“Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.”
-Lois Wyse
25
Jun
2007
SOMEONE HAS STOLEN MY LUNCH OUT OF THE BREAKROOM FRIDGE. THIS REPRESENTS A SIGNIFICANT FINANCIAL LOSS TO ME.
NOW I HAVE TO PAY FOR LUNCH, WHICH I CANNOT AFFORD.
WHERE IS MY FUCKING COKE AND STRING CHEESE YOU FUCKING NAZIS????????????
ALSO, I WANT MY TUPPERWARE BACK!! HOW MANY MORE HOURS WILL YOU HOLD ONTO THIS LUNCH YOU KNOW IS NOT YOURS??? IT HAS BEEN THREE HOURS, PEOPLE.
That is all.
25
Jun
2007
25
Jun
2007
24
Jun
2007
24
Jun
2007
Stephanie and I were sitting at the kitchen table this morning lingering over our coffee and talking about the trip we took to the bookstore yesterday.
“I was so upset they didn’t have that fourth book I wanted,” she said.
“Which one was it?” I asked.
“It’s called _Death in Little Italy_. It’s set in late 19th, early 20th century America.” She paused. “It’s a murder mystery, obviously.”
“Ha. Yeah, I figured that from the title. You know, _Death in Little Italy_. I mean, if it was called _Spaceship Number 9_ I wouldn’t guess it was a murder mystery.”
“Aha,” she said, “but what if it was called _DEATH ON SPACESHIP NUMBER 9_?”
“Cross-genre marketing,” I explained.
“Sneaky,” she said.
We sipped more coffee.
I burst into uncontrollable giggling.
“_DEATH ON SPACESHIP NUMBER 9_!!” I gasped. “I so have to write that book now.”
23
Jun
2007
I biked down to the local Walmart to get out of the house and wander around looking for a bike headlamp and backlight, since I’ll be biking home from MA class in the dark. I stopped by a cheap local diner for lunch (yes, I’m poor, and here I am spending $8 on lunch. Anyway).
I ended up eating an omelette with a side of buttermilk pancakes. I tested at 90 and took three units to cover the number and then another 5 units so I could eat a pancake and a half of the three next to me. I figured if I ate more than that, I’d get a headache from the sugar rush.
So, underwhelmed by what was supposed to be “the best breakfast place in Dayton,” I walked across the street to Walmart.
I pricechecked a couple of bike lights, decided on the one I wanted, and started wandering up another aisle, looking around for various and sundry things that I can’t get at the grocery store.
I started feeling a bit woozy, like there was this strange pressure in my head. Not a headache, exactly, but something that felt similiar to a high-sugar headache. Weird, I thought. I guess those pancakes *did* go straight to my head… but shit, I was at 90 before I ate them. I shouldn’t feel this way unless I’m winging over 250. What the fuck did they put in those pancakes?
I checked the time. It had only been about a half hour since I’d eaten. It *had* to be a high. If I’m going to have a low, it’s generally an hour and a half after I shoot up. That’s generally the time it takes for the insulin to peak in my system.
So I kept walking, and started to feel increasingly anxious and disoriented. Why was this person in front of me? Why was everyone in my way? What the hell was wrong with everyone? I needed everyone to get away from me. Bloody fuckers.
I was having trouble deciding where I was going. Did I want to look down this aisle? What was down this aisle? Why was I hear again?
I turned back around and went down an aisle I’d already been down, completely clueless as to why I’d have any interest in going down there. Maybe I had *missed* something. SOMETHING WAS MISSING. AND WHO THE HELL WAS THIS OTHER PERSON IN MY WAY GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY WHY IS EVERYONE LOOKING AT ME WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME I JUST NEED TO SIT DOWN.
Yes, I just need to sit down. Some small part of me was aware of the fact that I was hallucinating things (I think I only passed, like, two people) and was becoming increasingly paranoid.
I found an employee step stool and sat down. I wanted my head to stop feeling so stuffy. I wanted everything to stop. I wanted EVERYONE TO STAY AWAY FROM ME.
I pulled out my glucose monitor and tested my sugar, expecting to see some bizarrely high number like 310 or something. What the hell had they put in those pancakes?
I blinked a couple of times at the face of the monitor. It read:
37
How the fucking hell??
Wow, I thought. I just took a massive crash 30 minutes after eating. After eating *pancakes.*
The suddeness of the crash is probably what resulted in the severe disorientation, and, of course, my complete denial of the fact that it was the result of a low sugar episode. I believed it was physically impossible for me to experience a low like that half an hour after eating.
I ate a couple of lifesavers, and sat on the stool hunkered up into myself hoping nobody bugged me for five or six minutes until my head started to clear.
After eating the candy, I started to sweat and shake, which are usual low sugar symptoms. I think the low just came on so fast that my body didn’t have time to react that way. What I felt first, instead, was the massive disorientation that resulted from my brain not getting enough sugar.
While I recovered, I thought about how I’d felt walking up and down the aisles, how I got that feeling of intense claustrophobia and that panicky, crazy-ass paranoia about how everybody around me was out to get me, and above all, my desperate need to GET AWAY from them.
One of the things I’ve been coming to grips with the last year is just how bizarrely fucking wacked out I was during the year before I woke up in the hospital. Mostly, I was exhausted, but when I wasn’t exhausted, I was often paranoid and panicky. I’d go from anxiousness to panic really quickly, and because I was so used to living my life by “feeling,” it meant I did and said a lot of hurtful things to people that felt absolutely correct and proper.
I’ve never been an easy person to live with, but being crazy and sick didn’t make me any easier to live with, either.
Once I felt comfortable walking again, I got up and headed over to the Subway and got myself one of those big pretzels – I still had to bike all the way home and I had another hour of wandering around.
I ate half the pretzel and felt myself even out. My head cleared. Everything cleared. Things were a lot simpler. Less closed-in. I didn’t feel like the whole world wanted to crush me, that everybody was out to crush and control me.
I tried to sort out what had happened. It was possible – I’d heard of it happening – that I’d hit a blood vessel when I’d taken my insulin shot, meaning the insulin went straight into my system before the carbs from the pancake had a chance to get absorbed, forcing me into a tailspin of a crash.
One of the reasons I try so hard to keep a tight rein on my sugar isn’t just so I’ll live longer, feel better, and be healthier. Yes, those are all great reasons, but I have my self-destructive days, and during those self-destructive days, I just don’t give a fuck about my body. I hate it quite a lot, and I’ll go into “fuck it” mode. Problem is, I do that now and it’s not just me and my body’s health that’s hurt. It means I’ll say and do hurtful things to the people around me.
And you know, I’ve already brutally hurt two people I cared very much about that way, and I’d rather not repeat that. There are a lot of people in my life still who I care deeply about and who care about me, and I’d like to make sure that I do whatever it is I need to do in order to spare them from this sort of behavior as much as possible.
It helps, I think, that people now are more aware of what this behavior is. There was some interaction Stephanie and I had when I was having a low, and she asked me a few minutes later if I was upset with her, and I told her no, I was just being short and bitchy because I was having a low, and I’d already taken something and would be OK in a few minutes.
At least there’s something I can point to now. At least I can talk myself down from some of the anxiousness and the panic.
But I’d prefer to have as few instances of sugar-related paranoia as possible.
22
Jun
2007
22
Jun
2007
Got to class again last night, and signed up “for real” (which involved paying money! That I sort of had!).
Master T. asked about my med ID braclet, and I babbaled on about having type 1 and how I test before and after class, and I keep my emergency sugar right there by my water… I think some part of me was worried I was going to get the “I can’t have you here and be responsible if you pass out,” but you know, I already signed my wavier. Instead, he told me he has a student he does private lessons with who’s also a type 1 diabetic, which is why he asked. Which was kind of neat in a weird way.
I guess it felt good not to be the spokesperson for my weirdness. It’s like being “the feminist,” “the black friend,” “the gay friend,” and etc. You can only represent for one aspect of what makes you you for so long before you want to start waving your arms and saying, “I’m more than this! Yes, I’m this too, but there’s a huge load of things that go together! I don’t want to be The Diabetic!”
Overall, class went a lot, lot, lot better than the first one. I had a partner who was also new, and we spent less time grappling and more time working on stance and punching technique than we did last time. It turns out that I’d so internalized the “keep your hands up” mantra that I’d been holding my arm incorrectly before I punched and losing a huge amount of power.
I need a lot of work. I’m out of shape and, as ever, uncoordinated. Even after all my time at the other gym, picking this stuff up, all this body stuff, it’s not easy for me. It’s been a weakness of mine my whole life, and it’s one of those things I recognize but am really driven to making the best it can be. I may never be a tricky fighter, but I want to be better.
Physcially, I’m a lot more put together after this class than I was after the last one, too. Some of what’s killing me is biking half an hour out there and half an hour back. Riding back is a bitch.
And… I’m wondering how much my inability to move for two solid days after class last week also had something to do with having low sugar all night. If you’re at 45 for six hours after a 3 hour workout, your muscles aren’t exactly getting much of anything to repair themselves.
My dosing strategy worked out really well this time around. Without the dinner insulin, I was able to come home at 150, which is high, but I knew from the week before that I was going to crash at least 50 points overnight, so I refrained from dosing and set my alarm. The low sugar woke me up at 1:30 am, before the alarm, and I tested at 61. I ate some jellybeans and tested four hours later when I got up for the day at 74 (80′s a perfect number).
Not bad.
I’m feeling good enough that I think I’ll be able to make it to class on Tuesday. Bare minimum, I can start with once a week if I have to, but I’m hoping to keep at two classes a week regularly and maybe add another one on occasion when I’m feeling up to it.
Felt good to be out and about.
22
Jun
2007
One of the things I’m working really hard on this year is managing my out-of-control finances. Sure, there was some bad luck in there, but there’s also been a lot of careless spending on my part. I don’t keep track of what I spend. I don’t balance my checkbook. I just keep approximate ideas of what I have and what I’ve spent in my head and spend accordingly. I’m usually about sorta maybe around where I thought I’ve been.
And when I wasn’t, I had a credit card.
Now the credit card debt is somewhere around 15K ($14,714.52).
I own nothing but my bicycle and I’m living off the good graces of friends. My goal for the year is to pay down this debt and learn how to budget properly. Luckily, I live with some people who are very good with money. Stephanie and the Old Man are my age – we went to high school together – and they own a house and two cars, have little to no credit card debt and live a very lean, budgeted life that’s perfectly comfortable and manageable.
I already know I can’t live as tightly as they do (I have a travel addiction and an SO who lives in another country; some extravagence is neccessary in order to live this sort of life), but I can live a lot better than I do.
So I came up with a budget of about what I should be spending in order to spend less than I make. It looks like this:
AK Student Loan: $55
CitiBank CC: $500
WAMU CC: $200
Transit: $35
MA Gym: $85
Groceries: $320
Fun: $195
Meds: $150
(my other two student loans have been deferred until September)
TOTAL PROPOSED MONTHLY BUDGET: $1540.00
WHAT I ACTUALLY MAKE PER MONTH: $1542.68
As you can see, I should have a whole $2.82 left over every month!
After logging all of my receipts for the last two weeks I decided to look at how I was doing for the month as far as variable costs (“fun” and “groceries”). I figured that made the math easy.
I should be at about half the total monthly cost for each of the variable bills, so:
“Groceries”
Groceries: $218.09
Snacks:$10.24
Actual Total: $228.23
Budgeted Total: $110.00
Difference: -118.23
“Fun”
Office supplies: $36.81
Dinner out: $30.13
Books: $7.43
Coffee: $37.24
Actual Total: $111.61
Budgeted Total: $97.50
Difference: -$14.11
Amount overbudget so far this month: $132.24
As you can see, I’m off to a fantastic start!
All snark aside, it does give me an idea of what I’m spending and areas where I can improve. I *do* spend a lot on food. Steph and the Old Man cook a lot with rice and noodles. If I live on rice and noodles I’ll feel crappy and triple or quadruple the amount of insulin I use, which would probably result in an extra $80 a month in med costs.
But there are places I can cut back – I need to stop buying my coveted Diet Cherry Coke, which is $15 a week. And I’ve got to keep the coffee costs to $10 a week. That’s one *regular* coffee a day, and if I skip a couple weekday coffee runs, that’ll give me enough “leftover” for a foo-foo coffee when I write at the coffee shop on weekends.
I feel bad that the “fun” budget is so high, but because it includes office supplies and actual brain-stimulating activities like going out to new places to eat, movies, and plays… it’s hard to cut that. I could probably get it down a lot further, though.
Budgeting is SO FUN!
I don’t know why I didn’t do this before!
21
Jun
2007
About to head out the door to MA class. Had to adjust my dinner insulin to compensate. Last time, I tried subtracting 2 units, and had a low during class and another around 2am. So this time I’m subtracting 3 units and eating a graham cracker right before bed.
Thing is, when I went to go test, I was only at 83 tonight… which I’d usually take 2 units for.
So that means… no shot tonight. And maybe half a granola bar.
How odd not to shoot up before a meal.
It feels downright scandalous.
