Merry Christmas

It's almost 5:00p here in the east and a hush is beginning to fall over our town and will work its way across the country as the sun sets. I wanted to take a moment to wish you a Merry Christmas. I follow several of your blogs and thoroughly enjoy keeping up with you and your families... many of you are almost an extension of my own.

Before I sign-off, I wanted to leave you with the Christmas story as taken from the New International Version of the Bible, the book of Luke, 2nd chapter. (If you're not familiar with the Bible, the numbers are for reference... just read over them and my appologies for not removing them for easier reading.)

The Birth of Jesus

1In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3And everyone went to his own town to register.

4So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels

8And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

9An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 12This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

13Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

15When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

16So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Merry Christmas everyone and may the Lord richly bless you!

Christmas Music Meme

I seem to be late to respond the these memes and this seems to be no exception. I started responding quite a few days ago and for some reason didn't get it published. I was tagged by 'G-Money' George over at The Born Again Diabetic (B.A.D.) Blog. So here goes with my top 5 selections in Christmas music.

My bottom 4 are pretty easy as they are all Transiberian Orchestra songs. In fact you could list any of the songs off the Christmas Eve and Other Stories CD and you would pick songs I really like, but I'll list my favorites for you.

5. Good King Joy - This is a great song, it starts really slow and mellow and then builds till about 3:00 minutes it breaks into a blusey, dialected narrative of the Christmas story. Great stuff!

4. Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)

3. The First Noel

2. Prince of Peace

1. Holy Night - My mom was a public school music teacher and was responsible for the musical portion of several PTA programs throughout the year. She taught at a different school than I attended. Regardless, my attendance was mandatory, but I didn't really mind. She was a very good pianist and one year I heard her accompany a male teacher whose awesome bass voice really did justice to this song.

I cherish her memory every time I hear this song.

The Frugal PWD

I'm attempting something new today in the way of infusion set management. It started a couple of months ago after the check-out lady at my pharmacy said she had four boxes of 9mm canula Quick Sets with 47" tubing and didn't want to use them anymore as she was switching to the 6mm - 23" tubing sets. She asked me if I wanted them, otherwise they were going in the trash bin. Naturally I was appalled at the idea of discarding these precious necessities and immediately said I would take and use them or else find them a good home.

A few days later we made the handoff and they have been sitting upstairs for serveral weeks while I tried to decide how to best utilize these little blessings from heaven.

Let me digress for just a moment and tell you that I only use my mid-section for infusion set placement. I don't think I have enough fat to try other spots comfortably. My method is to draw an imaginary horizontal line around myself from my spinal column to my mid-front, starting about 1" above my pelvic bone. At the first of the month I start placing infusion sets as far back as I can reach and with each successive set change I move forward slightly over half the width of the set being careful to not cover the previous puncture site. I generally use 8 sets per month or two per week. (I read that many of you experience bad sets but I've simply not had this experience.) At the beginning of the next month I draw another imaginary horizontal line approximately 1 1/2" above the previous line and start over again at the back, moving forward with each change as before. After three months I go to the other side.

By doing it this way there is only the remote possiblity that I could hit the exact same point twice in one year. So far this has worked well for me.

Back to my story. Since I have more fat on my stomach than on my lower back I'm using my standard 6mm sets for the first two weeks of the month and then the 9mm's as I work around towards the fattier front. Today's set change felt comfortable so I think I'm on the right track.

I wear my pump on my belt so I don't need (or like) the 47" tubing. Since my previous 23" tubing should be OK (right?), after I inserted the set I switched back to my old pre-primed 23" tubing. I finished by doing a .5 unit fixed prime.

As I write this at approximately 10:00p ET, everything is going well. I did wake up high this morning, for reasons I can't totally explain and it took me till slightly after noon to drive my readings back into the normal range. Since then my readings have been within reason.

Talk about the things we do save a few bucks, but as we all know this can be an expensive condition, especially when trying to maintain tight numbers.

I going to try to use these 9mm sets for the remainder of the month. I'll keep you posted should I encounter any problems.

Sign Of The Times

Thursday I had a half-day board meeting for the local non-profit entity I serve. One of my fellow board members works for a nationwide credit card firm whose telemarketing center is located right up the road and he was nice to procure a large state-of-the-art conference room for us to use.

While visiting the men's room at this facility I noticed half-full Sharp's container mounted on the wall. Upon closer inspection I saw it was filled with disposable insulin pen needles and assorted used test strips. This came as somewhat of a shock to me. I don't think I've heard of a non-medical related firm that makes these containers available to their employees. It makes me wonder does this firm employ an above average number of PWDs or is this somehow representative of the population as a whole? Maybe East TN has an above average population of PWDs... I don't know.

Overall we have a hard working demographic, but standing at the entrance to Wal-Mart for a few minutes you can tell most folks here aren't going to win a twiggy look alike contest. On the other hand I think this is true for most of America.

Regardless it's nice that this firm provides Sharps containers for its employees. In the past there have been many days I carried around a used syringe in my pocket or I broke off the needle, put the needle back in the cap and put the cap back on the syringe before throwing the whole assembly in the trash. It would have been nice to dispose my syringes in a legitimate fashion... at least while at work.

That Was Easy

I finally took a few minutes to convert to Blogger Beta and it was amazing quick and simple. (Murphy must have been looking the other way!) I probably won't look at all the cool new features till after the New Year rolls in, but it will be nice to comment on blogs again.

Frustration

I've been attempting to leave comments on other blogs for a couple of days without much success. I've tried using not only my standard browser - IE7, but also Firefox but neither is successful so I guess the only thing to try is to upgrade to the new blogger. I was trying to put this off for awhile as Murphy tends to jump up and insert himself in these situations, but if I'm going to continue to be a part of the blogging community it looks like now is the time for action.

If I'm down for a while you'll know I'm merely having a long chat with Murphy!

Man It's Early

Well here I sit at 5:30 in the morning… awake and feeling pretty good, but I’d rather be in bed catching a few more Z’s before the alarm goes off. Unfortunately I don’t think the ‘feeling good’ will hold as I’ve been awake since 3:45. That’s when I fought myself out of a fitful sleep and realized I’m probably having a hypo. I traipsed downstairs and sure enough the meter popped up a 54. I’m now 216 with 30 minutes of insulin on board and a little frustrated that I once again over corrected. Fortunately I didn’t blow it badly, but still I overate.

Recently it’s come to my attention that I’ve gotten slightly sloppy with my diet and since we’re going to Texas to visit kin and friends shortly after Christmas I’m taking some time to focus on calorie/carb reduction. I think I’ve mentioned here before that I try to keep my TDD < 40. I use this as just a broad indicator that I’m hitting my reduced (well actually my daily goal) carb requirements. Yes I realize this is not a perfect system as it leaves very little room for stress or other non-food induced spikes and their subsequent correction boluses. So far this month I’ve done pretty well: 36.6, 35.7, 35.0, 33.7, 35.6, down from several weeks of 45+ TDDs. It will probably take a small correction bolus to bring me down into range this morning, plus I have a prayer luncheon today where I’ll have to monitor food intake closely.

Well hypos happen and I refuse to let them (or just about anything else) rob me of the incredible joy of life.

I see now that it’s slightly after 6:00a so it’s time to get this day rolling. Hope everyone has a totally awesome day!