Raising my voice for diabetes

April 14th was "Raise Your Voice For Type 1 Diabetes Awareness Day". More information, and links to other people speaking up, can be found here: Six Until Me

I'm a day late, and better with pictures than words, and I think these speak for themselves:

This, do 4-6 times a day.

This, do every time you eat carbs.

They are meant to be uncomfortable to look at.

This is my life, and the life of any type 1 diabetic, every day. So if these make you wince or look away, just remember, we deal with it day in and day out. There's no looking away. It's a burden we carry silently in a struggle to maintain a "normal" lifestyle.

Presidential Election 2008 prediction

I've had this prediction for a while now, but I want it in writing to look back on.

Today, April 1st, 2008, I am committing to my presidential election predictions. This isn't an April Fool's joke.

Round 1: Nominations
Democrats: Obama
Republicans: McCain obviously, but Paul and his followers are for some reason still in the race. I guess McCain could drop dead and leave Paul the winner by default?

Round 2: November Election
McCain.

Explanation:
This all comes from my gut, no fancy polls or statistics or anything like that. I predicted both of Bush's wins in the same way. Basically, my hunch is that the bad guy always wins. Life isn't some fairy tale; it's filled with corruption, hate, ignorance. And usually covered with an excellent PR/marketing campaign.

There's a chance if Hilary got the nomination she could beat McCain, but only because she is as big a bad guy as he is. Lies and deceit, that's what wins the American heart. It'd be hard for her to lie enough to beat out McCain's ignorance, but I think she's got it in her.

As you can see, I don't think Obama will make it. Why? Because he's honest, and he gives people hope. He wants change. He's the good guy.

An explanation of the previous post

In the previous post (go read it first), I described a vision I often have. I also wanted to talk about what inspires this vision, but didn't feel like it would fit in with that piece of writing.

An image was recently released of the oldest galaxy in the visible universe. It is 12.8 billion light years away. Our own sun is only 4.5 billion light years old. When the light from this galaxy was emitted in a billion fiery nuclear furnaces, our Sun was still 8.3 billion years away from being a twinkle in the Milky Way's eye.

That galaxy no longer exists. At least, not in the form we can observe. Time has shaped it. Its gas clouds have condensed into stars and planets. Civilizations probably rose and fell. Stars spent their fuel and collapsed, colliding with each other and forming into black holes, and eventually there was darkness. But we won't see that for another 12.8 billion years, at which point our own sun will be dust in the galatic winds.

It takes our sun, Sol, 220 million years to make its way around the Milky Way. If you imagine each rotation around the milky way as a "sun year" (as we refer to dog years), that puts our sun in its prime at the age of 20. At just 45 "sun years", or 10-billion Earth years, our sun will run out of fuel and become a red giant, engulfing the inner planets.

The oldest known living tree was 5,000 years old when it was cut down unknowingly.

We already know the average human life span.

A female mosquito can live up to 100 days. Males, up to 20.

If a 20 day life of a mosquito seems irrelevant to us, just think how we must feel to the universe.

The speed of time

Sometimes I get caught up thinking about how the speed of time changes with scale. When I do this, I usually put together a short video in my head, in the style of a music video. I've had this vision in my head for a long time, and it kills me that I can't adequately portray it. Since I'm not a video editor, I will try to describe it. Read along and try to picture it in your mind. Throw some mellow, rhythmic trance music in, such as ATB.

We start out observing bacteria reproducing asexually, dividing with each steady beat of the music. Each beat, a new generation. Then a transition, the reproducing speeds until it's almost a blur, at which point we visually zoom out to see that the bacterial colony was on the back of a mosquito. As our time continues to speed up, the beating of the mosquito's wings progresses from a slow rhythm to indistinguishably fast. The camera follows the mosquito's flight, part of its short existence, until it lands on the arm of a child. We can hear the mosquito's heart beating at a normal pace, with the music, as well as the child's, which seems painfully slow.

Again, time continues to speed into what we consider normal. The sound transitions to the child's heart, speeding to match the old perceived pace, and the mosquito zips away. The camera zooms out to show this person sleeping under a tall tree in the mountains.

At this point, we speed up to match the pace of a tree's life. The transitions take on a more drastic effect as the child darts in and out of the frame in the blink of an eye, hanging a swing, playing, running, napping. All the while aging rapidly, for to the tree, this person's life is but the blink of an eye.

We also observe the tree's life progress at this fast pace. Growing, seasons coming and passing like night and day. As we speed time again, we watch an acorn fall from the tree and grow from the ground to grow into another towering giant, as well as many others in the scene. Time speeds up yet more, and we can see hundreds of trees growing tall and getting taken down, much like the bacteria we started with.

We can also see the ground shifting. Erosion levels the steep hill where a child once napped, and tectonic plate movement begins to cause compression ripples in the hillside. As the camera zooms farther out, time continues to speed, and we observe now an entire landscape change. Lakes form and drain, mountains rise and erode. Continents drift.

Zooming farther away, the Earth circles the sun ever faster, and becomes smaller with distance. Soon we're watching one of the long elegant arms of the milky way drifting around it's core.
Farther still, it's but one of 35 galaxies in our Local Group, our cluster of galaxies drifting through space together. At this time scale, each has its own active life. Spiriling, colliding with others. Little specs of light flashing in and out of existence as entire stars are born and die.

At this point, we zoom out to what looks like the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, a view filled with distant galaxies, and our own galactic neighborhood becomes indistinguishable from the rest.

UPDATE, 4/22/08: I just came across an animation out of Germany with a very similar concept called "Temporal Perspective". Check it out:

Bloodsugar, why you gotta be like this?

I hate making a big deal about my diabetes. Hell, I hate even acknowledging it. But now at 2am, I feel the need.

Tonight I had a bowl of instant mac & cheese. 55g carbs. My bloodsugar was a little high at the time, 160, so I dosed 5 units instead of the 3 that should have worked.

At 10:30, I checked my bloodsugar and found a surprising 215. Shit.

Dose 5 units. 2 should have worked, but it seems like my old ratio of 1 per every 50 over has been failing lately.

1 hour later, I check again, expecting something nice and pleasant around 100. No, it's 271. It's gone up. A lot. So I raged bolused. A "bolus" is any injection of fast acting insulin in order to bring down blood sugar quickly, as opposed to a basal dose which is slow acting and provides a base level of insulin in the system. And the rage part, well that's obvious. I had given more than I should have earlier and saw reverse effects.

So I shot up with another 8 units. 4 should have done. Take that fucker.

But you see, the night isn't done yet.

While I was home for Christmas I had a surprising extreme low in which I didn't feel any of the usual symptoms, so I have to be more careful now. My body might not always clue me in. So I set an alarm for 1:30 to check my bloodsugar.

And what do you know, at 1:30, it was down to 45. Typically I should get the sweats and shakes at around 50, and I feel right as rain.

That didn't last long though.

I hate when normal healthy people complain because their bloodsugar is low. They might feel weak, or light headed possibly, but I would put $100 on it that their sugar is above 60, in the perfectly healthy range.

You do not know low bloodsugar.
You do not know the graving for carbs. Any carbs. Chips. Candy. Pop. Avoid fat, it slows the absorption. You feel like you haven't eaten in 2 weeks. Even if you just had a 2,000 calorie meal an hour ago.
You don't know the trembling hands and full body sweat.

So it's 2:15am and I'm sitting here, up since 1:30, drenched in sweat, trembling, chugging 16 oz of pepsi and eating tortilla chips like crazy. About 10x the carbs I need to fix the problem, which means I actually need another shot now so I don't end up near or above 300 again.

Put test strip in meter.
Prick finger.
apply blood.
125mg/dL. Good, coming back up.
Get out syring.
draw 4 units of air.
inject air into insulin bottle to balance pressure.
draw 4 units of insulin.
insert needle into tummy.
inject.
Wrap up blog entry.
Go to sleep.
Check bloodsugar in the morning.

---
Update. 7:30am.
Do you believe in coincidences? I'm not sure I do. Either it's a coincidence that my bloodsugar was 303 this morning, or the diabetes gods are somehow mocking me. Clearly I need to learn to control the carb cravings during a low.

For 5 hours, my bloodsugar must have been in the 300-400 range. Anything above roughly 140 is basically corrosive to your system. My eyes, nerves, heart, kidney, were all soaking in a nice sugar acid bath overnight.

By the way, when I was diagnosed with diabetes, my fasting bloodsugar was 300, just to put things in perspective.

Anyway, I'm done with this story. I only wrote it for me, to acknowledge the problems I do face, and quit living in denial.

Oh well. 9 units and 2 hours later, and it's back around a healthy 90. Of course, 4 units should have done it. I'm afraid to eat now. It might mess it all up again.

Winter Solstice

I was at a party lastnight, standing next to a friend listening to the other conversation bits. Two of the people there were a happy couple...

guy to girlfriend: I love you more than the day is long
Me to mike: That's an odd thing to say. Friday is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

It was pretty funny at the time, I guess you had to be there.

Big Numbers

Big numbers are hard to comprehend. I just read this short way to put big numbers in perspective:

It takes only 11 1/2 days for one million seconds to pass.
Nearly 32 years for one billion seconds…
And nearly 32,000 years for one trillion seconds to pass us by.

Why space exploration is necessary

Phil over at Bad Astronomy Blog has a good post explaining just why space exploration is so important, in case anyone has forgotten exactly what we gain from it.

He also recently put NASA's budget into perspective: (emphasis mine)

A lot of people think NASA is a waste of time and money, and maybe this is why; they have a grossly overinflated idea of how much NASA spends. When NASA loses a $150 million probe, that’s a lot of real money, but hardly a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend as a nation (and remember, we spend $11 million per hour in Iraq).

So if you know anyone, including yourself, who honestly thinks NASA is a waste of money, go smack them upside the head for me.

Sick and tired of negative attitudes

Alright, I'm diabetic, I've covered that before. How often do I whine about how much it's changed my life or how much it hurts or how it alienates me? I don't. That's because all it is to me is an inconvenience. A chore. Some people brush their teeth after eating, I take a shot. Yes, I had to get over my fear of needles, but beyond that it's just a (slightly expensive) inconvenience.

I read some diabetes oriented websites and blogs to stay up on new treatments and such. It seems that the entire "community" of diabetics are a bunch of whiners who love to feel sorry for themselves. Specifically, Amy at diabetesmine.com and her readers. She's written a ton on the fancy wireless pump she uses that is so convenient. She knows how to ratio her insulin based on how many carbs she eats, and yet every chance she gets she complains about what a struggle it is and how thanksgiving is so troublesome because of all the danger foods.

GET OVER IT.

If I have a granola bar with 24g of carbs, I dose 1 unit of insulin.
If I have sweet & sour chicken with white rice, a total of 200g carbs, I dose 10 units. You see, my ratio is 1:20, so no matter what I eat I'm taking a shot, so what's the difference?

And I really don't think I'm "missing something." My A1c test scores have been 5.0 for a year. And just so you know, that's a better score than most normal people have.

Sorry, I just had to rant about all these people trying to tell me my life is ruined over such a trivial thing.

Rudy Jiuliani

“Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.” - Rudy Giuliani

Want a good republican candidate? Ron Paul.