors or test strips, it's like paying hundreds of dollars to wrestle a bear blindfolded.