Friday, December 10, 2010

I'm engaged!


It's been a week now and I feel like I'm still spinning. He asked me on Friday the 3rd. It was so sweet. Then this week I got to announce it in all my classes. It all feels a little "BYU-Ido", but for this hopeless romantic it's been perfect.

One more week and we'll have to part ways. I already know I'm going to miss him like crazy. We'll both be very busy though. Hopefully the time won't drag on.

We will be getting married during the second week in August at the Portland Oregon temple with our reception back in Eugene. We'll slowly be planning our wedding over the next eight months.

I'm very happy and very excited and very in love. It's still a bit surreal. I can hardly believe this is happening. :) Chris is everything I've wanted in a husband. It turns out that maybe what the Bishop has been telling us all these years is true; "you marry who you date".

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Starting Over - Day 1

Tonight I've had a severe wake up call. Now is my only time to change myself and to prevent future problems with my diabetes. How privleged am I to be given second, third, even
fourth chances at this one task- have the self discipline to poke my finger, calculate insulin amounts, change IV-like sets, and take care of my body every day of my life.

Today my numbers were:

- 214

Daily Average: 214

Twenty years of diabetes means I won't get very many more chances to fix this. Its now or never Kristina. What things are more important in this life than to live a healthily? I can think of only one or two. I can update my blog from my phone.

So today I'm beginning again. This time I can't give up.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Day 13

7/21

Today I was having problems with my set so my numbers stayed in the 200s for most of the day. I changed my set and hopefully tomorrow will be better.

- 284
- 401
- 263
- 248

Daily Average: 299

Day 12

7/20

Alrighty.
-222
-398
- 217

Daily Average: 279

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Day 8, 9, 10, and 11

I've not done so well these past few days. I've only been testing a little bit, and I didn't write it down. I'm pretty sure Sunday, Day 10, I didn't test at all... I'm not going to put up the numbers. I'm just going to start again.

My new pump came on Day 8 like the guy on the phone said it would and that was very nice. Its exactly the same as my previous pump. It looks new, but that's about it. :) I shipped the broken pump yesterday afternoon so hopefully that will be all worked out. I might call a little later this week just to make sure they got the package.

It's almost time to go home. Saturday. I'm still working out the last of my finals. It's a little frustrating, but it's getting there.

Thanks for your support, everyone. :)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Day 7

Today has been quite the day!

First the numbers:

- 90
- 276
- 101
- 306
- 179

Daily Average: 170!!!!!!!!! I get a pink tab today!! :D

So this morning I went to have insulin for my breakfast like a good little girl and to my surprise nothing happened when I pressed the buttons on my pump. The battery was full of life, the reservoir was full. To me nothing looked wrong. "Well I'll take out the battery anyway just in case" thought I. Nothing happened. The buttons still wouldn't work. I decided I should call the manufacturer. But first I had to go to the bookstore. I got what I needed and was leaving the check out when... "beep beep beep". I grabbed my pump out of my pocket and to my surprise there was a button error. Button errors happen when you hold down one of the five buttons for more than three minutes. I wasn't pressing any buttons! Time to call Minimed. I was put on hold for maybe two minutes and by this time my pump was doing the "car alarm". This is an alarm that goes off when I don't respond to one of the other alarms. Generally it happens if I haven't done anything with the pump for more than twelve hours. It sounds like a car alarm. Without the use of my buttons there was no way for me to turn it off. Here I am walking around campus with this little blue cell-phone-ish thing in my hand making noise enough to attract the attention of everyone I passed. Finally I got through to Minimed and I'm pretty sure the guy on the other end could hear my little car alarm because he knew what was going on and all I told him was that the buttons weren't working. He said that there was a malfunction and that I would need to have a new pump sent out.

The only emergency that might have been an emergency today was that when the pump is alarming like that it suspends itself which means it won't give me any insulin. Luckily a year ago I was taking a Science class and wanted my pumps to use as a visual aide for a presentation. My most recent old pump is still functional and uses all the same stuff as my current pump. I put in a new battery, and got it all powered up. What I'm most proud of is I did all of this before I called Mommy. After twenty years with Diabetes I'm dealing with my own disasters. :) Which wasn't even a disaster. Tomorrow a nice UPS man or lady will come with a new blue pump for me that should last until they come out with something new.

I also found out that I really like my current doctor. I called him this morning to let him know about what had happened. I had to leave a message, and he called me back not just once but twice until he caught me. I'm pretty sure that the second time he called was after office hours. How nice.

Day 6

- 366
- 98
- 260

Daily Average: 241

Not bad. Missed a number.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Day 5

Time to change my set.

-212
- 260
- 369

Daily Average: 280

Missed a number today. :( I'll try again tomorrow... :P

Monday, July 12, 2010

Day 4

Ugh. I did terrible today. I just don't think I had enough insulin for the junk I ate. I didn't feel like cooking so instead I ate things I didn't have to cook which ended up being things with a lot of carbs. And lets not even discuss the calories, not that I really need to worry about those affecting my diabetes. But still. Ugh. It's been a Monday, to say the least. So here are my numbers...

- 147 The day started out promising...
- 465
- 369
- 368

Daily Average:337

If tomorrow's average doesn't look better I'll change my set just to make sure the problems aren't things that are easy fixes. Tomorrow is a new day. I have a quote on my wall that says "Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying "I will try again tomorrow"." So I will have courage and try again tomorrow. What's nice is that usually I get to start the day with a "clean" blood sugar. Something that is below 180 so I have a clean slate to start with. We'll see.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Day 3

Not terrible. Could have been better.
- 183
- 282
- ... I can't remember. I'll give a daily average tomorrow when I check what this number was. I did test, I just didn't write it down.
- 316

I won't write much tonight because I have classes in the morning. Today I forgot to test at noonish because we were running late for church. But I didn't go low at church which is always a good thing. I also noticed that I could feel the 316 tonight. I like when I can feel the 300s because it means my body isn't entirely used to being that high. It makes me feel like I'm making progress.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Day 2

Today's been interesting. My numbers are still higher than I want.

- 234
- 286
- 343
- 331

Daily Average: 298.5

Weekends always seem to be harder. It's frustrating to test when I'm supposed to and have the numbers be off. Usually it's because I missed one little something that I should have Insulin for, and even though I know why it's still frustrating.

Tomorrow will be a new day.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Day 1

Not so good for my first day, but when you're starting over again the first day is hardly ever particularly good. The numbers for today were:

- 7am 147
- 2pm 342
- 8pm 321
- 11pm 219

Daily Average: 257.25

No pink tab for me today. But the numbers could have been worse. After all the junk I ate today I'm surprised that they weren't higher. Hopefully it won't take too long for me to get my averages back down to the 180s.

I'm really grateful that I have a pump. In a diabetes chat room I heard about someone else who is still on a pen. I probably should learn how to give myself shots in case of emergencies. Just think. In today's world of technological advances I can give myself insulin by pressing a button whereas 80 years ago Diabetes was a death sentence.

Did you know that pizza actually takes longer to digest in your system? Normally when I have a bolus for a meal I have the entire bolus in one go. With pizza I do what's called a dual wave bolus. I spread the insulin out over a half an hour usually. It's very interesting.

For anyone reading, thank you for your support. :)

Something New

It's been a while since I've written.

As it gets close to time to go back home I'm realizing that once again I've slacked on taking care of my diabetes. There was a month or so while I was home that I had perfect blood sugars. The best blood sugars I've had since a long time ago, before puberty when my mom was doing everything for me. It was hard work, but I felt really good. Everything went well until I stopped doing the work and now that month of hard work has been overshadowed by about two, maybe three months of really poor work on my part. Something has to change. I've had diabetes for almost twenty years and my blood sugars are still "out of control".

I have a plan. It's the same plan I had back in that month that I did really well. Only this time I want to write about it.

I have a planner. Planners and myself have never been the best of friends but I've decided that it's time we got over our differences and worked with each other. That month that I had really good blood sugars I wrote down EVERYTHING. I kept track of my daily and weekly blood sugar averages and if the average was ever below 180, which is where I want it, I got to put a little pink tab on it. It's amazing what rewards you can give yourself when you're easily amused. A little colored piece of sticky paper was all I needed. I want to be testing 4-5 times a day. Once when I wake up in the morning, once about noon, once between 5 and 7, and once when I go to bed. The fifth test is if I have any lows during a day.

So here's how I'm going to write about it. I'm going to not only keep track of my numbers in my planner, but also write them down here, so that anyone who is interested can see them. I'm hoping that this will also give the me the extra push to do this daily.

If you are interested, there are some vocab words you'll need to know.

A1c - the fancy name of this is a glycosylated hemoglobin test. Basically its the average blood sugar a person has over a three month period. Mine has been at or above nine since I was nine. This means my average blood sugar since I was nine has been somewhere around 250, probably higher. A person without diabetes would have an A1c between 4 and 6. Most diabetics are happy if there's is 7. 7 is my ultimate goal but I'd be happy just to get it down to an 8.

Basal Rate - I'm on an insulin pump which gives me the option of having a steady amount of insulin being pumped into my body. It's similar to an IV. Right now I'm getting (throughout the day) between 24 and 33 units of insulin.

Good blood sugar
- I had a doctor once tell me there were no good and bad blood sugars. I think there are. To me my blood sugar is good if it is below 180 and above 90. Bad blood sugars are everything else.

I can't think of what other words I might use from the language of Diabetes. If you're interested and at some point I use a word you don't know, just ask. I'm more than happy to explain.

My plan for writing about all of this is to write every night and post the four or five blood sugars for the day, plus any insights, or rants, or explanations I feel like for that day.

Thanks for reading!

Saturday, April 24, 2010

DANCE!


Dance has always been a passion of mine. I fell in love with Swing when I was fourteen and for the past five years I’ve been expanding my limited dance knowledge little by little. Finally, this semester I was able to register for Social Dance, the prerequisite for all other ballroom dance classes. The class is designed to teach four basic dances that will allow you to successfully get through any dance anywhere. We start with the basics and work up until we have enough knowledge to be “impressive”. On Thursday my Social Dance class began learning the Foxtrot. We learned a basic travel step, a turn, a promenade, and a variation of the promenade.
What is there not to love about dancing? It’s exercise. Dancing with the Stars? They all lose weight. It makes you feel graceful. The clumsiest person ever could learn to control her body while dancing. It just inspires happiness. If you can walk, you can dance. So dance! :) If you don’t know how… I’ll teach you.

I have a new goal. I want to update my blog more often.

Friday, January 22, 2010

U of O and the Difference Between Good and Better

I have two thoughts tonight.

When I applied for Brigham Young University - Idaho I knew it was the only place I wanted to go. An LDS school on a small campus, and not in Utah. After being there for three semesters I have an incredibly high opinion of the school. The Spirit is very strong everywhere on campus. Everything is all I want in my education so far. After the Rose Bowl, however, I'm realizing that there is one part of college I'm missing out on. Football. I never thought I'd miss it. BYU-I does have a few football teams, but nothing big. I have a hard time believing the stadium has ever been completely full except maybe for Freshman Orientation on occasion. It's one small part of college I'm missing out on. It'd be nice to have a team to root for and get excited for.

I'm hoping, however, to end up at either BYU-Provo (I'm praying that that's not where I go), or U of O to get my Masters degree in Education after I finish in Idaho. Then I'll go to as many of the games as I can afford.



My second thought tonight is something I randomly thought of on the way home from work tonight. I think there's a difference bettween a good worker and a "better" worker. A good worker presses the proper buttons on the computer and fills the orders like a grocery list. A "better" worker takes the order while packing it, knows what a number 2 (a barbeque sandwich combo with a side and a drink), and a number 10 ( a big box meal with your choice of a thigh or a leg, two sides, a crispy strip, an individual popcorn chicken, a biscuit, and a large drink) off the top of their head, and makes sure the customer leaves happy, or at least won't call the store because of a miss packed order. Maybe the "better" worker has just been in the business too long. I'm grateful for my position at KFC. They're paying my way through college. The best way to repay them is to do my job to the best of my ability.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

I love days like today. Usually these are the rare days that come between the rain in the fall and spring. At least here in Eugene. But today it was a gorgeous January day. The day started out really well anyway, but then I walked out the door and to my surprise…




I was disappointed to have to be at work while the sun was out. I would have loved to have been out with my camera and tripod working with the fluffy clouds in the sky. They made a beautiful backdrop for the sunset that came between 4:30 and 5:30. I didn’t get home fast enough to get good pictures of the sunset but, …



It was a great day. Even at work. Everyone seemed to be in a great mood. I love the rain with a passion, but today the sun was nice. I drove to work and back again with my country music blasting. I went to work with the window down even. It was beautiful. Heavenly Father loves us, and we are so lucky to have the world we live in.

Friday, January 15, 2010

I’m not usually a morning person, but today I made an exception. I got up at 6:45 and got dressed, made myself a lunch, put my hair in a French braid, packed up my stuff and was ready to go an hour later. It was just a normal drive until we got further into the mountains. My heart started pounding when the snow appeared like the remnants of white linen shredded over the tops of the pine trees. A few minutes later we were there. Finally I’d be able to try this crazy sport that I knew absolutely nothing about, other than that it looked like a lot of fun. We pulled on snow pants and boots and grabbed our boards. I knew it was going to be a lot harder than it looked the minute I strapped just one foot onto the board. I was slipping and sliding all over the place. You should just know that Snow and I are in a love/hate relationship. I like looking at it, but every time we get together the snow thinks it’d be fun to try and assassinate me. Today I came prepared with two pound weights on my feet called snow boots. They made me feel like an astronaut. The minute I strapped into the board one foot wanted to go one way and the other foot was hanging on for dear life. I almost decided right then and there that I would never be able to do this and it was time to go home. Lucky for me I didn’t want to seem like a chicken and despite my better judgment screaming “no” I hopped along the ice to a hill. It was a little hill so we went up to the top and then I was told to strap my other foot on the board. “Oh my gosh. Kill me now”. After giving the people already on the hill a show, I finally was able to slide a few feet before I ended up right back on the ground. Talk about frustrating. After my second time down the little hill, a group of beginners came and took over my little hill. So we decided to head to the bigger beginner’s hill. My first run down the hill I hit the ground quite a few times, mostly because I sat down when I started going too fast. The second time down the hill I had a better feel for what I was doing and then just as I got towards the end I tried to stop. I managed to do the first part right, but somehow I got flipped around and hit the ice hard on my rear end, and hand. I have no idea how I ended up on my back facing the wrong direction down the hill. I sat up and went right back to the top of the hill. I continued like that for a few more runs down and then decided it was time for a break. My muscles were so tired. After lunch we walked around in the snow a little and took pictures. By the time we left I was wet and could tell I was going to be sore for the next few days. I’d had the best time and for some crazy reason I can’t wait to go back and try snowboarding again.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Tonight my family and I went to a friend's wedding. It was really pretty. It was in a Catholic church downtown, and the reception was at Emerald Valley Resort (I think that's what it's called. I can't quite remember now) where we had my senior prom. It was neat to tell my family about the little details from prom. Where tables were set up, where we were dropped off and picked up, what the lighting was like and where the DJ was, where we took pictures.

The wedding reception was beautiful. Amber and I started talking about what our ideas for ours are. It was so fun to sit there with my sister and talk about these things. Sure we've talked about them before, but never really just the two of us. She's such a cutie. I love Amber so much. :)

The wedding also made me realize again the value of eternal marriages, and families. It makes me giddy. We have such a blessing in the Gospel.