My Dickens’ Village 2012

I uploaded the video for my village back on the 14th, but with everything going on with bad insulin and being sick, didn’t get a chance to share it here. Prior to finishing the video, I had to do some village reconstruction. I had a doctor’s appointment in Pittsburgh on the 7th and when I came home, I discovered Hurricane Alex had hit while I was gone. A lot of people and trees were knocked over – I guess in his attempt to try and get to the window. Everyone asks about the cat and the village but not the dog!

I am happy with the way the river came out – it looks much better than the blue felt I used before! One year for Christmas, my sister bought me The Locomotive Shed & Water Tower (the little piece sitting on the river). When I was putting trees in and covering wires, I had moved it and set it on the river then decided it actually should be sitting on the river. That worked out pretty good!

I have an overall picture of the village below and the video below that:

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Hospital Nightmare and Escape!

I ended up in the hospital with an infected foot. Last Friday, I went to get some NPH insulin because I still didn’t have good Levemir. Novo Nordisk replaced the 2nd bad box with the same lot number and that was also bad. They wouldn’t ship it Friday because my area doesn’t have Saturday FedEx deliveries – it was going to be Tuesday until I could get it.

I don’t know if it was the NPH or something else, but I gained 3 pounds between Saturday and Sunday and another 5 pounds between Sunday and Monday – and no, I wasn’t snacking on Christmas cookies! I was really swollen and when I took the bandage off my foot Monday morning, my foot was getting red. I “thought” it was because my bandage being tight when my foot swelled up. I didn’t think it was infected because my blood sugar was doing really good (other than the bad Levemir and testing out NPH). I didn’t feel good but I thought that was from being exhausted – that was day 8 of taking insulin every 2 hours and I was really to drop over.

Tuesday morning when I went to get my shower, I took the dressing off and the red had spread so I knew it was infected. I called my mother to come and take me to the ER. We went to the local ER at Conemaugh Hospital. The doctor agreed it was most likely infected so he did some blood work. My SED rate and white blood cell count were both up and he wanted to admit me. I didn’t want to be admitted there because I go to the wound center at Ohio Valley General Hospital in Pittsburgh and since it was a wound related problem, wanted to go there. They were great in calling Pittsburgh to get me transferred there.

A Human Pump – Bad Box of Levemir AGAIN

Last January, I had some bad Levemir.  With that bad box, Novo Nordisk first had my pharmacy give me another box and that was also bad.  The box they shipped me was good.

Since then I have been saving the last pen in the box to use after I use the first pen out of a new box.  I forgot to order my pens before I had to use that last pen so no extra pen.  Of course, that had to be the box that was bad!  I opened the new box Sunday morning and my blood sugar started going up and corrections weren’t working.

To make sure it was the Levemir, I took Apidra every 2 hours to equal my Levemir dosage.  My blood sugar went back to normal.  Monday morning, I tried the Levemir again and my blood sugar went up again.

The Delusional Optimist Returns: A Flicker of Hope

Back in the mid-90s was when I started having some signs of complications. In 1995, I had an upper GI that showed slow stomach emptying – at the time, I didn’t realize that I had the beginning stages of gastroparesis. In 1995 and 1996, I also had a lot of laser surgery for retinopathy. During that same time period, I started getting neuropathy in my feet that got progressively worse.

Sadly, it took going on disability in 2005 that gave me the time to get online and find the Diabetes Online Community (DOC). It was late 2007 when I first found the DOC. By the time that happened, my neuropathy was so bad that I had to use a walker to get around. In 2006, I had stitches put in my foot without needing to be numbed. I had zero feeling in my feet up to almost my knees.

When I found the DOC, I not only learned tips on how to manage my blood sugar, I found hope that my neuropathy could be reversed some day. There were articles posted about nerve regeneration and discussions that followed. One very interesting discussion was how our mitochondria can take 2-3 years to reach our feet in a person of average height. And of course, most of them get killed off on the journey from our spine to our feet.

Yesterday I had an appointment at the wound center. Because I had left and then decided to go back again, I was treated as a new patient and had to go thru the health screening part for a new patient. The nurse practitioner joked about having to do the filament testing – she knew that I had zero feeling in my feet but was supposed to do it as part of the process.