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I’m tired.  Sometimes, I’m worn out before my day really gets into full swing.  And I bet I know why.  In fact, there’s a good chance that you’re in the same boat.

I never sit and just do nothing.  Where do they find these people who watch an average of 5 hours and 11 minute

s of TV per day?  Seriously?  There’s so much that I don’t get around to doing every day that I have a perpetual feeling of guilt.  I mean, I try, but there just aren’t enough hours in a day.

I must admit, I don’t consciously think much about having diabetes.  I do what I do on auto-pilot most of the time.  Even though my whole day is about diabetes, it’s also kind of not.  Mostly I think about it when I’m a little frustrated because somebody else doesn’t “get it.”  I know that I actually do a lot to takecare of my diabetes, but there’s always something more that I could be doing.  I’m known forbeing too hard onmyself.  Didn’t McDonalds have “You Deserve a Break Today” as their catch phrase once-upon-a-time?  And if you can’t trust a goofy-looking clown who sells hamburgers, who can you trust?  So I decided to take a serious (?) look at what I’ve accomplished in the past couple of days, diabetes-wise:

Ronald-McDonald

  • My pump reservoir hasn’t run dry.  Not even close.  And I’ve managed to change my site every 3 days.  Okay, yesterday was three days and 5 hours.  Close enough.  I was busy reorganizing the attic and I figured it would make more sense to change the site when I was ready to take a shower.
  • I picked clothes to wear that would give me a convenient place to clip my pump.  Who needs to be worrying about a pump when you’ve got better things to do, like schlep boxes around an attic?
  • I didn’t drop my pump on the floor getting in or out of bed, and my cat didn’t chew through the tubing.  He’s done that.  I think he really likes the smell of insulin.
  • I got insulin from the pharmacy.  Um, technically, hubby picked it up for me.  But I’m the one who put it in the refrigerator!
  • I made sure I still had plenty of glucose tablets in my purse, and the top drawer of my night stand.  Nobody ever plans to go low.
  • I made sure my dog Bailey got her pain med twice a day—she has blown out both ACLs in the past six weeks and goes for her second “knee” surgery in two more days.  I have to think about the health issues of the other “people” in my house, too.  Diabetes isn’t everything.
  • Since I was planning to go out to dinner, I had a super-healthy lunch of quinoa and veggies.  Give and take.  It was a low fat lunch, in preparation for my much-anticipated duck and gruyere polenta dinner.
  • Counted my carbs at dinner and did a dual-wave (combination) bolus.   Every try counting carbs in duck and gruyere polenta?  It ain’t easy.
  • I found my Continuous Glucose Monitor, my Dexcom receiver.  Well, actually, my hubby found it for me.  He’s a good egg.  It went MIA sometime shortly after I was having my morning caffeine on Sunday.  Hubby remembers me showing him on the CGM screen what my BG did overnight after dinner at my favorite restaurant.  I forgot to run a temp basal increase after setting the dual wave bolus, so up, up it went.  But I remembered to do the dual wave bolus, at least, so I didn’t go low during dinner.   Now back to the missing Dexcom receiver.  Really, I can’t be responsible for what happens before I’m fully caffeinated…I mean “awake”!  The CGM was on the floor in my car.  It fell out of my purse on the way to brunch.  Apparently it wanted to take a vacation from diabetes.
  • I charged my CGM receiver.  I even remembered to close the door over the USB port when I was finished.  This is a new receiver, and I need to use my label maker (Yes, I have a label maker.  Go ahead and laugh.  Get it out of your system.) to put my cell phone number on it, in case it gets lost.  Again.  Did I actually make the label and put it on the receiver?  No, I was busy in the attic, remember?  But I thought about it, and all great accomplishments begin with an idea.
  • While I was changing my sensor, I noticed that my sharps container (a liquid laundry detergent container) is getting full, and I made a mental note to buy more detergent in a container that is suitable as a sharps container.  The opening has to be big enough for the inserter to go inside the bottle.  Seriously, detergent manufacturers should take this sort of thing into account.
  • I’ve gone through one Multi Clix lancet drum, so I’ve changed my lancet regularly.  I’m not one to re-use lancets for a long time.  I know that’s not everybody, but it’s a pet peeve of mine.  Maybe it’s a nurse thing.
  • I rounded up all the lancets and test strips that were scattered in three different locations of the upstairs (not in the attic) and culled them all together in one location.  I’m not sure how they wound up having various places to live, but this has been remedied.  Ah, order.
  • I’ve counted carbs on everything I put in my mouth.  Wait, does that count?  It’s at the level of brushing my teeth, so it happens automatically.  But yes, I did.  It counts (pun intended).
  • I got some exercise.  Remember?  I reorganized the attic.  I worked up a sweat.  If my CGM hadn’t been missing, it probably would’ve been telling me that I was holding steady in the 80s while I worked.  Or gotten left somewhere in the attic.

When you really stop to think about it, diabetes makes us uber-productive.  Before you even leave the house in the morning, you’ve probably already made more decisions and engaged in more tasks than many people do in an entire day!  Give yourself credit where credit is due.  I know I’m trying to do just that.