Currently, diabetes makes me feel like how my cat looks

photo via me, the obvious best photographer of the century

I have no recollection of how or why this picture of my cat ended up in this previously untitled blog post, but I'm rolling with it. 

Anyways, hi! It's been about a year since I've last posted (I blame college, as usual), and wow has my diabetes been a certain five letter word lately. Part of the blame is on me; I definitely was not doing my finest carb counting. (Sorry I abandoned you, measuring spoons and carb labels.) Add messed up basals, ISFs that aren't working, that awkward month after spring semester, plus a week of camp, and you've got yourself one nasty math problem.

After 2 nights of no sleep because of that aforementioned math problem, I was exhausted. I'm 99% sure I cried every day. On night 3 of frustration and sleep deprivation, I decided to ring up the on-call endocrinologist at o'dark thirty. I explained my situation and she told me: "Try giving yourself shots and changing your site because you really need to come into the office, so we can look at your blood sugars." AKA what I had been doing, while waiting for my appointment to come up. (I had actually changed my site 3 days in a row, so I had that site-changing thing covered.) I'm sure you already figured this much out, but I was just a little mad. (Shocker, am I right?) 

I called my dad the next evening to vent and he suggested going off my pump for a few days to figure out what the problem was. Begrudgingly, I did. I like my pump; it makes my life easier, decreases the amount of needles I insert into my body, has my CGM on it, and remembers my basals, ISFs, and carb ratios for me. My pump also makes me lazy. It allows me to constantly cover food 15 minutes after I eat it, lets me forget my ISFs, and keeps all of the data the doctor needs for me, so I don't have to do much or look over any data. By the time I went on my short pump break, the cons definitely outweighed the pros. 

Since I had no clue what was going on in my life, diabetes-wise, and I was on shots (which do not remember carb counts, insulin dosages, or ISF factors), I did the thing I hate. Logging. I used Tidepool Mobile, which is a no-pressure app that lets you take notes. That's it. You you only tell it what you want to; it's very low-stress.

As I typed my 3 word blurbs, mainly consisting of my blood sugar, carbs, and insulin given, I started noticing trends. My blood sugar wouldn't go down to around 100 until I used my lowest ISF, I needed more Lantus than my current total basal was giving me, rage bolusing doesn't actually work (note to self: seriously, just wait 1 1/2 hours before giving yourself insulin!), and covering food before I eat it is much more effective than covering it afterwards. A lot of these seem like easy things to realize, but when you've been diabetic for over 14 years and haven't been paying attention for a while, you tend to forget the basics. 

3 days after going on shots, I changed my ISFs from anywhere between 1:40 and 1:50 to just 1:40, I raised my basal to equal 22 units, around 2.5 units higher than I was getting before, and I am committing to waiting until my pump finishes giving me insulin before I dive into my food. (Patience is a virtue, even when it comes to diabetes, apparently.) 

I put my pump back on today, even though three days of data isn't really enough to make the perfect changes. It just feels so weird to be without my pump. (And I want to see if I actually fixed my issues or if I need to go on a pump break. Which hopefully I don't because a pump break seems like a VERY big change and we all know how I feel about change.)

So what exactly is the moral of this story? Sometimes you need to take 80 steps back, take a giant breath (even though you REALLY hate doing that), and go back to the basics. It might just help.

Postscript:

JUST KIDDING. Moral of the story is definitely that my cat understands my feelings on a spiritual level. 

And now that I've written this blog post and got out my ~creative energy~ I should probably stop putting off studying for my chem exam tomorrow. #pleaseprayforme

The Best Food of All Time

Try not to get overexcited if you love food blogs because I promise that my blog will not be turning into one. I pretty much dislike cooking, but this is pretty much my favorite recipe of all time. I would eat this stuff every day of my life if it was up to me. (Then again, I am also a person that really likes habit, so maybe that's not saying much...)

This mysterious looking green stuff is actually the best food ever.

Ingredients:

• 6 servings of your choice of pasta
• 2 medium avocados (peeled and seeded)
• 1 1/2 cups spinach
• 1 1/2 cups arugula 
• 1 packed cup of basil leaves
• 3 tablespoons of lime juice
• 2 garlic cloves or 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper

Yay for having an organized picture of the ingredients! 

Directions:

1. Put your pot of water for the pasta on the stove. This will give your water plenty of time to boil, and it will be boiling by the time you finish making the pesto.
2. Throw everything but the pasta into your food processor. I usually start with the avocados, grind those up, then put in the arugula and spinach, grind those up, and then put everything else in the food processor. 
3. Take your magical pesto out of the food processor and put it in a small bowl. Then put the sauce in the fridge.
4. Cook your pasta according to the package.
5. Strain your pasta.
6. Put half of the pesto in the bottom of the bowl, put the pasta in the bowl, then put the rest of the sauce on top of the pasta, and then mix it up. (My mom taught me the half on bottom, half on top trick. It makes it 1000 times easier to mix the pasta sauce.)
7. Eat and revel in the taste of the most delicious pasta* you have ever made and/or eaten.

Extra step: feed some of the leftover veggies to your favorite herbivore.

So this is pretty much my favorite recipe of all time because it includes my favorite fruit, the avocado; it takes minimal effort to make (I'm all about being lazy;) it takes maybe 20 minutes at the most; and it is in the rare healthy and delicious category of food. And technically the sauce has no carbs... (The pasta is a whole different story.) 

Moral of the Story: Yum.

* This is an obviously unbiased statement and if you think this is untrue, you may need to seek help.

And the original recipe came from here.