And the toes have it.

It came out of nowhere. How in the world did this idea pop into his head? Did I joke with him about it? How does he even know this is a possibility? Was it his older brother that filled him in? Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?Basically, B came into the family room on Saturday night and declared:"Tonight, when you check my sugar while I am sleeping...I want you to check my toes.""Why?" My husband and I questioned in unison."My fingers just need a break."And with that he whipped around and walked resolutely out of the room. My husband and I looked at each other warily. We were sure this germ of an idea had to be planted by someone. Now don't...

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Reenactment: Too much information

My husband and I have a lot of conversations over the phone. He is usually gone before I wake up, and he drives around all day to see clients. I drive around all day being a mom. As a result, we are always trying to catch up with what is going on in each other's lives. (P.S. The mySentry has been off the past two days as J asked me to wait until Friday to put the CGM on him. He is next in the lineup!)This is our conversation that took place yesterday. ((((((Ring)))))))Him: "Hey babe! How are you doing?"Me: "Better, now that I'm on the way home. The kids in L's class were pretty feisty today. You?"Him: "My clients are a little feisty today...

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Burnt Out on Judgment: The Not So Simple Motions of Diabetic Living...

This might seem silly... I know. I know I don't have to try hard, or go far, to ask my readers to imagine for a moment being a person with diabetes. (Naw... You don't say!) ☺But still...! Imagine, for a moment that you're a person living with diabetes, and have lived with it for many, many years... Imagine it's been challenging. You've gone through many phases of burn out, and phases of challenge. It's been a deep struggle, for various reasons:Managing this crap every day is a roller coaster, and well, it seldom likes to actually do what we expect it to do. Einstein once said that "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting...

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Emotional Whack-a-Mole.

It is confusing. Knowing how I'm supposed to feel. Being a caregiver of three children with Diabetes, I am expected to feel many emotions, take on many different attributes...all at one time. Is it no wonder my brain is swelly?I'm expected to be brave: Allowing my 14 year old go away on a camp out for the weekend. Bravery. Allowing my 10 year old to attend Basketball Camp for 8 hours without me. Bravery. Allowing my 8 year old to go on an all day fieldtrip without me. Bravery. I have to keep a stiff upper lip and jump into the trust pool with both feet.I'm expected to be strong: I want to cry all the time. But for the sake of being a semi-normal...

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CGM: Quality sleep, not quantity sleep.

(Before you read this you should know, I'm not a doctor.  I'm just a mom relating her personal experiences with the CGM. If you have any questions, call your doctor, your CDE, or contact Medtronic directly.)I'm a fan of the CGM, but it has a lot of issues...not the least of which is it's always on, and it always has something to say.Always on means constant information shooting our way. I don't know about you, but I have a love/hate relationship with information. On one hand, information is power. On the other hand, "SHUT UP I DON'T WANT INFORMATION ANYMORE!! MY BRAIN IS GOING TO EXPLODE!!!We've had good runs and bad runs...

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Lessons from the Butter Incident

I love comedies. Satires, in particular. Some of the greatest of life lessons were buried deep within satirical works of literature, theater, and film. We laugh through them, but seldom do we stop to consider the valuable nuggets we've been just given.In respect to filmography, what are probably two of my most favorite scenes are: Cher's observations to her friend Tai, about Monet paintings, in the movie "Clueless"; and Cameron's enthrallment with the little girl in Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," in the movie "Ferri's Bueller's Day Off."These two scenes loosely mold a certain view I...

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Continuing the mySentry dialog.

Thank you for your questions the other day! Today I'm going to post answers to the mySentry questions, Monday I will have a long beautiful post explaining ALL about the CGM and how it works! I'm going to start by saying that Wed night we had to take off Ben's CGM. He was ice skating and bumped it pretty good. (In other words, he fell flat on his stomach a dozen times.) I made the call and pulled it...and TOTALLY regretted it the next morning. He went to bed with a BG of 132, he was 125 at 2:00am...and then woke up almost 400.What the what?!!Oh how I wished I was warned about this ahead of time. We didn't get that sugar down until almost...

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mySentry: My diary of the first 3 days.

You're in the right place!  My blog is under construction.  Please bear with me!_______________________________________________________________________________I have so much to share and only so much brain capacity. I've been sitting here staring at the screen for five minutes and have decided to just begin typing and see where it takes me.I want to start out saying that I fully understand how completely blessed I am to have the mySentry sitting on my bedside table at this very minute. It is the beginning of something wonderful, and I have this unshakable feeling that this is bigger than what it seems to be.On the outside it seems so...

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She's got Diabetes, now, Y'all!

I love observing people. People are an interesting societal experiment of contrasts, paradoxes, and dichotomies. If you are a lover of the observational art of human interaction and behavior, then there are two places you probably, secretly, enjoy: the mall, and the internet.I love the mall, because frankly, I'm visually amused. It's like TV, really. (Except, well, I still don't want to see your boxer shorts, or your g-string, so please, pull up your pants.)The internet... is a little more complex. It's like TV, in many ways, except that you actually get to SEE the end results of people being told how to think and feel (and often, with the...

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Believe.

She said it four times. I couldn't look her in the eye the first three, but on the fourth time I had to look to make her stop saying it."Meri, you are doing a great job."Why did she keep saying it? I'm doing a pretty good job. I mean, I'm no Madam Curie or anything. I know I can do better. If I put my heart into it, I can probably improve on those A1C's..."Meri, you are doing a great job."As I lay in bed last night just about to surrender to sleep her words echoed in my swelly brain. I know she wanted them to sink in, I don't know how she did it, but her tone was firm yet soft at the same time. I know she knows I am hard on myself. Was she trying...

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The Messy Language of Type 2 Diabetes

"Well, my husband is a board certified endocrinologist, and he told me that whenever a Type 2 patient is 'good,' and gets their numbers 'normalized,' that he removes the Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis, and changes it to a 'Metabolic Syndrome' diagnosis, instead, to help them out." -- Misinformed Mrs. Know-It-All.The woman was very angry at me. How dare I suggest Type 2 Diabetes has no cure. And furthermore, I could go get a gastric bypass surgery, if I wanted. That, for certain, was also a cure. This, of course, was followed by a few "You people will never be like us; you need to stop comparing yourselves to us... You keep trying to act like we are...

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onward.

I'm real people sick.My husband is out of town today and I am on my own. So as I get ready to bring the boys to school I am VERY careful to have them all prepared diabetes wise so I don't have to bring my ashen white face and shaky aching body out of the house again.I have to bring them to school. But I'll be darned if I'll go back to those schools today because of a simple oversight on my part.I'm not sure what their supply boxes look like at school, so I carefully pack their backpacks to replenish them.Just in case.I give all three boys two extra vials of test strips.I give all three boys apple juices for lows.I pack all three boys cell phones...

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Awareness, Acceptance, and Perseverance

I really hate year end resolutions. Call me a little full of myself, perhaps, or a little 'pessimistic' if you want, but I find it beyond silly how people don't realize they're being played like puppets, every January. I mean, really? Come on... How can you not tell?? You can't seriously believe you can get on a cereal diet, a milk shake diet, a soup diet, a sprinkle crap on your food diet, a yogurt diet, smoke water vapor cigarettes, etc, and think that all your weight/health issues, whatever else, will magically just melt away... Or paying $200+ for some incredibly UNREALISTIC exercise regimen with some guy, ripped beyond belief, who probably...

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