Category: Health & Well Being

Don’t Answer Yourself!

I was doing dishes a week ago and thinking about a particularly difficult situation that a colleague is going through. While contemplating some of the associated policy and rules behind what he would be facing, my wife noticed my lips moving and realized that I was talking to myself. To be honest, I hadn’t even noticed I was doing it at the time. But I admit its a practice I’ve indulged in a lot. And so should you.

During our infant and childhood years, we indulge in self-talk a great deal. Whether it’s to act out whatever game we’re playing or simply to babble on (in my son’s case, he effectively never shuts up whether there’s a person in the room or not), it’s a part of who we are. Our brains don’t differentiate between actively thinking or speaking those thoughts out loud.

However, as we reach adulthood most of us tend to eliminate the practice from our lives or keep a tight lid on it. Maybe from embarrassment or negative correction from a parent or influential person in our lives, there’s a societal stigma against talking to yourself. For the most part, if we see someone talking to themselves we tend to associate it with mental health issues. But believe it or not, it’s perfectly normal to talk to oneself and can actually have some benefits.

According to an article posted by Big Think entitled, “5 reasons talking to yourself is good for you,” they touch on a few of these reasons and they seem to make a lot of sense. Especially when you consider that some of them were taught to me by teachers in high school and college. These reasons include the fact that self-talk can help augment your cognitive performance, helps you to encourage yourself and can be an effective means of talking yourself down.

The article also goes on to explain how self-talk can be a means of developing self-control, but the one that sticks in my mind the most is that it reinforces memory. Whenever I would have difficulty with something I was studying in college, my professors would encourage me to read the material out loud. This helps the reader to retain the information more effectively as it involves an active participation in the absorption of information.

One of my favourite perspectives comes from Dr. Jessica Nicolosi, a clinical psychologist who was quoted in an article by NBCNews.com as saying, “If we speak out loud, it forces us to slow down our thoughts and process them differently because we engage the language centers of our brain.” I’ve noticed this effect when I’m reading bedtime stories to my son. It always seems as though my mind is taking in the words and processing them WAY faster than my mouth can spit them out, and it often causes me to skip over entire paragraphs.

My son’s too clever to let me off the hook and usually has me back it up a notch, but sometimes we need to slow ourselves down and talking to oneself can be an effective way to do it. Just to be clear, we’re talking about an ACTIVE participation in talking to oneself, not the result of a mental health issues or hallucinations. If you decide it’s a good idea to have a conversation with your microwave at two in the morning after eating magic mushrooms, we’re in a different arena of discussion and you should probably re-evaluate your life’s choices.

Talking to yourself can also be an extremely effective way of preparing for something that causes you anxiety. Anytime I’ve had to do something that would involve speaking for long periods in front of people such as giving presentation, providing guided tours or teaching any kind of a session to someone, I’ll usually “present” to myself in order to be prepared to do it to others. This not only acts as a sort of rehearsal before speaking in front of others, it can also allow you top time yourself in real time, since our minds process faster than we speak.

The bottom line is that talking to yourself is not only normal, it’s healthy. It can lend a number of benefits and even though most people don’t admit to it, almost everybody does it. My grandfather always used to say that it’s perfectly fine to talk to yourself… as long as you don’t start answering yourself! ☯

Ohm, Excuse Me…

Do you have a personal mantra? Do you have ANY mantra? What the hell is a mantra, anyway? The term is used fairly often in modern society. Not a month goes by where I don’t hear someone say, “Oh, yes! It’s my personal mantra…” For the most part, they’re referring to some clever quip or saying that they feel has significant impact on their daily lives and/or their existence. But what is an actual mantra, and what purpose does it serve?

Simply and traditionally speaking, a mantra is defined as “a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation.” Typically originating from the Hindu or Buddhist faiths, the using of a mantra focuses your active mind’s attention in such a way that it allows your thoughts and mind to float freely. It can help with relaxation and does, in fact, focus your meditation. It can be extremely handy if you’re a newcomer to the meditation scene and are having difficulty sitting still or concentrating.

That being said, I should reiterate a point I’ve often made in the past that there are various forms of meditation, from the traditional image most people have as illustrated above, to moving meditations such as Tai Chi or even Yoga. Not every method and/or form will require a mantra, and not every mantra is a simple “ohm.” It can be pretty much anything you choose, so long as it works to help you focus and concentrate.

Personally, I don’t use a mantra when I meditate. I prefer silence or some soft background music with forest or ocean sounds. By focusing on these sounds, I’m focusing my mind. I’ve usually referred to this as an “external mantra.” Silence can also be an effective mantra, since focusing solely on the silence and concentrating on it will have most of the same benefits as an active, repetitive mantra.

Depending on what school of thought you prescribe to, the use of the mantra “ohm” causes a reverberation throughout the body that religious monks believe has spiritual or religious effects on the body. I couldn’t find a stock photo to demonstrate it and I’m too cheap to buy one, but there is a Hindu symbol that represents “ohm,” (also spelled aum or om) and you can hit up Wikipedia under “mantra” if you want to see it. It’s been made popular in such a way that the symbol is represented on yoga gear, jewellery and clothing apparel.

On a last note, a personal mantra is something a bit different. This usually involves a saying or quote that resonates with a person and has a direct impact on how they live their life. Something along the lines of, “Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza…” Anyone who recognizes that quote will understand how badly I just aged myself, but it’s usually something a person repeats or states to themselves or others often but has nothing to do with an actual mantra or meditation.

Although you don’t NEED a mantra in order to meditate, it can be a handy and useful practice to help you focus and concentration when doing so. Sometimes life makes it a bit difficult to find a quiet moment to meditate and a mantra can also help block the outside world. In fact, there are some YouTube videos with hours of mantra chanting, for those who want to have a listen at what it should sound like. ☯

Social Distancing Should Also Be Social Media Distancing

I know that anyone who’s read the majority of my posts will be aware that I’m not a big fan of social media. For those who are new here and may not be aware: I’m not a big fan of social media… In all seriousness, I consider social media to be somewhat harmful. Not because it’s inherently harmful in and of itself, but because some people choose to use it in harmful ways.

I’ve been off the social media scene for almost two years now, having done away with the likes of SnapChat and Facebook, due to issues they caused me in my professional life. I was partly responsible for these issues, since no person is ever ABSOLUTELY responsibility-free in any given issue, but after I learned the damage that having other people on social media caused, I chose to step away.

As the world continues to turn, the population continue to become more and more dependent on social media for even the smallest of social interactions. Everything from applying for jobs to dating, the more time passes, the more people are depending on their computers and their devices to do the talking for them. And as convenient as some of it may be (I’ve applied to a number of jobs online, it sure saves driving around and physically handing out resumes) there are some significant pitfalls, as well.

In some ways, a lot of ways, we’re slowly losing touch with our own humanity. No, I don’t mean that we’re all suddenly becoming robots. But we certainly are beginning to resemble automatons. I challenge any of you to walk through a public area, even one where a person should be paying attention to their surroundings such as the grocery store, and you’ll notice that the majority of the population have their faces buried in the screen of a smartphone.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m at the grocery store I pay attention to the aisle I’m in and the groceries I’m looking for. Weird concept, right? You would think that checking your Twitter or Facebook could wait until AFTER you’ve completed your errands. And no one really needs you to SnapChat the nachos you found at 20% off, regardless of how excited you may be.

In some ways, a lot of ways, I totally understand the compulsion. There’s an almost surreal addictive feeling behind some of the social media platforms that are out there. Up until late 2018, I would compulsively check my phone dozens of times throughout the work day, no matter what I had on the go. Nowadays I tend to limit myself quite a bit more, checking my phone only for phone calls and email purposes and occasionally searching for things that I’m curious or researching on.

A good example of how we’re stepping away from our humanity involves a story I’d like to share with you. I have a friend who used to be absolutely obsessed with online singles’ sites. In fact, over the course of a few very short years, he completely did away with meeting women in person, and depended solely on finding online profiles and attempting to meet people in this fashion. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying there’s necessarily anything wrong with meeting someone new online. But if it causes you to lose the ability to approach someone in person, then it can be more harmful than good.

The digital frontier allows people to present themselves in any way they see fit. Occasionally, this won’t be in keeping with their realistic selves and people get some rather nasty surprises when they meet in person. That’s only one of the pitfalls. Don’t even get me started on meeting someone online who ends up being of an opposing gender than you thought they’d be, or a creeper who’s trying to meet with minors. But I digress…

My friend spent a few years trying to meet “the one” through many of these singles’ sites. He went on some dates and even started some semi-lasting relationships with them. But they never lasted. Not in the way he wanted. I used to encourage him to go out somewhere and do it the old fashion way. Go sit at a coffee shop with a book and a beverage. You spot someone from across the room, your eyes meet, you share a smile and you walk over and introduce yourself. Maybe you chat for a while. Then you work up the courage to ask if they’d like to meet for coffee again. Maybe they say yes and offer up their phone number.

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I believe this kind of thing still happens. Although not quite as I described above, I met my wife the old-fashioned way; live and in person. My friend finally yielded to my persistence and attempted to meet someone in person. His experience was grand. He attended a local book store and introduced himself to a woman and asked her if she could recommend a good book she may have read (pretty smooth, I thought). They hit it off and even went out once or twice. They ultimately moved on from one another, but the experience changed his perspective of the online scene.

Dating is only one aspect, but it’s an easy one to write about. But for the most part, our dependence on the Internet and social media is slowly pulling us away from the actual world around us. Although the world is currently caught in the throes of social distancing, there’s still a big, beautiful world out there. And it would be a shame if people completely disconnected from it in exchange for the cold, pixelated screen of a smart device. ☯

Burn, Baby, Burn…

If you’re anything like me, you enjoy the smell of incense. I particularly enjoy the smell of an incense that’s available locally called “Ocean.” But there are number of more traditional scents, such as sage and sandalwood. And I once read somewhere that the word “incense” is based on the latin term meaning “to burn,” which is kinda cool.

Incense incense burning is usually done in order to produce a particular scent within the surrounding room, but it’s been long associated with the martial arts, religious practices and ceremonies and rituals. In fact, while growing up in the Catholic church I would often attend services with my family where the priest would walk around and “bless” the congregation by shaking a device called a “censer,” which contains burning powdered incense.

Some religions will use burning incense as a way of blessing things, warding off bad spirits or during ritual practices. Most convents and temples of varying faiths will usually have incense burning for one reason or another. Some people burn it within their home just for the pleasant scent (pleasant being a relative term, since my wife tolerates the incense I use but isn’t a huge fan if it).

Is incense a good idea? Like most things in life, there are good and bad aspects to incense burning, especially within one’s home. First of all, let’s agree that burning incense creates smoke. In all cases, breathing in smoke of any kind is never a good idea. This isn’t a new concept; the medical world has been talking about the dangers of smoke inhalation for decades. Ever sit too close to a camp fire? Once the breeze conveniently turns the smoke towards you, breathing easy is the last thing you get to do.

Depending on where you purchase/obtain your incense, they’re mostly made from natural ingredients. This doesn’t mean that it’s any better for you. After all, tobacco and marihuana are natural products but they’re no better for your lungs. But modern incense that you buy at your local retail chain can contain preservatives, chemicals and artificial products that can release carcinogens into the air.

You can Google some research initiatives that were done in the past twenty years. increased levels of incense burning has been linked to certain forms of lung cancer, asthma, tissue inflammation and even rashes. I have no idea how much incense you’d have to burn to be affected by these hazards and ideally, you should be burning incense in a well-ventilated area.

At the end of the day, incense has been around for way longer than we have. Make sure to light and burn it safely, since it is a fire hazard and try not to use it in confined spaces. I have a bad habit of lighting a stick of incense during my workouts in the basement of my home. It’s not so bad when I’m doing forms, but it gets a little hard to breathe when I’m doing something intense like a circuit workout or weights. Actually, that’s kinda what led me to write this post. Burn with care, folks! ☯

Cause And Effect ⚖️

I used to love physics in high school. Yes, I was one of those freaks; I even took some of the advanced physics classes in my senior year for extra credit. A part of me gets a headache every time I even THINK about some of the concepts we studied in those classes, while another part of me absolutely immersed myself in it and considered it the highlight of my high school years. And no, before you ask I didn’t carry a pocket protector or have a little strip of tape holding my glasses together.

I had an interesting discussion over a week ago about the concept of karma. Much like most of us have at some point, some folks try to seek out some form of faith and are uncertain where to look. During this discussion, it was mentioned that the concept of karma was considered more as a result of cause and effect as opposed to some form of intervention from a divine presence. I think this was an interesting comment, especially since that’s basically what karma is; cause and effect.

Nature and the universe has a way of balancing itself out. Think about the course of your day and how things end up. If you walk up to a hornet’s nest and kick it, you’ll get stung. Cause and effect. And this happens in just about every aspect of our lives. Looking at it simply from a physics perspective, Isaac Newton once explained that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. He was mostly referring to the exercised forces on objects that counteract one another, but the concept is very much the same.

The so-called “Law of cause and Effect” states that every effect has a specific and predictable cause and every cause or action has a specific and predictable effect. The back and forth that takes place within this law is a result of the choices you make, the decisions you take and the path you choose to pursue in life. Sounds a bit like karma to me…🤷‍♂️

I could get into Einstein’s theory of special relativity and REALLY give everyone a nosebleed (myself included), but quantum physiques was never a specialty or forte of mine. If you want to seriously fall down the rabbit hole without the benefit of a net, feel free to Google “causality” and see how long it takes before you need several shots of Fireball to make the buzzing in your head come to a stop. But I digress…

Karma, such as it is, is defined as the effect on one’s life from accumulated causes they’ve generated. Yes, within Buddhist terminology, karma is considered as “the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.” I think that’s pretty spot on, and whether you buy into the concept of reincarnation or moving on to another form of existence, the message if pretty simple: live well and you’ll be well. Live badly and you may live badly.

Something from my Catholic upbringing is working its way up to the surface… Something about living by the sword means dying by the sword… Really, if you look closely enough at most schools of faith and even people who believe themselves to be Atheists (because believing in nothing is still believing in SOMETHING, but I’ll save that for another day), there’ll be something similar or identical to this concept.

So effectively, I’m sure you’ve noticed that those who intentionally do wrong, live a life of violence, commit crimes and harm others, usually don’t go on to retire at a ripe old age, hugging their grandchildren while sipping lemonade on the porch. There’s a lot to be said for living a “good” life and doing “good” things. No matter what your faith or your thoughts, living as pure and noble a life is what every person should aspire to. ☯

CGM Is A No-Go…

Well, damn! Just shy of three weeks after starting on Continuous Glucose Monitoring with my new insulin pump, I’ve discontinued its use and I have no idea if I’ll be able to get back on it. I’ve already described some of the problems I started out with, using CGM in a post from last week entitled Step By Step, Day By Day… but the past week has been even worse. In twenty days, I burned through a seventy-day supply of CGM sensors. How did I get here?

The first instance is described in the linked post, so I won’t get into THAT one, but even that one gets me to my second sensor on the second day, which should only have happened after seven days. Luckily, the second sensor lasted the full week. I was elated and happy, and just a little bit impressed at how the pump would instantly stop and start delivering insulin based on my blood sugar levels. It wasn’t responding quite as quickly as I would have hoped, given some of there highs and lows I had, but I guess the idea is to get levels to taper off as opposed to just suddenly dropping a high.

But anyway, the third sensor I placed barely lasted twenty-four hours. Two workouts and some hot showers later and the adhesive dried out and the sensor slipped. After about a week and a half I was already on my fourth sensor, which should have lasted me a month! No small wonder that I’ve grown frustrated and have taken a break from CGM.

It seems as though all these little problems, lack of adhesive, faulty sensors, bad sites full of scar tissue, etc… are a repeat occurrence for me. Consistent physical activity, especially long bike rides in the sunny, Saskatchewan heat, doesn’t bode well for CGM. I’ve even tried wrapping band-aids around the adhesive site in an effort to try and keep the site intact, to no avail.

The night before last was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I noticed that the adhesive was starting to lift on the current sensor, which still had six days left before requiring replacement. In an effort to keep from having issues, I added additional bandages to keep the damn thing in place. Next thing I know, my pump gives me a message indicating that the sensor was “updating” and not to calibrate. It was also nice enough to tell me that this process could take up to three hours. Lovely…

When it finally allowed me to test my blood sugar and calibrate, it didn’t accept the reading and told me to wait 15 minutes and test again. I did just that. Instead of accepting the calibration, it once again told me that it was “updating” and not to test. I checked my instructional guides and didn’t find any reference to this. In my frustration, I sit tight and wait for this so-called update.

The pump finally tells me that the sensor is not functioning and to replace it. I blow air through pursed lips and install a brand new sensor. I get the typical message advising me that the warm-up may take up to two hours. It’s almost ten o’clock in the evening and my wife heads off to bed, wishing me good luck in getting my CGM working.

After the two hours, I provided two calibrations before having the damned thing tell me that the sensor isn’t working and to replace it. I’ll admit that I totally lost my shit and tore all of it out. I turned off the CGM option on my pump and installed a leftover FreeStyle Libre on my tricep. I made it to bed shortly after 1 o’clock in the morning with firm thoughts of telling CGM to go fuck itself. But I digress…

It just goes to show that issues with Diabetes aren’t limited to the body. The technology that’s meant to make our lives easier can very much be a problem as well. I have fourteen days on the current FreeStyle sensor, so I’m taking a break. Perhaps once I’ve had a break, I’ll return o it and try with a renewed sense of purpose. For now, it appears that my Diabetic journey towards becoming part machine has ground to a halt. ☯

I’ll Just Leave This Right Here…

I’m usually pretty loud and wordy, a trait that I’m quite confident I inherited from my mother. Although I usually have the ability to control my volume and she’s pure-blooded French-Acadian and for a gentle woman, her voice not only carries volumes, it never stops. ANYWAY… I sincerely love my mother, so don’t interpret the above-comment as something negative.

I simply bring this up because I realize that my posts can often become long and convoluted and can be quite the read. So today, I’m keeping it simple with the above illustration. I forget where I found it; it was a couple of week’s ago. But I think it carries an important message about controlling one’s emotions and maintaining self-control when faced with the obstacles of daily life. Enjoy! ☯

Lazy People Need Not Apply!

Laziness is insidious… Once it gets its greasy claws into a person, it can be pretty difficult to shake ’em off. There are ALL sorts of explanations for laziness, including psychological issues ranging from lack of self-esteem or fear of success, all the way to physical deficiencies that include lack of certain key vitamins like B vitamins, Vitamin D or certain mineral salts.

In the case of someone with Type-1 Diabetes, laziness takes on a whole new meaning. For some, it’s an unintentional result of how they deal with their condition. Fluctuating blood sugars, stress from treatment or lack of rest (since we never tend to sleep all that well) can contribute to feeling sluggish and lethargic. These feelings can often be contributed as laziness by the unaware, and it’s a label I faced often throughout my school years.

Years ago, way before the advent of frequent daily testing, carb counting and my trusty insulin pump, I would often suffer high blood glucose levels during the school day. Especially since lack of education made it so that I never assumed there was a problem with “sugar free” foods, despite their high carbohydrate count. I would often find myself sprawled on my desk, snoring softly as a teacher would walk over and crack a metre stick on my desk. Sometimes it wouldn’t even wake me. I wonder how much more I could have accomplished if I had better control of my levels, back then.

But every now and again, I would encounter someone who is genuinely lazy, for no medical reason, and simply chooses not to bother with their own care. I encountered such a woman over a decade ago. I was dating a woman whose mother had Type-1 Diabetes. She suffered from a leg discrepancy and was only in her early 50’s. We were at her home for a family meal the one night, when someone came in with a 2-litre bottle of soda. She immediately requested a large glass of the soda, to which I “helpfully” pointed out how much sugar it contained and asked when the last time she had tested her blood.

She laughed at me. In fact, the entire family joined in her laughter, as though the concept of testing her blood sugar was anathema in her household. I watched in horror as this woman quickly gulped down almost 50 grams of carbohydrates as though it was water, followed by a full meal. Whether she was using long-acting insulin injections or not was a mystery, but she certainly didn’t inject herself BEFORE the meal. If I consumed that many carbs without an insulin adjustment, my blood glucose levels would skyrocket dangerously (and I’m currently only in my 40’s).

Sadly, the woman in this story passed away just a couple of short years ago. I’ve wondered how much longer she could have lived, with better health and better quality of life, had she simply taken her self-care in hand and worked to keep control of her Diabetes. And this is the important takeaway: having Diabetes means you can’t afford to be lazy. There are too many fine details we need to pay attention to, including maintaining supplies, knowing what foods we’re eating and keeping a tight control of blood sugars and other complications.

I’ll admit that I’ve been guilty of waking up in the middle of the night to a pump with only a few units left and rolled over, content to change out my set once I woke up. Despite my best efforts, laziness hits me occasionally as well. But considering that someone with type-1 Diabetes already has a shortened life expectancy, it’s important to test blood sugars often, work out frequently and do your best to maintain your health. You not only owe it to yourself, but to your family. ☯

Step By Step, Day By Day…

I tend to harp on Diabetes a lot and complain about the many complications that accompany the disorder. And rightfully so, considering how many issues Diabetes can cause in one’s daily life. Just one day can be a chaotic turmoil of problems that can affect other areas of your life. Enter: last Saturday night…

I started Continuous Glucose Monitoring about a week and a half ago, in anticipation of turning on the Auto Mode on my new insulin pump. Auto mode is pretty sweet as it takes a lot of the guess work out of trying to keep blood sugars in range. Working in tandem with the CGM, auto mode tracks your blood sugars every five minutes and makes adjustments on that basis. If it sees that your blood sugars are starting to climb, it’ll increase your basal rate. If it’s starting to drop, it’ll reduce your basal rate or suspend your pump until you even out.

The reviews have been quite positive, considering this particular Medtronic pump has been in use in the United States for the past couple of years. The benefit has been that Canada has gotten to take advantage of their findings without suffering all the trial and error up here. The only active involvement on the user’s part, is the occasional finger prick throughout the day to calibrate the CGM and telling the pump how much carbohydrate they’re eating.

I feel it’s about as close to having an artificial pancreas as one can get, although I have no doubt that the next twenty years could yield some even better technologies. But Auto Mode does require a number of things. For one thing, you need to have a certain amount of sensor data accumulated before activating it. As previously mentioned, you also need to check your blood sugars through a traditional finger prick at least two to four times a day to calibrate the sensor, which is a pain in the ass.

Anyway, I’ve explained all the bell and whistles associated with my new pump before (Presenting, New Medtronic 670G), so you can click on the link for more info. But as with any new technology, there will ALWAYS be trial and error. And that’s what happened to me last Saturday. Let’s examine the timeline, shall we?

Monday, June 22nd: I attend the local MEDEC Centre for CGM and Auto Mode Training. MEDEC means Metabolic & Diabetes Education Centre. This is where I obtained all of my pump training and is also the office my Endocrinologist works out of. Once the training was completed, I was walked through the process of installing CGM and did so in the office, prior to my departure;

Tuesday, June 23rd: Less than 24 hours after first installing CGM, I removed it. Issues late in the previous evening caused a sensor error that couldn’t be corrected. It requested a second calibration and subsequently requested that I install a new sensor. My pump trainer was contacted and we discussed everything from possible scar tissue to simply having bad enough luck to have installed a faulty sensor. He also recommends installing a new one. My fears at letting a machine control my well-being are renewed and I stubbornly refuse to install a second CGM. Not today, SkyNet…

Wednesday, June 24th: After a full day of negotiating with myself, I decide to install a new sensor. I also did it while accompanied by my wife, since she would be the one who would need to apply the adhesives in the event I choose the back of my arm as a sensor site. I cycled a 60k with one of my friends the previous day, which I felt justified my not installing a new sensor right away. I’m pretty good at convincing myself…

Thursday, July 2nd: I’ve worn a sensor for a full week at this point and the pump is now requesting that I replace it. I marvel at the perks I’ve enjoyed during the week, including the pump suspending itself if I hit lows and spending much more time “in range” than I’m accustomed to. I feel somewhat better physically, but I’m absolutely exhausted, either by the hot weather mixed with thunder storms or because my body is finally staring to relax. Or maybe it’s the fact I’ve effectively cut out energy drinks (I say, as I compulsively scratch my forearms and rock back and forth);

Friday, July 3rd: This day taught me an important lesson. I started the morning by doing some intensive yard work in the sun. I followed it up by doing a MetaShred Workout and 30 minutes on the punching pad a little while later. Two workouts, two showers and extended time in the hot Sun taught me that sensor adhesives have a distinct limitation on how well they can stick to a grown man’s belly. In my hubris, I didn’t make a nice, smooth seal of adhesive all the way around the sensor. The result was water getting under the adhesive and drying/evaporating, which ultimately dried out the adhesive and caused the sensor to lift. It lost its footing in my flesh and popped out. One day into a new sensor and I’m forced to replace it because I rushed through the installation. Lesson learned…

Saturday, July 4th: When installing the new sensor last night, I took extra care in applying all the adhesive pads. I basically treated it something akin to putting a new diaper on my newborn, Alex. If I don’t ensure the edges are covered and the bands stick properly, he’ll introduce me to a new level of hell by spewing a volcanic jet of baby waste out the sides. So I essentially treated my sensor with the same amount of attention. And they say that you can’t learn anything from diaper changing! But it’s during the evening and overnight that the proverbial full diaper hit the fan…

  • 4:00 pm: My wife bakes a banana bread. My wife’s banana bread is my kryptonite! If I could sit with the pan in front of me and eat the entire thing, I would. Hence, the reason she cut the recipe down to a third of the sugar. A fact I was made aware of AFTER I bolused for my usual two pieces of bread;
  • 4:50 pm: My pump alarm goes off and suspends due to a low. I mention it to my wife and become aware of the lessened sugar content. I’m frustrated at the low but tickled pink that the pump is doing its job and I get to keep eating, so I cut myself two more pieces of banana bread. This was a mistake I would pay for later…;
  • 8:00 pm: The low and the accompanying correction I dealt with is followed up by my usual feeling of fatigue. My wife is also quite tired and we agree to go to sleep early after getting both kids to bed. I think to myself that I may ACTUALLY get a solid 8 hours’ sleep for a change. Then, I realize that my blood glucose is skyrocketing and a correction is necessary. It takes over an hour to finally fall asleep;
  • 3:10 am: I am awoken by a beeping I can’t identify. In my sleep-induced haze, I check my phone before realizing it’s coming from my pump. It tells me that it’s lost sensor signal and to move the pump closer to the sensor. I swear and mumble softly as to not awake my wife, since both items are tethered to my stomach. How much closer do they need to be??? But I had apparently rolled onto the sensor, which caused a problem. I decide to ignore it and allow the problem to correct itself. I go back to sleep;
  • 3:30 am: Damn it all to hell! I just manage to fall asleep and the pump starts blaring at me that it needs a calibration. Apparently, my timing was off and I should have tested right before bed. I decide to be lazy and press the pump’s “snooze” option;
  • 4:30 am: The pump once again tells me to get up and calibrate via finger prick. I give my pump the proverbial middle finger and hit the snooze button again…;
  • 5:30 am: GET UP AND CALIBRATE YOUR DAMN PUMP, SHAWN!!!! Fuck you, pump! You’re not the boss of me! I’ll do as I damn well please… (as I get up, walk downstairs to my office and test my blood sugar) I curl back up into my blankets, give my pump a last cursory glance to ensure no issues. Blood sugar is normalizing and I feel my eyelids getting heavy. I go back to sleep;
  • 6:30 am (roughly): Baby Alex starts crying as he realizes that its morning and he considers it a firm injustice that we have the temerity to leave him in his crib. My eyes pop open with the cartoon sound of smashing glass and I fight off the urge to start weeping. My wife, who is the ultimate champion of our household, musters from her slumber and rescues the baby from the torture chamber that is his crib;
  • 8:30 am: I awake to the dulcet sounds of Joe Satriani’s Always With Me, Always With You for only the second time in many months, since I usually awake before my alarm goes off. I step away from the bed with an accumulated two or three hours’ of sleep. My wife made coffee. She rules.

Lovely, eh? The life of a Type-1 Diabetic is sprinkled with these lovely days of difficulty and lack of rest. I’m confident that once I get used to it and the Auto Mode is in full swing, I’ll feel better about it and things will get easier. When I first started the pump, I had all sorts of difficulties and there were days I was ready to chuck it out the window. But I couldn’t imagine life without an insulin pump, now. As long as my patience holds out and I stick with it, Auto Mode may just be the ticket to getting my Hemoglobin A1C’s below 7.0, for the first time in over a decade. Here’s hoping… ☯

The Sound Of Silence…

Last week, I awoke to a quiet house. I’m never a fan of Monday mornings… They usually mean I have to get some work done and the week has started, the calm and free time of the weekend has evaporated and dealing with the outside world sets in. But anyone who has children and lives in a “typical” family-oriented home will understand why silence can be a bit of a surprise, sometimes even concerning.

My usual Monday mornings involve a colourful choice between an infant wailing for food or a parent’s attention or my rambunctious five-year old son who thinks that my abdomen makes a pretty good trampoline if I’m quietly sleeping. In fact, since the advent of COVID-19, I’ve set an alarm every weekday morning but have never reached it as my children usually wake me up before I get there. Which is fine, right? That’s pretty normal for a family household.

But last Monday, I awoke to the dulcet sound of Joe Satriani’s “Always With Me, Always With You,” which is my morning wake-up alarm. It’s a smooth, guitar-based instrumental that allows me to wake without being jolted out of my slumber as though someone has connected a car battery to various parts of my body. Anyway, after a moment’s confusion I realized that I couldn’t hear a sound, which in this household is an abnormality.

A mild sense of panic set in as I wondered what was going on. The temperature was in the low teens with a steady rain, so I knew my oldest wouldn’t be playing outside (at least I hoped he wouldn’t) and Monday is a day off for my wife. I stepped out of my bedroom to find my son snoring softly in his bed with his iPad playing cartoons next to him. This is an oddity in itself because he went to sleep here in my downstairs office, last night. This means that at some point, he transitioned upstairs to his bedroom without waking anybody; a miracle unto itself.

The baby was quietly sleeping in his crib and I found my wife sitting on the couch, tinkering on her phone. We said good morning and chatted for a few minutes before it was agreed that my wife should go back to bed and sleep while the baby sleeps. I got a cup of coffee and toasted an english muffin and escaped to the solitude of my basement, which is where I do all my research, indoor workouts and my writing. I settled in and enjoyed my breakfast in a quiet solitude that any parent can agree rarely happens.

So, I sat there… Took sips of my coffee and actually played Mega Man 2 on a badly coded game emulator on my computer. I read a few chapters of a book and checked out a few things online and enjoyed the silence. And you know what? I honestly don’t understand the folks who claim they can’t stand being in silence. It’s wonderful. You can be alone and collect your thoughts, you can enjoy some much needed down time and it’s good for your overall mental well-being.

Eventually the bubble bursts, and it didn’t take long for my son to track me down and begin demanding breakfast. But having that little bit of quiet time every now and again can make a huge difference in one’s life. I highly recommend it. Whether you have a workout, read a book or flat out do NOTHING and just relax, everyone should enjoy a little calm and quiet. Every once in a while. ☯