Friend health status - sleeping and borgs

Hola!

So says Casey, our chief photographer for this post. Casey's health is cute and sassy, as always. Jordan, Ben and Mark are also all doing well. Me, I'm GREAT. I wanted to share with you my new borg body parts. Marcus -not-so-well. He has Mono. But, we'll get to that.

As you all know, I have Diabetes. I've had an insulin pump for about 9 years now, having got it when I was preggers with Benjamin. I love it, and it has made my life much more 'normal'. About 2 years ago there came along another new invention that can drastically help me in my quest to have better control over those blood glucose values (better known as blood sugars) that just love to vasilate on me.

The device is called a Continuous Blood Glucose Monitor, or CGMS. What it does is test my blood sugars every 2 minutes. Yep, every 2 minutes! Now that's a lot you say, yes, but I was recently up to 8-10 times a day, and that was by sticking my finger. The CGMS does it by no blood letting, rather by electrical stuff (that's too complicated to explain here). With all this data I can see if I'm going up, or down or staying level (that doesn't happen often, hence the diabetes diagnosis.) I call it my robotic or Borg body part.

While home in July I purchased one of these CGMS (there are only 3 companies that make them right now). I chose the Navigator system because of it's accuracy. It's pretty accurate, as I've tested it against traditional blood sticks. Best of all I can see my 'trends' now. That's techy terms for 'going up, down or level.' For instance, I've found that I can drop from an 80 to a 60 in 3 minutes! (Normal is between 80 and 120). This information is VERY important because before I would test and be 80 and say, "Great!" and do nothing. Now I can see 80, and see that I'm going down rapidly and quickly eat something before I get too low.

I wear a sensor and transmitter on my arm. It lasts 5 days (but I've been able to 'trick' it and have it last 12) before I change it. The hardest part is getting the tape to stay stuck. But we think we've finally figured that out. We stick it, glue it, then tape over the orginal tape. Yes, it's a process, but it makes the sensors last longer, they're about $40 a piece! It looks big, and is kind of bulky, but the part actually going into my skin is about as thick as 3-4 fishing lines and about 1/4 of an inch long.

The receiver is what receives the information the sensor gets. That's made me adjust what I wear a lot. I need pockets!! The receiver displays my blood sugar and an arrow that goes straight up or down if I'm going up or down really fast, another arrow if I'm going up or down moderately is at a 45-degree angle. Last is a horizontal arrow if I'm staying level. I've learned not to trust this arrow too much, but the vertical arrow I really move on!

The pump is the black one with the tubing line coming out of it. That puts the insulin into me. So this is how it works.

I am about to eat something. I look it over for the carbohydrate amount and calculate.

I enter the carbs into my pump.

The pump tell me how much insulin I need and I put that in via the tubing.

I then enter the carbs and the insulin into my Navigator.

The Navigator then shows this information on the graph.

Yes I do a LOT of math everytime I eat. Good thing I'm smart!

I'm feeling much better these days, and I've really learned a lot about how to properly program and adjust my insulin amounts. I also know now that I can exercise mildly for 10 minutes and drop my blood sugar by 20 points in 20 minutes, and it will continue to drop for another hour. If I exercise really hard it can really mess me up. Still working on that.

Now on to Marcus. He has mono. This is what he looked like this past week.

Yeah, really inspiring. He seems to be doing better now after a week of almost solid sleep, tylenol, ibuprofen and steroids. He didn't go to school at all last week. We were blessed in that it was only a 4-day week. He'll start back to school tomorrow and take naps during his prep times. Wish us luck! Good thing he's a good student, or this could have really set him back!