Sunday, July 17, 2011

Here, there, and everywhere...a recap

I'm a bit scatter-brained tonight.  Actually, I have been for a few days.  You'll have to forgive me.  I think we're in the midst of growth-spurt-hell at the moment.  Lily's numbers have been plummetting for about a week.  Especially at night, which means I get very little sleep.  We go to the gym and I drop them off in the child care center.  Pick them up two hours later and test her...she's been in the 40s.  I've had to resort to giving her 15g of carbs for free each time.  Can't dose her for her bedtime snack or we spend all evening trying to keep her bgs up.  And I've had to set her pump on a temporary basal for overnight.  I've found that even with an 80% basal, she's dropping 50-100 by the time she wakes up in the morning.  Funny cause I used to tell people..."at least she was diagnosed young and will never know any different."  Yeah, not so much.  They know different.  And instead of being able to go through all her growth spurts without the added complications of diabetes, growth spurts have the potential to become fatal!  Life with diabetes is never dull!

Anyway, just thought I'd give a bit of a recap of my last week to update on a few things.  I had my appointment with the urologist.  Oh, how fun was that!  Picture this....you're lying on an exam table with stirrups and all and you have not one, not two, but three (seriously, three!) doctors examining you and asking you to cough, sneeze, bear-down, in attempts to get you to "leak".  Yup.  Good times.  But I did walk away with a course of action.  I'm going to devote myself whole-heartedly to physical therapy with a sports medicine clinic in an effort to avoid surgery or other invasive actions.  Because the three doctors incident was invasive enough for my tastes!

I did it.  I volunteered for JDRF.  They had an email out about a month or so ago.  Asking for applications for mentors and mentioning that they specifically needed mentors who were comfortable talking to parents of newly diagnosed infants and toddlers.  So, I filled in the info and sent it in.  And then had to go to a training session.  It was actually kind of nice.  I got to meet a few other people with diabetes, one who was diagnosed later and is currently comtemplating pregnancy.  And I met another T1-mom with a T1-child!  Now I just need to wait for them to send me the names of people who want to be contacted by a mentor.  Kind of nice to be doing something though.  I think I've been feeling a lack of usefulness to the d-communtiy since Lily's diagnosis.  I just don't want parents to have to go through that loneliness and devastation that a diabetes diagnosis brings in the beginning.  At least, not without a little support and a shoulder to cry on!

Okay...fitness, weight-loss, and all that.  Things have changed again.  I've dropped off on the strength-training lately.  Actually, I shouldn't call it dropping off.  I suppose it's more of a scaling back.  I've decided to do strength-training every other week instead of twice a week.  And I actually kind of like it this way.  I'm concentrating more on controlling the weight on the machine instead of just increasing the weight.  I increase when I'm ready to, but for the most part, it seems to do my muscles more good if I concentrate on training safely and not just trying to push myself to do more.  And I'm finding that I actually like that little bit of achy-soreness that comes from lifting weights this way!  On the weeks that I'm not strengthening, I'm concentrating on those high-intensity cardio workouts.  I've beeing doing the "sprint-training" where I do 90 seconds of a slower pace followed by 30 seconds of fast-enough-to-give-me-a-heart-attack.  I'm finding it's actually really effective in pulling my tummy in and making me feel so much better about my body!  I'm still focusing on my icky, blubbery spots more than I should, but at least my body is capable of so much more!  I've come to a realization about my weight-loss though....I'm thinking I need to focus a whole lot of energy on my diet.  Blach!  I don't want to though!  I have a horrible sweet tooth (I blame my mom...it was all that stealing my Halloween candy stuff when I was a kid).  I think I need to give up the treats that I indulge in far too often.  Right now, I have a container of Caramel Nut Chocolate Clusters on the counter.  They need to go.  Each one has 110 calories!  Not saying I can't indulge a teeny tiny bit...but, I've been indulging way too much!  I need to cut it back by a lot, add in more lean protein, and a whole lot of fresh vegetables.  It's going to be a struggle.  But I need to do it if I want to see any kind of loss from here on out!

Okay, one last thing before I sign off for the night...my confession for the post!  Here it is....I took the kids to a local, small meat-and-produce shop the other day.  After shopping, I put the kids in the car, loaded the groceries in.  And forgot that the cart was pushed up against the front of my car.  Backed out of my spot and the cart when zooming across the parking lot and crashed into the cart of another shopper.  Luckily it didn't hit her.  But...I should have stopped and gotten out and apologized.  I felt horrible!  But I didn't.  I just headed home.  And now, I still feel horrible!  Sometimes, it's just better to do the polite and right thing immediately!  I need to keep that in mind.

3 comments:

  1. Good for you for becoming a mentor!! I hope families can find support more quickly than I did.

    I know you feel bad about the shopping cart, but if no one was hurt it is a bit funny. Did the person yell at you?

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  2. Seriously, we are gonna know all the deep and dark secrets of Cindy with this "confession bit".

    AND...YEP, YEP, YEP on the food. I can say that I know this from experience. I could run my ass off everyday .... and hardly lose a thing. The only real weight loss came when I decided to shape up my diet. I eat tons of veggies and fruit. I do limit calories. In the beginning I cut them down to 1500/day. It WORKED. YOU.CAN.DO.IT. xo

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  3. Love the recap!
    Glad you are going to be mentor...it's so important in those first few days, weeks, to have someone who's been there before!
    I was worried that you were going to run over the cart with your own car! Bummer it ran into someone else's cart, but I totally had to giggle about it!
    I so hear you on the food thing. It's amazing how complaining about how you feel like a cow (speaking of myself here!!) while eating a bowl of ice cream really doesn't do much for the not feeling like a cow anymore!! ;) I'm with you on making a change!!

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