HOLD ON...HERE COMES 2007!!!

Had a good Christmas.....as good as it could be while working throughout the whole holidays!! The Ramada near where I work was overly kind and cooked us an entire Christmas Dinner for the whole team at work on Christmas day. That was very nice, very tasty and much apreciated!! Did manage to fit in a quick visit at my sister's house with all the family - and had a few others over the house. Busy times, but all great times!!

The picture is from the trek to Clam Harbor beach yesterday. I thought it wouuld be a great day to go to the beach and take pictures!! Well....seems the -10 degree temperature with the WINDS made for a very chilly visit! Still managed many good pics!

Made it through the holidays with good sugars....only thanks to the RT system. Did not overeat the sweets, so I feel like it was a sucessful holiday season HA! I'm all set for 2007. I don't usually make new years resolutions, but I am telling myself to take my multivitamin EVERY day...so we will see how that goes!!

Green Christmas?

Well Colorado has its share of snow now - but here....GREEN GREEN GREEN. I was out today for a long walk, +5 degrees (C) and no snow in the forcast! May be a green Christmas after all! Love the new camera, took hundreds of pics today, but now I want a snow storm just for the picture oppertunities!

RGMS/CGMS PROOF! Amazing Results

It has been 4 months since I started using the Minimed 522 CGMS pump with the glucose sensor.

I went a few weeks ago and had my first HA1c. I found out my results today - AMAZING! I know the value itself may not be amazing, but the CHANGE is what I find amazing!! Here is the outline:

Nov 2005 HA1c 8.0
Aug 2005 HA1c 7.7 (not much better!!!)
Aug 2006 Started Minimed Paradigm 522 sensor system
Nov 2006 HA1c 6.7

I went down a whole percent point, with no effort. The sensor did all the work - alarmed me when I was rising to high, and I would quickly correct. Simple as that! I find that I do not feel the slow creep - hyperglycemic unawareness. I will feel the high glucose feeling, but not until I hit arond 15 mmol/L. If I am sleeping, I will not wake up to feel the rise in glucose - and many many morning had terrible glucose values! This has been eliminated by the sensor system - it wakes me if my glucose goes outside of my desired range!

I work shift work, and have a very hectic lifestyle - so this 6.7 HA1c, with the 1% drop over 4 months - is the best Christmas present I could ever ask for! Enouch evidence for me!

Research is starting to show the same results. There have been multiple articles in the Diabetes Care Journal about the reduction in HA1c values - both published in November, 2006. I am gathering all this info to present to my insurance company soon! BUT not sure if the clinical guidelines for the use of the sensors is out and available for the insurance companies!?????

Murphy's Law!

Well Christmas is here!! This year's gift of choice, a new camera!! I am excited, but now the snow is no wheres to be found! We had one storm a few weeks ago, and I was out taking cool pics! Now....it is like fall again! Makes me wonder if we will have a white Christmas! I want to get out and take WINTER PICS!! I have the winter tires ready for action....bring on the snow!!

So update on my Pump Skin....still hanging on and doing great! Looks like the day it went on! I enjoy the little pick me ups...but I would really love to see Minimed come out with colored tubing, or colored infusion sets! I figure they can make the tubing and sets still translucent (so you can see bubbles etc)...a good marketing scheme! I sent my idea to Minimed, and got a standard letter back. That was about 2 years ago...makes me think I should send this idea again!!

Shall we hope!?

Diabetes Break-through?

I read about this in the National Post today, and as well on Kerry's Six Until Me site. By Human nature, I am impatient. I read this article, I want to see this in Human Trials right away - but I understand the process of research, and the time needed...

Either way, this is an amazing glimmer of hope - please have a read of the article! A nice Christmas present!

As for the gym visit yesterday it went well! Well sort of, Devin was actually booked to see me at a gym on the other side of town (whoops, a booking error)...so I was at one gym, and he was waiting for me at another gym across town. It all worked out ok, I rebooked for next week with him - and went solo and had a good workout at the gym. It was nice to get back at it. I have been averaging one gym visit every other week for the past month or two....I am going to up that to twice to three times a week (my week is an 8 day cycle),,,,writing it down is the first step...:)

Christmas must be near!

Finally I made the first step towards admitting Christmas is near!! I was out driving yesterday, and drove past my local Lion's club tree sale, and decided it was time to get going on the Christmas season!! The very nice folkes from the Lions Club helped me pick out a tree....as per my criteria.....

1. No higher then I can reach (As I stand with my hand high in the air)
2. Able to fit into my VW with nothing sticking out of the car as I drive....
3. Nothing living in it that I would take home....HA, as funny as that sounds, the man took the tree and gave it a good shake to accounce to any occupants it was time to vacate!

So there I was, with a tree in the car, Christmas music on the radio...all set! I got the cheapest of the cheapest tree stands, a few decorations and headed home!! All went well, as you can tell by the picture. No one injured, a lot of SAP on my hands - but it went up so easily! Sadly, none of the gifts under the tree are for me, they are all for my family :(

So now unrelated, I am heading to the gym today. I took a few months off (Go ahead, tell me I am lazy. I called it a vacation) but today I am back at it. Booked in with Devin, my favorite trainer - so today I am back at it.....we'll see how the sensor stands up, but it is going to be nice to know ahead of time when my glucose will be dropping during a workout, rather then hitting the wall in the middle of my cardio.....then stumbling to the locker....digging out some form of glucose, you know the drill!! I will let you know how it goes - if I make it out alive :)

Stormy Week

Well this week ended in a wild stormy way. SNOW STORMY!! Two stormy nights and here is the talley:

1. Bruised right hip....first step out, fell flat on my a**
2. Broken rear wipre on the VW. Maybe from the weight of the snow...maybe from my cleaning of the 15cm of snow off the car to prevent freezing...whoops!
3. Furnace broken x twice. OUCH.
4. 1 mouse in the house.......who really likes peanut butter, and is talented at eating it off the trap without setting the trap off....until this morning.....
5. Every morning the lovely E-2 error on my meter (I like to keep the room cool while I sleep!!!)
6. Many beautiful pictures!!!!!

Love winter! (???)

Using Carelink and your MAC computer.....don't give up, it worked for me!

Woke early this morning to capture the beauty of the first snowfall of the year, and it was worth it! I am sure it was a nice sight, I was out in my PJ's decked out with the winter gear.....and my camera!

Yesterday I spent about an hour on the phone with Minimed technical support, and they were very helpful! I called about several unexplained calibration errors I was having with the past few sensors. There is a new protocol with Minimed - that they need to look at your carelink data to help diagnose the problem. Now the issue - I use a MAC computer - and Minimed is very open about the fact that they do not support MAC computers with their internet based carelink program and have no plans of changing that in the future.

I had dealt with this issue back in September, by installing WindowsXP on my macbook (with the intel chip) - I am able to boot into WIndows and it runs fine. Minimed told me this would not work, that the USB cable would not have the correct drivers and would not be recognized. WELL MAC USERS don't loose faith. It worked fine and has been working fine for me. The Minimed rep wanted to call my local rep and get her to come to my house so I could use their laptop to upload my data. That was a nice offer, but really - my local rep is overloaded with work as it is, I am sure coming the 2hr drive to my house for a data upload if not going to be high on the list of priorities!

Either way, I explained to the technical support agent that I have had no issues uploading my data to the carelink system through my MAC, running WIndows XP ..... they had to believe me when they saw my current data online! They are not allowed to tell people that this will work for people using MAC that have an intel chip ... in case someone goes out and pays the $100 for the windows XP (with service pack 2) and have it not work for some reason. BUT IT DID FOR ME!

So I spent an hour going through the carelink data - The agent was explaining ISIG values and just exactly how a calibration error is calculated. And how important it is to do about 4 calibrations a day, and no more then that. Interesting.....but it was nice to be able to pick his brain! I have not been using the carelink faithfully, it is a little bit of a pain to have to reboot into the windows - but I am going to try to do it once every 2 weeks to see how thinkgs are going. I like to look at trends and overall values.

So what can you take from this? If you are using a MAC with an intel chip, and this CGMS system - you can use the carelink by running Windows XP through bootcamp. Medtronic is not planning on addressing this issue so do not wait for them, and they can not tell you to go out and try this technique.

Secondly - don't ever hesitate to call the helpline. I have always had 100% success dealing with them - an assest.

Cheers!

Warm your testers....

Well I think today Winter will find us. There is a snowfall warning for New Brunswick and Newfoundland....30 + cm snow. We in Nova Scotia will get mostly rain, with a few cm of snow (which means a real mess). Sadly this is the start. The start of the mad rush for winter tires (not to mention the cold weather pushes people into the stores to SHOP for Christmas!!!).

But really, my heart goes out to all of the testers of this world. Today is the day we have to start thinking about the dear old E-2 errors....telling us our meters are too cold! Someone needs to create meter sweaters...or a meter duvet to keep these suckers warm! I am sure there are lots of tricks and trades used by people out there in meter land - I stick to my sure fire method of sticking it in my pocket for a minute or two. Usually taking the chill off it is all that is needed. Hard core cold days require the meter to be put right against my skin - like sticking an ice cube into your armpit......COLD!

Tis the season....warm your meters, I think winter is fastly approaching!

Cheers!