Things I Miss

I recently commented on this blog by Amylia Grace on Diabetes Daily about the thing I miss most about the pre-diabetes years (there were only eleven).

"mixing grape soda with red kool aid and having the most amazing drink ever. That is what I'd do with a day off from diabetes. Drink grape soda, and mix some of it with red kool aid. "

I have been able to find diet Orange soda out the wazoo but when it comes to diet grape, it's nowhere to be found. It makes me sad. Grape is my favorite flavor. I don't know if I genuinely like the taste or if I just like it because it's purple. And why I mixed it with red kool-aid (strawberry, cherry, fruit punch, doesn't matter!) I'll never know what my eight year old brain was thinking. I also think once I split a grape and put it on the edge of a glass like a lemon. I really thought I was a culinary genius.

A list of things I miss:

1. Baked Potatoes - I used to eat them, but since I became Amylin deficient I can't anymore without going into my "high blood sugar coma" state where I sleep for 2 hours.
2. Cotton Candy and
3. Carmel Apples - I just went to the fair last week, couldn't eat hardly anything!
4. Deep dish pizza - see baked potato. I stick with thin crust now!
5. Bleached, white, bad for you pasta - occasionally I treat myself to chef boyardee ravioli or make my famous Alfredo pasta, but I can only eat a tiny bit since both the sauce (made from flour and milk) and the pasta make me in to "comastate"
6. Sweet Tea - didn't really drink this as a child, but since McAlister's became a frequent Sunday lunch venue, the sips I've had of others have made me jealous.
7. Regular maple syrup - for a while I used sugar free, but it tastes so watery and has a weird after taste - so now I just put butter and sometimes peanut butter on my pancakes (when I eat them)
8. Non callused fingers - oh how i miss the days of soft hands.
9. A mixture of minute rice, milk, butter, and sugar - I know, weird - this was something my mom and I used to enjoy together! Now I can enjoy it in small heaps of brown rice, but brown rice just doesn't taste the same in the sugary mixture as the white did
10. Halloween candy - I was diagnosed on November 6, 1998 - my bag of Halloween candy was given away to my two younger brothers. Painful! It still hurts! I now buy discount Halloween candy and give it away to the members of the MSSU History Club - and take one or two for myself - but they don't understand the significance!


What do you miss about your pre-diabetes days?

Meal Management 1/2: Back Story

I have a formula. I haven't determined whether it will or won't work because I have trouble sticking to it. But I'll share it with you nonetheless.

But first, backstory. I think I am addicted to carbs, which is unfortunate for a diabetic. I don't feel full til I've had my fill of bread or pasta. Veges just don't do it for me. And I love fruit, but it leaves my stomach rumbling and me craving more dessert until I get some cookies or cake in me. Ok, so it's not this bad all the time, but often it is. It makes diabetes management very hard.

I could blame lots of things besides myself, even though I'm ultimately the responsible one. I blame my switch from regular to Humalog most of the time. I was a candidate for a pump when I was 14, and switched to Multiple Daily Injections (MDI) at that point (do they even call it that anymore?). Here I am, eight years later, and I am still taking multiple injections because my a1C's haven't come down far enough to actually enter pump education (not to mention I sitll can't afford the copay for a pump. Outrageous!). My logic: when I switched to MDI, my doctor told me I could essentially eat whatever I wanted. Wow! Whatever I wanted, and just take a shot with it! Awesome! I think I ate anywhere from 100-200 grams of carbs a day after that, and a lot of it I didn't take insulin for (oops).

My mom is the same way. She and I are about the same weight, although she is taller than me and carries her weight at her hips (I dangerously carry mine around my stomach, which I ironically inherited from my great aunt who I am named after). But we both enjoy eating, and we both feel fuller when we have had a good carbo-filled meal.

But it's so dangerous anymore. Recently, my Doctor put me on Symlin (an Amylin supplement; Amylin is a hormone made in the liver that tells the brain when the stomach is full and also helps control post-meal spikes, something I was and do have problems with). The hardest part is remembering to take it. It does affect your stomach until your body is used to it, and so you have to start taking it gradually, anytime you eat 30 or more grams of carbohydrates. If you stop taking it, you have to start again at the smallest dose and work back up again or you get really sick (I found this out the hard way). I also stuffed myself silly before I felt the least bit full (another sign of Amylin deficiency).

Moral of the story is, because of these factors, I had (and still have) very, very poor meal planning abilities. Top that off with living on a college campus for 3 years (eating the limited salad bar with light ranch as the only "healthy" dressing option gets old fast), and you have a recipie for disaster.

Living on my own has helped tremendously. It is so difficult though. It's easy to buy frozen dinners and shove them in the freezer (my biggest temptation is to buy several Totinos pizza's that only cost 1.25 each and eat the whole pizza in one sitting - about 60 grams of carbohydrates and more calories than I even want to mention). But, as a former proponent of "I don't cook," I've begun to enjoy the hobby. As I am working 40 hour weeks this summer (a new concept to me!) I find that coming home and cooking a meal destresses me after a long day (dispite the fact that during southwest Missouri's way-hotter-than-normal June my roommate refused to turn on the a/c!).

I have come up with a game plan for meal planning. As I've rambled on about myself enough for one day, I'll share it with you tomorrow.

S