How YOU Doin'?

Well, it's been a busy month...let me tell you what's been going on.

 

Since our last meeting, I've given in and set up  a payment plan on the pump, because frankly I need my supplies and they had stopped sending them due to an overwhelming balance on my account. I know I would usually rant about this, but I'm tired of it. I'm just over the whole damn thing. I need my pump, I need my supplies, I'm over a barrel if I don't get them, end of story. Whether it's Medtronic that screwed up with communication or my insurance that screwed up with paying or me who screwed up because I didn't do a thorough job of double-checking everyone else's work is neither here nor there.

 

Also, I noticed that hardly anyone read the last blog I did, probably because I didn't post it on Twitter or Facebook or anything, so here's a link in case you're interested: Read Me. Note- there are Muppet Babies.

 

We're coming up on September 15th...for those of you who don't know what that means, it's an anniversary for me. The day I was diagnosed with diabetes REDACTED years ago. Some years it comes and goes and I don't pay attention to it, but more and more I'm seeing that I kind of focus on it. Another year, no cure. Am I bitter? (If you have to ask you're not a regular reader of this blog.)  I'm not, actually. I'm resigned, which might be even sadder. 

 

 

Honestly, at this point I wouldn't even know how to NOT be a diabetic, so what would be the point?

 

What else has been going on? Bandit has been sick, testing my patience and my skills as a future parent. Thank goodness for my husband, who keeps coming to the rescue when I feel like I can't take the whining one second longer. It doesn't help that the dog is 50+ pounds and needs assistance getting up and down off of the bed...usually on my side. Or that the meds he's been on have been making him gassy and uncomfortable. He's getting better though, so that's a good thing.

 

We're also looking at getting a new car, because getting a child in and out of the back of a Camaro is not going to be a back friendly endeavor. We had to take my car in to get some work done on it before we can trade it in, though. Someone dropped what we think might be a ladder on the roof and dented the heck out  of it earlier this summer, and that sort of thing decreases the value of a trade in. Otherwise that thing is in primo shape- I've been trying to take *really* good care of it because that's what you should do when you have a cool sports car, even if you don't like it because you keep hitting your head on the ceiling whenever you go over a bump.

 

I'd still like to stick with black even though we live in the desert and it gets crazy hot...I'm thinking this will be big enough, and I even like the detailing:

 

Sure, it's seen some action, but the previous owner swears it's tough enough to handle anything.

 

 



Math

I'm not a big fan of math, unless it's addition into my bank account. But I've been doing the math and I've come to the conclusion there aren't enough hours in the day for me to live a normal life and take care of my diabetes the way I know I should.

                             Hours in the day                    = a negative number...
                 What I need to get done in them

First off all, let's look at the taking care of myself thing. There's the whole "low carbs" thing I'd been trying...That stopped almost as soon as it started. I was crazy to think I could do that. I do think I'm eating better though. I know I'm eating more yogurt, and fruit, and vegetables, and I am trying to lay off the heavy carbs at night. I'm not always successful, and if there is pizza to be had you can be sure that I don't even bother. I've also been trying to exercise more. My blood sugars are always better when I do that. This is all good news, but none of it is habit yet. When I can say that I've been doing all of this for a month together, then I'll be more apt to celebrate...but let's look at the numbers, because I think they show why I haven't formed any good habits yet.

I try to exercise at least 20-30 minutes five days a week. Okay, fine, three to four, max. But still, that's better than I've been doing.

I usually work five days a week, which takes up 10 hours of my day (30 minute commute each way, 8 hour work day, 1 hour lunch in there somewhere).

Where I spend most of my waking hours...at least it looks cool.

Add in the 8 hours I get for sleeping (sadly, it's usually more like 6 when you take into account the tossing and turning and pump beeping, but I'm still trying for 8) and that means 18 hours of my day are already accounted for. 30 minutes of exercise shouldn't be that bad, right?

Well...we're forgetting some things.

There's the 1 hour a day I spend getting ready to go to work, scarfing down some breakfast, and making sure I pack myself a lunch. If my night was particularly bad, that hour includes my 30 minutes of exercise, and if my night was really terrible or I wake up low, then the exercise is replaced with health maintenance.

By the time I get home my husband has usually started dinner, but sometimes I make dinner (a rare occurrence) or I at least get home in time to help. I am also trying to be better about cleaning up afterwards, so that's 20-30 minutes of clean up and maybe 30 minutes of cooking. Usually I get home only 10-15 minutes before dinner is ready because I get off of work an hour and a half after my husband, plus my 30 minute commute, so he's a hungry guy by the time I drag my tired ass through the door. Let's say all this takes an hour and a half.

How much of my day has been spent already? 19.5 hours, and 19.5 from 24 is 4.5 hours. I should have plenty of time for more exercise. Wait...did I include eating dinner? Better make that 4 hours left over. Still plenty of time.

Only I haven't had time to decompress yet. And at least once or twice a week I'm working on laundry. And my dogs need fed. And by the time dinner is over and cleaned up on an early night (because sometimes I work 'til 7 or 8) it's almost 8pm, and if I exercise then I'll be up for hours because of adrenaline (I know this from experience.) And really, a few minutes of conversation during a 24 hour period is enough for you and your spouse to connect, then call me co-dependent and clingy because I need more than that. A lot more. The house doesn't clean itself, either. And I feel like I'm always spending at least an hour a week paying bills, though it's likely less than that.

It should take longer to spend a paycheck than it does.

Still lots of time, right? Well...my husband and I are working on becoming foster parents, and once we have a placement we'll be adding going to the doctor with the kid, going to court with the kid, going to birth parent visits with the kid, going to meetings about  the kid and taking care of the kid to the mix. And while much of that is going to require me to take time off because of work, or happen on the weekend, a lot of it is going to eat up what little free time my husband and I have, because we want a younger child and I've heard they can't really feed or clothe themselves until they're at least five or something. Most of my experience with babies has been pretty limited, but they seem to be able to take care of things on their own pretty early...

Books always tell the truth, right?

I know what I need to do is get up earlier and get in my workout so that I'm not adding an additional thing to my poor sleep cycle, especially since I tend to go low in the mornings and will need to deal with that before I can exercise...only, let's be real, there is definitely a problem with getting up before 7 am. At least there is for me. I am just not a morning person. I can't concentrate or focus, and the earlier I get up, the harder it is for me to eat breakfast.

I know I'm making excuses, but unless I have a staff of five working seven days a week four hours a day with me there's little chance of me getting into the kind of shape I wish I was in, so I guess I need to set myself a goal and just work at getting to it, and if I don't look like a Victoria's Secret model a year from now that's okay. As long as I'm healthy, that counts as a big win.

I miss this show.

One step forward, two steps back

Had my doctor's appointment today. My hbA1c was 7.1, which is exactly what it was last time I went and .1 less than it was in November. All my blood work came back good. So that's going for me.

Got another bill from Medtronic, and frankly, I've had it with them. I was told my pump should be covered no problem by the employee who was handling my account, my insurance is not covering all of it, and now I still owe $1600+ dollars for this blasted thing. If I had that kind of money, I'd pay it off just to give myself a five month break from dealing with insurance and medical companies (because God knows when January and "deductible season" rolls around again this starts all over.)

I may have mentioned this before, but I get stressed out pretty easily. I try hard to be positive. I'm a naturally pessimistic person, and I don't want to be that way. I work hard to try and not be negative, to try to not hate on people, to try and just roll with it.

http://flowingdata.com/2011/09/18/yoda-pie-chart/

Fine, Yoda. Fine. Sometimes I succeed and it's great. Sometimes I fail and the whole damn world is going to hell and taking me right along with it. And yes, I know it's not the end of the world because I owe money for medical supplies. My husband has already advised me on how to proceed, and since he has a great deal of medical industry knowledge I'll follow his lead. And I'm sure someone somewhere owes more than I do, or is in a great deal of medical debt, but we all deal with issues our own ways and right now, with what I've got going on in my life, owing $1600 to a company that assured me I wasn't going to owe them anything is kind of my biggest first-world problem.

http://whatwouldjackdo.net/2011/05/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-and.html

It's not even the money as much as the principle which irritates me no end. I shouldn't be paying them anything. They should have secured the information about how much I would owe and what my insurance would cover before they sent me the pump and I started using it for a year. I don't know if I've ranted about this before or not, but honestly- who DOES that? You don't get to move into a house before you sign a ream of papers indicating that this is your interest rate, this is your monthly payment, this is who you owe what. You don't get to take a big screen TV home from Best Buy before they swipe your credit card...and afterwards your credit card company doesn't say, "Oh, wait...we don't cover that particular kind of TV. Sorry" so that Best Buy now has to come after you for the money a year later.

Insurance is a weird thing. It's great to have it, don't get me wrong. I'd really be up shit creek without a paddle without it. But dealing with it is a giant pain in the ass, and Obamacare has not fixed any of the problems that we have in our health care system as far as I can tell. In fact, all it has done is fixed things so that now everyone has to pay for something that won't pay for the things they need when they need them. Way to go government. Big win there.

I actually saved this on my computer as "Congress."

 



And now Google Blogger is not letting me change the alignment of the text, which means I'm gonna have to either type all the way to the end of the line or else my words are going to look like I'm some eighth grader trying to make her blog look all cool. And I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to make the stupid program work the way it's supposed to!

 



Sorry Yoda.

 

 

Beware the vampires

I had to get some blood work done this morning.  I didn't enjoy it as much as, say, going to Disneyland, or seeing New Kids on the Block in concert...or cleaning the bathroom, but it was okay. At least I didn't faint this time and the phlebotomist knew what she was doing.

I haven't had blood drawn in a few months. I forgot to do it for my last appointment, and then the nurse practitioner I'd been working with left my doctor's office, so my appointment for June was pushed back to next week, so I guess we'll see what a few months of not checking has done. I'm sure that the retina specialist I saw a couple months ago has sent the letter detailing everything he saw in my eyes has arrived, so undoubtedly that will come up.

I don't know, even though I've been a patient of this particular doctor for several years I've only seen him once or twice, so this feels a lot like going to a new doctor. And I don't particularly care for that because Tom, the NP that was, knew me. He knew what my treatment had been, the issues I've had with the insurance, the emotional stresses in my life- he understood where I was coming from. Now I feel like I have to start over and it's not sitting well.

Add that to the stresses I do have going on right now, and I don't feel particularly on track with the diabetes care. For one thing, this has pretty much been how things are going right now.

I've been trying to exercise more, and I've managed to get in three workout type activities a week here for a couple weeks. I'm certainly not on a schedule or training plan, which is what I should be doing, but at least I'm not just sitting around watching Star Wars for the seven hundredth time. I'm watching Property Brothers instead.

Fact is, I'm not exercising because I'm just tired. I'm tired of putting a smile on my face when I don't feel like smiling, I'm tired of things not going my way, and I'm tired of always feeling so damn down all the time. Am I depressed? Maybe a little, but mostly I just feel tried right now. I've got a list of things to do at home and at work that are each a mile long, and I feel like I'm always behind the 8 ball. (Is that the right expression? I don't play much billiards so I may be completely off on that.) I'm happy enough- I've got a relatively clean house thanks to a helpful husband, I'm in a good place in my career, and I've been writing a little again, which always makes me feel good.

I just need a nap. But I don't see one in my future until retirement, at least.

Apparently, I'm not alone.

Sorted out...sort of.

*sigh*

It isn't as though I expect life to go perfectly, you know, but some days the little bumps in the road feel like New York City potholes. And it seems like the path of life was laid out by cows in the 18th century (*wink* to the Blockheads, particularly the Bravehearts.)

When I last blogged I was waiting for my insurance to approve the continuous glucose testing sensors for my pump, and I was glad that I wasn't waiting on pump supplies that were more vital because it had been two weeks since I'd requested them. They arrived on Wednesday...which, if you want to do the math, is actually 21 days from the day that I ordered them- so not two weeks, but three. That's closer to a month- on a "rush" job- than is acceptable, if you ask me. Three weeks is how long you can check a book out from the library. Three weeks is how long a track break was when I was in elementary school.

Elementary school...which is when I ordered the blasted things.

 

I'm pretty sick of the red tape, to be honest. They know I have insurance, even if they had it wrong. They've never not gotten paid. They should have put the sensors in a box the day I requested them and sent them, then taken care of the insurance submission and everything. That's good customer service. That's the kind of thing I'd expect when I was dealing with, oh, I don't know...a place that deals with life saving medical supplies. I have ordered things I didn't need from Amazon.com and gotten them the next day. But I guess I've learned my lesson- from now on, I don't wait until I'm short on diabetic supplies. I order when I've got plenty and allow for the sloooooooow process to take place.

 

I think we're all a little spoiled in this day and age when it comes to instant gratification. Amazon is a part of the problem, actually- I can order books and have them show up on my doorstep in less than a day if I'm willing to pay enough money. Maybe Amazon should start selling pump supplies. I'd be able to get them fast and cheaper. I mean, eventually Amazon will be selling us everything and we'll never have to go to a real store again, so this isn't out of the realm of possibility. In fact, it may be scarily accurate.

 

The bottom line, though, is that it all comes down to the bottom line. I look to places like Medtronic and Dexcom for life support, and they look at me like this is my high school yearbook picture:

 

I'm money, baby.

 

I've probably talked about this before, since it's one of those things that I rant about, but that whole "there's a cure, and we'll find it" line that the lovely and talented Mary Tyler Moore kept saying back in the 1980's is baloney. If there is a cure, it won't be more profitable than keeping me a diabetic, and I'm sure that Lily (they make insulin) and Medtronic (pumps) and Dexcom (blood glucose testing) and the myriad of other companies that make blood testing strips and diabetic foods and pumps and glucometers and glucose tabs and glucagon shots and this stuff

 

'Cause goodness knows I can't handle the sugar in the regular stuff

 





aren't exactly chomping at the bit to make sure that the millions of us that have diabetes suddenly don't need their products anymore. I mean, I know it sounds cynical, but I'm a capitalist at heart and even I'm like, man...a cure for diabetes would probably hurt the medical economy in a big way. What the heck would happen to totaldiabetessupply.com and all of its employees if diabetes were cured? All the engineers working on advanced pumps and monitoring and stuff would have to engineer something else. What on earth would Wilfred Brimley talk about on Liberty Medical commercials if there was no more diabeetus?

 

http://sspdapparel.storenvy.com/products/3619474-diabeetus

For goodness sake, there are even t-shirts that depend on this disease!

 

All joking aside, the medical industry is called an industry for a reason, and while all of these companies are trying to help people with diabetes they are still profiting from them, so I'm gonna stay cynical on this one until I actually see that there's a cure. In the meantime? I'll order my supplies sooner and hopefully avoid this kind of drama in the future.

/rant on

You all know that I have had my issues with insurance and doctors and medical companies in the past. Frankly, that a week ever goes by without me having to deal with the horse crap the medical industry produces blows my mind. I should be used to it by now. I should be.

But I am so not.

I am out of MEDTRONIC MINIMED ENLITE sensors. Medtronic is the company that produces the pump I use. The company that, until this year, I've not only had few problems with but have defended to my endocrinologist's staff every visit. That ish stops now, because I am having one of the absolute WORST customer service experiences of my life with this company right now.

Let's go back a few weeks...actually it's months. I got a bill for umpteen THOUSAND dollars because apparently no one at Medtronic has any follow-through when someone leaves. The person who was handling my account left (or was fired, or got beamed up, I don't know and don't care), and no one bothered to follow up with my insurance company, so I was stuck with a bill for my entire $6999 insulin pump that I was told by Medtronic was completely covered.

 

Okay, I get it. Shit happens.

I call my insurance company to speak with our patient advocate, she gets on the phone with whomever and calls me back. "We're cutting them a check," she tells me. Problem solved, right? Nope!

I called Medtronic about my bill, because I wanted to be sure they got the check. Apparently the insurance didn't send a big enough check, because Medtronic still had me owing them $1600...plus about $600 for miscellaneous other things. Now they were also charging me for things like blood testing strips and pump supplies, which had always been FREE once I met my deductible even when I only had my insurance. As of November of last year I have been double covered. You can imagine my surprise and anger at this situation. So I told them to please, run everything through the insurance again, because I am double covered and I should not be charged for these things. Whomever I spoke to said okay.

Weeks went by. I didn't get a bill. I started to worry.

Actually, that phone call was a massive waste of time, as you will see.

 

So I call Medtronic AGAIN, and this time I am still being charged $2000+ for things that I have no business being charged for. I ask them to send me a paper bill immediately. Upon receiving it I make a Watson and Crick like discovery...they have my primary insurance wrong.  I call the insurance patient advocate again, and she tells me to fax over the bill, which I did. I then called Medronic because lo and behold! Those sensors for the CGM they tell everyone last 6 days only last between 3-5 is you're really lucky, and I was almost out. I was also going on vacation for a week and going to be sensor-less for the whole trip if I kept going through them at the average rate, which made my husband and me uncomfortable.

 

So I again call Medtronic, explain to them that my insurance company was looking into the bill, that I was leaving in five days for a vacation and had one sensor left. I also pointed out the err in my insurance. The woman that I talked to said okay, went to look at my account, and someone was already in it, probably at my patient advocate's urging. Regardless, the Medtronic employee said she'd put a rush on the sensors. Problem solved, right?

 

Dr. Cox- just tells it like it is.

 

Be glad that I didn't need something important, like, oh I don't know, insulin or pump setting supplies, because guess what? I logged into my Medtronic account today (the day we got back from being away for a week, mind you, with one sensor that at best will last the 6 days Medtronic claims it will, and, at worst, bends as soon as inserted and is a dud in less than 24 hours). This is what I see when I logged in.

 

W. T. F.?????

 

Because Blogger won't let me change the size, further infuriating me, let me tell you what that says: PENDING AUTHORIZATION. This is what "rush" means to these people. "Rush" to me means, "I kind of need this yesterday, so if you could get it to me as soon as is humanly possible, that would be of great benefit to me." "Rush" to Medtronic means, "You'll get it whenever, lady."

 

So now I have NO sensors, and I'm a little more than a little pissed off. Two weeks is not a "rush" order. What if that had been pump supplies- the kind that get insulin into my body so I don't die? Seriously? I cannot even begin to comprehend why a company that I have had so few issues with over the past ten years I have used them now suddenly becomes the most infuriatingly non-communicative and incapable company I have ever had to deal with in regards to my diabetes. I am so mad right now I am virtually seeing red.

 

Actually, I'm seeing green.

 

I want Medtronic to fix this, because I like my pump, for all of its faults, and I like the CGM element, for all of its many faults. But if at my next doctor's appointment my endocrinologist suggests we try to go with a different company and all of this shit is still unresolved, I will gladly return this new pump and go with some other company, because this is getting to the point of too much for me.

 

Oh, and did I mention the nurse practitioner that I usually work with at my endo's office doesn't work there anymore, so my June appointment has been pushed back to August?

 

Time for one of these. I'll meet you at the restaurant at the end of the universe.

 

 

 

 



I spy with my little eye...

I've been to the eye doctor twice this month, which is saying something because I'd rather have a root canal than go even one time to the eye doctor. I don't do drops in my eyes. I don't do contacts. I don't like anything going near my eye at any time for any reason. It stresses me out. In all honesty, and given my goal to be more positive, saying that I hate going to the eye doctor is a step up from what I would usually say.

Even this is kinder than usual.

The reason for this extra visit is not that I had to go back to pick up new sunglasses (because they haven't called me to let me know they're in yet, which means I'll be back for a third time later this month, damn it.) No, it's because my optometrist referred me to a retina specialist, "just for a baseline." In other words, he saw something and wanted a second opinion on it because I'm diabetic.

I've known for a couple years now that I've got the early stages of diabetic retinopathy, so the fact that my eye doctor wanted me to go see a retina specialist really came as no surprise. He wasn't even that concerned. It's not like the spots I have are (a) that many or (b) in a place in my eye that is going to greatly affect my vision soon. Still. It's freaking diabetic retinopathy. That's bad.

For those of you who've never heard of diabetic retinopathy, here's what it looks like.

Not me, by the way. My eyes are better than this!

I know, it looks like something you'd see on a Science Channel special about aliens, but in layman's terms that's an eye, the big yellow dot is the pupil, and the little yellow dots are parts of it that don't work anymore. (I think....hey, I'm not an optometrist or an ophthalmologist.) At any rate, as the eye gets more dots, you start to lose your sight. And when you get enough of them then you're blind because you couldn't keep your blood sugars under control, which probably had more to do with your lack of self control than fate handing you a bum deal.

That was pretty cynical. But it doesn't make it any less true.

The retina specialist (retinologist?) told me that it takes about three years for bad blood sugars to show up as retinopathy. So I can be having a grand old time eating whatever I want and letting my blood sugars skyrocket and not "see" the effects for three years. This is bad for so many reasons, the most important being by the time you see the signs there's nothing you can do to stop it. I can't say that there isn't fair warning, though. It's not like it's a secret that bad blood sugars lead to nasty complications. And any diabetic will tell you there are at least four or five people in their life always trying to get them to check their blood sugar.

Avoiding the red...I've been in the 7's lately. :)

 

Fortunately, I'm in pretty good control and have been working hard the last few years to remain so. The doctor was impressed with how healthy my eyes looked even before I told him I'd been a Type 1 diabetic for 30+ years. Of course, he also pointed out he wants to see me yearly because things like diabetic retinopathy can escalate quickly. (He also pointed out a cataract that is not yet big enough to consider surgery for, so now I can add "making me feel old" to the list of reasons I do not enjoy going to the eye doctor.)

The fact that I'm not blind now is a blessing, and the fact that I'm now draggin' my butt to the eye doctor at least once (and now probably twice) a year will hopefully keep me from being so for a long, long, epically long time. Also hopefully, I'll be able to head off any other complications now that I am more actively taking care of myself. As a teen I ignored my diabetes as best as I could, making up blood sugar numbers to get my parents off of my back because I wasn't checking (sorry, Mom) and skipping shots to stay thin while I ate whatever I wanted. It was a very bad few years for me, and some of the habits I acquired back then I am still trying to break. I think this is something most diabetics go through, and I'm probably right to think it. I don't think everyone is as lucky as I am when it comes to complications (sorry again.)

I try not to be too preachy to other diabetics- I get the same speeches and nagging that everyone else gets, and it's tiresome. We know, okay? I can rattle off the complications just as well as my doctor. However, speaking as someone who used to ignore and cheat her way through diabetes, I'm fighting to keep myself from getting worse. The retinopathy is there and it isn't going away. If three years from now my doctors look at the back of my eye and say, "You look the same" then I'll be happy.

In the mean time...maybe I should call to see if my sunglasses are ready. They're pretty cool.