LifeAfterDx--Diabetes Uncensored

A internet journal from one of the first T1 Diabetics to use continuous glucose monitoring. Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

My Photo
Name:
Location: New Mexico, United States

Hi! I’m William “Lee” Dubois (called either Wil or Lee, depending what part of the internet you’re on). I’m a diabetes columnist and the author of four books about diabetes that have collectively won 16 national and international book awards. (Hey, if you can’t brag about yourself on your own blog, where can you??) I have the great good fortune to pen the edgy Dear Abby-style advice column every Saturday at Diabetes Mine; write the Diabetes Simplified column for dLife; and am one of the ShareCare diabetes experts. My work also appears in Diabetic Living and Diabetes Self-Management magazines. In addition to writing, I’ve spent the last half-dozen years running the diabetes education program for a rural non-profit clinic in the mountains of New Mexico. Don’t worry, I’ll get some rest after the cure. LifeAfterDx is my personal home base, where I get to say what and how I feel about diabetes and… you know… life, free from the red pens of editors (all of whom I adore, of course!).

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Smoke detector batteries

Damn. Ambushed.

I didn’t even feel it coming. Of course. I never do.

But where was the frickin’ DexCom? It’s supposed to prevent things like this.


47 mg/dL flashed at me from the face of the Presto Meter.

Hello low. I haven’t seen you for a while.

I don’t know if it was the surprise, or the lack of sugar reaching my brain, but I just sat there like an idiot, staring at the number.

Rio leaned over to look at the meter. “Hey, there’s only two digits!” he said.

Then he jumped up, shouted “Hooray!” and bolted from the room. About 30 seconds later he came bounding back in waving a glucagon emergency kit, “I’ve been dying to use one of these for years!”

Fucking Christmas in January.

When Rio turned five I taught him how to use a glucagon ER kit, and he’s been dying to stick me with it ever since.

Lucky for me, his mother intervened first, with glucose fluid. Then a brownie, then potato chips (we can argue about optimum choices some other day). Then a bowl of cereal. Then crackers. The low was a stubborn bastard. I’m not sure how or where it came from, but it took almost 100 carbs to get my head above water again. And poor Rio didn’t get to use the glucagon.

Good thing, as it turned out.

About an hour later, my brain functioning again (at least as well as it ever does), we decided to review the somewhat obtuse inject-mix-pull-inject process of using the ER kit. That’s when I noticed the expiration date.

Oops.

My break-glass-in-case-of-emergency to save-my-ass medication had expired.


Two years ago.



Sunday, January 15, 2012

Quick and easy diabetic meals

Sysy of Girl’s Guide Fame emailed me the other day, wanting me to join in on an email-based “collective, constructive, and tasty” diabetic recipe exchange.

(((groan)))

I love Sysy, but I hate these email things.

The instructions said it should be something quick and easy that you make when you are short on time.

I actually have only one recipe that fits the bill:

Open microwave, insert box.
Check nutrition facts label.
Multiply carbs by severing size on box and enter result into pump.
Wait for both sets of beeps (microwave and pump).
Serve and enjoy.

Sunday, January 01, 2012

Another year, another copyright

© 2012 William “Lee” Dubois

...and so, my friends, we begin our 8th year together at LifeAfterDx...