Show and Tell

Women are known to always have some kind of bag pretty much attached to them, as if it’s some sort of appendage. Handbags, clutches, purses, make up bags, diaper bag, whatever they may deem needed for the appropriate outfit, occasion or need. Each woman would probably say that they could not live without whatever their bag may be. Mine, is my little pink diabetes bag that I literally cannot survive without. I just recently decided to get something a little bigger and shove as much as I can into one bag that I can fit into my purse instead of searching in my bottomless pit. My new meter came in a pouch but it  was bulky and ugly and I just had to do something about that. Typically, I wouldn’t go with something so pink, but diabetes supplies are so drab, black and grey are the standard colors so I wanted something a little more cheery.  So this is my show and tell of items that I really truly cannot live without and that I must have in order to live on a daily basis. Really, I’m not being dramatic here………

This is my insulin pump, it's delivering meal time insulin or what's called a bolus. There are fun colors that the pump comes in, but I did choose black so it's not as noticable.

This is my pretty little diabetes bag of goodies. I know it's a little girly.

This is most of what I have to keep on me at all times. Top left, the orange and blue looking pen is my insulin pen for injections in an emergency like the other night when I wasn't getting insulin from my pump.

Under that on the left are glucose tabs, that are for a sugar low and brings me back up. But they taste nasty, at least those orange ones do. Next to those are Ketostix. If I'm really high and I'm not sure how long I have been I have to actually pee on one of these strips to see if there is something call keotones in my urine. That's probably a whole other tutorial so I won't even get into that now. If you really want to know, google it. You see my test strips that I put into my meter to check my BG, my finger pricker, there are AAA batteries for my pump, an infusion set, which the infusion set conects from the resivoir in my pump (hhhmmm... I didn't get a picture of that.) to the site which is what has the needle that goes into my stomach which I pull out once it's all connected. There is only a little tiny plastic peice of tubing type thingy left in me that the insulin goes through. This is called the canula. 

These are the infusion sets. Blue one(Quickset) is the one that I'm thinking is evil. That's the one that kept getting bent on me the other night so I wouldn't get any insulin. I'm trying it again tonight, but I'm begginging to wonder if there is an issue again because I can't get my surgar down right now. The other one(Silouhett) is a little less evil. I call it evil as well because it hurts like no other to put in, it's needle is too long for my liking but I know it works. 

This is my glucagon shot. This is used if I pass out and it only works if I have a low. If my blood sugar is too high it will not work but will not harm me. I really pray that this is never needed.

Now that I have gone through that, I wanted to take a moment and say something that I am truly thankful for. I titled this blog Beautiful, Ugly, Mystery to help me remember to look for things to be thankful for and find the beauty that is hidden among the ugly. I know that there will be times in my writing I won’t be able to come up with anything but this is not one of those times.

 I talked a bit in my last blog about the complications of having “D”, one of those things is complications with vision, and have damage to blood vessels in the eyes and throughout the body. Eyes I believe are usually where it would first begin and where they check first. When I was first diagnosed things started to go downhill so fast, although I’m convinced I had been developing the disease for about a year before being diagnosed. While getting on insulin and trying to get my BG (blood glucose) level my vision did start to go pretty bad. I have a pair of glasses from then that I only use when I’m sick or I’m having issues with getting my BG down for some reason. I use them so rarely that when I put the on one day about a year ago after being married to my husband for a year and having known him for about 3 years before that he had never seen me in them. That shows how much I have not needed them.  Although I have not had issues as far as I can tell, my doctor has been telling me to go get my eyes checked especially since it’s going on 5 years since being diagnosed. Also, they need to know for future purposes because that is an added risk for child birth. (I did say future so anyone that knows me reading this don’t go getting excited, I’m not preggers! Just hold your horses on that one!) So I got my eyes checked and 20/20 vision! Praise God! Also, no issues with any blood vessels, no hemorrhaging or anything. Perfectly fine. That was a sigh of relief! There you go for today folks hope you enjoyed my tutorial. ;)