Saturday, July 31, 2010

eating out

At the hospital, when I was diagnosed almost three months ago, the dietitian came to teach me about carb counting. This seems to be the cardinal skill necessary for any insulin dependent person. She gave me some guidelines and print outs and told me to buy the essential carb counting guide, Calorie King.

So, I went home, pulled out my scale food scale for the first time, and started measuring every single thing I ate. In the last few weeks, I'm finding that it is insanely difficult to count carbs..... you have to measure every single thing that you eat, know exactly what is in your food, and know the carb count for every ingredient in your plate; it’s more manageable when you are eating at home (although still exhausting), but when you eat out, it is nearly impossible. After the first couple of weeks, I just started guessing.....but honestly most of the time I have no idea.

Now, the thing that has been bothering me is that except for large chain restaurants, most restaurants don’t seem the least bit interested in providing any kind of nutritional guide for their food. This bothers me for several reasons: 1) most restaurants don’t change their menus that often, so it would be easy to figure out nutritional info for most of their dishes; 2) it’s really easy to figure out nutritional info, and there are many free websites, like http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp available for this purpose. All you need to do is enter the ingredients and portion sizes. It would not take very long. Even my mom figured this out and has already catalogued all of her signature dishes. 3) Finally, it would be tremendously helpful not only to people like me, who need to know exactly how many grams of carbs they eat in order to dose the right amount of insulin, but to anyone trying to make informed decisions about what to eat.

I really wish small, independent restaurants would start doing this…. even if it’s only for a few of their dishes.

meter inaccuracy

Last night before dinner I checked my blood sugar and it was 170. I was surprised because it was much higher than I expected, so I tested again using the same meter...... and it was 124. I was shocked.

This morning I checked my blood sugar with my regular Aviva meter and it was 103. Then, using the same drop of blood, I also checked using my one touch meter, and it was...... 128. What? I checked again using both meters and now it was 112 and 106. I am very surprised by how inconsistent these meters seem to be, even with the same meter and same drop of blood. Is this normal? How am I suposed to make decisions about insulin when I don't trust the meter? How do other people deal with this problem?

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

clinical trial

I just finished receiving treatment for a clinical trial. This trial is to test a potential new treatment for newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes. The study was blinded, meaning that I had a one out of three chances of receiving the placebo, and neither I, nor the study PI would know. Given that this drug is strong, and I experienced severe side effects, I'm not sure how it is possible to keep the treatment blinded. Unless, of course, they create a placebo that also gives you severe headaches. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work. Or maybe not everyone that receives the drug has such a severe reaction. Who knows...

So, for the last eight days, I've been waking up at 6AM to get infused with this ?? (i'm almost certain it was the drug). Not fun, I hate needles and blood. I'm definitely not a good candidate for diabetes... but nobody asked me.

The week was pretty miserable. On day three, I started feeling very sick, even taking tons of ibuprofen, I still had a fever, and the most terrible headache of my life. Although I was miserable, I'm also glad that I had such an intense reaction, because at least now I don't have to wonder whether or not I received the drug. I really hope it helps me get better. I know this is not a realistic expectation, but I'm holding out some hope that maybe I'll be off insulin for a little bit. I could really use a break. I wonder how long it will take before I feel the effect....if any.