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Entries in type I (352)

Wednesday
Aug212013

Join The Strip Safely Tweet-In, August 21st at 8pm EST

Strip Safely is headed by my friend and DOC legend, Bennet Dunlap. In my opinion, when Bennet says something is important for me to pay attention to... it's important. I hope you can send some tweets tonight! - Best, Scott

 

Taken from www.stripsafely.com


 

On Wednesday, August 21st beginning at 8pm Eastern, we are staging a StripSafely Tweet-In, asking Congress to send aides to the upcoming Diabetes Technology Meeting on September 9th. 

Please join us and add your voice. 

We’ve made it easy. Simply go to the Let’s Tweet page of Stripsafely.com, find your state and click the link listed next to your senators and congressmen. We’ve already created the message – you just need to tweet it out. (Don’t forget the leadership at the top of the page – we can all tweet to them!)

Then, please, get creative and send additional positive messages to help the diabetes community build friends in Congress. Include the hash tag #StripSafely. Feel free to use this link to our letter in your tweets.

Diabetes isn’t partisan about whose life it impacts. We shouldn’t be partisan in seeking support for our health.

Friday
Aug162013

GiveAway: Lauren's Hope 

 

It's time for the last giveaway of anniversary week, but first...

I wish that I could find enough meaningful words to express what the last six years of writing Arden's Day has meant to me. The truth is, so many of the tough times are made easier because I know that you are out there. I'm grateful that you find my blog useful and I want you to know how much I appreciate it when you visit. Thank you!

Now go get some free stuff!

Lauren's Hope is giving two winners their choice of either the bracelet that Arden wears or the caregiver necklace that I wear. Each winner will also receive a signed copy of my book, 'Life Is Short, Laundry Is Eternal'.


 

The ability to comment in this post has been disabled because entries must be left here on the Lauren's Hope blog. Good luck, I hope that you win!


Don't forget to enter the other giveaways currently running on Arden's Day:

Win $50 for your JDRF Walk

Signed Copies of my book

10 copies of the Disney/Lilly book, Coco's First Sleepover (giveaway closed)

Wednesday
Aug142013

Low Blood Glucose: Then and Now

I always think of anniversaries as a perfect time to reflect about how far we've come. It doesn't matter if you are talking about a wedding anniversary or an amount of time since something has happened, once and a while it is valuable to reflect and take a moment to feel not only what has transpired but what you've learned.


On August seventeenth of 2007, the second day that this blog existed, I was preparing to make a video with my kids when Arden's BG suddenly and significantly, dropped. Since my first inclination about the blog back then was to educate, I made the difficult decision to ask my son to turn on the camera as I was tending to Arden's low BG. More difficult was the task of later editing the footage. The video is not pleasant to watch, it's terrible in fact but if you have ever wondered what it was like to try and get a three year old whose blood glucose is dangerously low and falling to take in carbs, well, this sure does show what that is like.

Before you watch the video, I want you to please take a moment to read another post about low BGs that I wrote in June of 2011. I think that the two juxtaposed like this will leave you with more then enough hope if you are still struggling and if you happened to be past this part of your life, I think these two posts together will allow you the benefit of seeing how far that you've come. Either way, be proud of yourself.

June 1, 2011

Twenty Eight

 

I hope that this post serves as a source of hope to families that are newly diagnosed or still struggling to find calm... read on, I think it will.
 
Last Friday we were packing up and getting ready to enjoy a sleepover at Adventure Aquarium to celebrate Arden’s birthday. Arden invited two of her girlfriends and one of them arrived at our door as I was testing Arden’s BG.
 
Minutes before, Arden tripped while walking in her room and when I asked her if she was okay, she responded, “I feel dizzy all of the sudden”, we had just changed her DexCom an hour before so it wasn’t reporting BGs. As we made our way to the kitchen where her OmniPod PDM was I went over the afternoon in my mind and I couldn’t imagine that she was low. 
 
Test strip...
 
Knock at the door...
 
Blood drop...
 
“Hello, I’ll be right with you...”
 
Beep... and her blood glucose is 28.
 
So, there is a woman that I barely know in my foyer, sleeping bags and pillows all over the hallway and Arden’s BG is 28. Not just 28 but very unexpectedly 28 and she was still in the middle of a bolus and I expected (no DexCom) that she was falling.
 
This next bit is where you take hope from the story...
 
I didn’t flinch. No elevated heart, no sense of panic, I wasn’t upset and as a matter of fact I maintained a calming conversation with the woman in my house as she considering panicking.
 
I explained the situation to Arden, shut off her basal and she began eating and drinking. 64 grams later all was normal again - except, it never wasn’t normal. A sad statement perhaps that this all could be a normal part of someone’s life but what the hell, it is... When it was over and the mother left, I felt like I was ten feet tall. In the past I did my best to stay calm in situations like this (they don’t happen often thankfully) but I was doing just that, trying to stay calm. That is, in the past I wasn’t calm, I was frightened and I was trying to maintain my composure and stop Arden from having a seizure. I was scrambling to stay ahead of the situation.
 
Last Friday, I was calmer then George Clooney on an old episode of E.R.. Not ‘old’ George Clooney, the one that is starting to look like he doesn’t belong with those young girls... young George Clooney, back when he was bedding down those nurses in the break room. I was all suave like that, except instead of nurses, I was rockin’ the juice box and I’m fairly positive that the bottom of G.C.’s foot is more handsome then I... However, other then those differences, I was exactly like that. ;)
 
I finally have my 10,000 hours of practice and one day you will too. Moments that now may feel like they are happening at 100 miles an hour will slow down to a Matrix like kung fu speed and you’ll just move through the slow motion around you, completely in control. I bent the spoon baby!
 
Okay, I’m out of odd movie and TV reference so I’m going stop.
Now you can watch the video from 2007... Be prepared, it is tough to watch.

In two more days Arden's Day will be six years old and on the 22nd, Arden will be living with diabetes for seven years. These years have at times been nearly impossible to traverse, there have been countless low BGs and moments that I was sure that I couldn't live through... but I did, we all did. Arden is fine, I'm not crazy, Kelly and I are still married and Cole seems pretty normal (as normal as a thirteen year old can be). Diabetes hasn't stopped us, in fact, and I say this with great deference to all the bad that it brings... I think it's made us better. More tired maybe, but stronger and more resilient. Today, as I reflect on all that has happened to us I can see how far we have come. I no longer feel the fear from that video when I watch it, just the triumph of living through it. My advice is simple, reflect today and give yourself the credit that you are due.
Wednesday
Aug072013

I'll be at the DSMA Social Media Meet-up Tonight in Philly... Will I See You?

Tonight at 8 PM - Cherise Shockley is bringing DSMA to The Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 1201 Market Street Philadelphia, PA 19107 - Salon D (5th Floor) for a live session of the #DSMA Twitter chat. 

If you are attending the meet-up tonight and you happen see me... please say hello, I'd love to meet you!

Here's a link to the FaceBook event page for tonight's meet-up.

 


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Monday
Jul292013

4 am Scavenger Hunt

I'm not embarrassed to tell you that more than a few times a year I fall sound to sleep on our sofa while trying to watch television at night. I am however embarrassed to admit that a handful of those times I am so stone cold tired that my wife can't wake me up to go to bed. This is apparently my signal to Kelly that I need a night off from BG patrol and she always, no matter how tired she may be, picks up the reigns and carries on.

One thing these nights seem to have in common, I always wake up a bit disoriented around 4 am, usually with pillows pilled on top of me acting as a blanket. 

Last week when this happened to me I woke on schedule around 4 am, stumble to the second floor and went directly to Arden's room to check on her. I picked up her DexCom, saw that she needed a small temp basal and reached for her bag but it wasn't where I expected it to be. I found my phone, realized I didn't have a flashlight app and proceeded to download one from the App Store.

This is the exact moment when all of this would get funny

There I was standing in the doorway of Arden's room, leisurely browsing the flashlight apps because I didn't want to download one that I would regret later - which is of course ridiculous. My hair was standing straight up, my shorts were twisted about 180º counterclockwise around my waist and I was incredibly thirsty, but in my exhausted daze I couldn't let go of the feeling that I didn't want to download an inferior flashlight app. This process took a few minutes and then I set out, armed with my new flashlight, to find Arden's bag that holds her OmniPod PDM, MultiClix lance, test strips and all of the rest. 

I quick scan told me that it wasn't in her room, "must be with Kelly" I thought. It wasn't. So I headed back to the first floor where I finally found Arden's bag under a pillow on a chair in our living room. I walked back upstairs, opened the bag and found that it only contained test strips. I laughed to myself and I made my way back downstairs. I won't bore you with every detail of the next twenty minutes but sufficed to say that the contents belonging in that bag could not have been more spread out throughout our home. 

Our poor dog Indy looked quite cross when I finally gave up on my new flashlight app and turned on all of the lights in the living room.  When I finally set the temp basal rate and went to crawl into my bed, I realized that I never folded the laundry that I put on the bed earlier in the day. One more trip around the second floor netted me a laundry basket large enough to hold the clean clothes... and I was finally off to dreamland. 

If only I wasn't wide awake from my scavenger hunt...