Happy birthday to me! I now qualify for all senior citizen’s discounts. And Medicare. If I could figure out how to apply for it. Luckily, we still have insurance and my husband’s employer is self-funded so it doesn’t fall under the “Affordable” Care Act. Yet. But I still must get Medicare so it becomes my secondary insurance. That’s probably a good way to spend my birthday.
My Sweet Baboo and I spent the weekend in Cincinnati with friends from Virginia. They were about four hours away from there and we live around three hours away, so it was a good place to meet in the middle. We did some holiday shopping — Christmas for her and Hanukkah for me — at Barnes and Noble and IKEA; ate at an awesome fish restaurant for dinner one night; meandered through a rainforest, a desert, an orchid room, and a bonsai display at Krohn Conservatory; and just generally kicked back and schmoozed.
On the way home, Baboo and I stopped at Jungle Jim’s, which is a humongous grocery store with food from all over the world. I stocked up on nipa sap (a palm vinegar from the Philippines) and pepper paste from Korea. We also came home with a variety of cheeses and my husband’s favorite foods — clearance and sale items.
For once, all things related to diabetes were going well, unlike a time last month when it seemed as if the dominoes would never stop falling. My scooter had kicked up its heels, clutched a bunch of lilies in its little fists, and died; my insulin pump coughed its last cough; and my continuous glucose monitor (CGM) had spit out its sensor. Furthermore, my blood glucose was swinging hither, thither, and fro; and I had an infection under the nail bed of my big toe.
And now? I got my new scooter in time for the mini-vacation in Chicago at the end of October with my traveling bud, my granddaughter, and her fiance. It’s the same brand as my old one, which means it’s too darned low to the ground. However, it’s the popular one around here, with means getting it repaired isn’t a problem. Plus, the company has also added a headlight and a battery-charger port on the tiller, which is easier to reach than the one on the battery pack.
As promised, the pump company had a new one to me the following day. I have been getting shutdowns when I go more than 12 hours without instructing the pump to do something. I never got that with the old one. I may have turned that function on when setting up the new one. I’ll have to see. Perhaps I can change the timing.
The CGM wasn’t really a problem: I only had to put in a new sensor. It’s just that I then had to wait two hours for it to begin spitting out results every five minutes just when I couldn’t use my pump and needed to check a lot more frequently.
As for the rest, I saw my podiatrist and endocrinologist last week. The podiatrist pronounced the infection as being gone, departed, vanished, not there, etc.
But it’s the endocrinologist who may have helped with the roller-coaster blood glucose, by poring over my CGM and insulin pump printouts and using the data to move me from two basal rates per day to five basal rates per day. In the process, my total daily basal amount was lowered.
Of course, the rates are unlikely to last and the number of rates are certain to change. The wonderful thing about insulin pumps is that you can set them to closely match your body’s rhythms. The problem is that your body’s rhythms tend to change now and again. The two basal rates per day also worked. For a while.
For now, my major problem is that my hair needs a trim. If it doesn’t get any worse than that, I’m happy.
