Diabetes Thoughts Blog

Last week the Boston area had to deal with a boil water order.  One of the pipes that brought all the water to the area broke, so they rerouted some water from an open air reservoir.  Good for flushing, but no good for food. (It would be like making food with pond water.)

This caused a rush on spring water from all the local supermarkets. It also caused all the local restaurants to stop serving coffee and fountain drinks. Everyone in the area was affected in one way or the other.

But, I was struck with the various ways that people with diabetes would be affected. The first thing was that I had nothing in the house to drink. I don’t drink pure water, I drink tea or crystal light, but both were made with water. I always try to drink things with little or no carbs, mostly so I can eat more. But, since there wasn’t much water to be found anywhere, I didn’t feel it was fair to my family to use up all the water on myself.

Next was bathing/hand washing. The water was supposed to be safe, but not safe if you had any cuts. I figured the holes in my fingers from glucose testing would be considered cuts. Blah!

The boil order is over, so I don’t have to worry about it any more. But I wonder if other people have to deal with this every day…

Note to self — When blowing compressed air into the roomba, wear some type of mask. The cloud of dust that came out made me sneeze, and keep sneezing…it has been an hour. Yikes.

What do you guys do?

I try to have lots of different kinds of gadgets, so it was just a matter of time before I got a Roomba.
Honestly, I didn’t expect a lot. I thought it could do some cleaning, but I figured deep cleaning would be out of the question. I was pleasantly surprised. It managed to pick up all the hair on all the carpets that I have put it on. Also, it is cleaning in all the places my vacuum couldn’t reach, like under my bed, under the tub, and under the couch. Yay for robots!

Of course, this is reducing my exercise. Cleaning the house was part of my exercise everyday. But…I have to say…I don’t feel too guilty about this one.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’ve updated my Holiday Page with some Valentine Candy carbohydrate/nutritional information. Please let me know if you would like anything added.

BTW, the picture is of the Valentine Snowman at my Designed by Lisa Cafepress Store.

Looking for information on how to make your own sick day plan? Talk to your health care team. Also, here are some good links:

• Type 1 Diabetes: Sick Day Management from University of Michigan – I particularly like the list of good sick day liquids with carbohydrate information.
• JDRF’s sick day suggestions - Good suggestions for parents of type 1 kids.
• ADA’s sick day suggestions- A great list complete with sick day foods with carb info (even in diabetic exchange information) and how to put together a sick day kit. It is written for kids with diabetes.
• Sick Day Checklist - a print-out checklist that you can bring  to your doctor to help create your sick day plan. One issue with this print-out is that there is an ad on the bottom of the checklist. Pretty good otherwise.

The various different weathermen are saying it is going to snow in this area, again….  They were talking about getting kits ready for weather emergencies. Of course I started to think about kits needed for diabetes. We with diabetes need a bit more in our kit than the general public. Here are a few things that I would put in my diabetes weather emergency kit:

1. Batteries (for pump and meter)
2. Syringes (in case the pump breaks)
3. extra vials of insulin
4. Frio or similar items that can keep the insulin cool
5. can of coke (for low blood sugar)
6. glucose tabs
7. glucagon kit
8. extra pump supplies
9. extra meter supplies
10. extra meter
11. Bottles of water

What would you put in your kit?

Helpful links:
Diabetes Emergency Kit
ADA’s Tips for Emergency Preparedness

Fruit and Vegetables in crates and boxes. (from freeclipartnow.com)

One way I tried to improve my diet/lifestyle (that actually worked) was to join a CSA.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. A person gives a a farm a certain amount of money which allows them to buy a share of the farm. Everyone who has a share gets a certain amount of vegetables during the growing season. Usually buying a share also means pledging to do a certain amount of farm work.

My share last year helped in a couple of ways. The variety of vegetables added more lower carb options to my diet.  I got some vegetables I would never have thought to buy when I was at the store. Since I already had them, I looked into interesting recipes. But, the CSA even had more. My CSA (like a lot of others) had a weekly newsletter that had interesting recipes. And, I had to work at the farm for a certain number of hours. So, a certain amount of outside exercise was something that I had to do.

If you are interested in signing up for a CSA near you, start looking into it very soon. My CSA sent me an email about sign-ups already. Quite a few CSAs sell all their shares by early February.

Looking for more information?

Here is a list of some Massachusetts CSAs: http://www.foodonthefood.com/food_on_the_food/2009/01/putting-the-loca-in-locavore.html

Here is a list of local farms and CSAs near Marlborough MA:  http://marlboroughlocalfood.wetpaint.com/page/Small+Farm 

Massachusetts list of CSAs: http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/csa.htm

Looking for a CSA in another state in the USA: http://www.localharvest.org/

Soon as the weather gets nice and cold I bring out the slow cooker. There is something great about coming in the house after a cold winter walk to the smell of stew cooking. One site I found especially useful for slow cooker recipes is “The Year of Crockpotting”.  This blog came about last year when a woman had a New Years resolution to use her crockpot every day. She posted each recipe on her blog. And yes, she finished the whole year.

Most people would stop at a year, but not “The Crockpot Lady”. She said that she will continue to post this year with tips and other crockpot information.

Her current posting is especially relevant for me. She posted suggestions on how to use her crockpot recipes and have a healthy diet. http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2009/01/crockpot-diet.html

Are you interested in reading even more on slow cooking? Diabetes Self Management decided to post about slow cookers recently too. Here is a link to their latest blog: http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/blog/Amy_Campbell/Slow_Cookers_A_Must_Have_for_Healthy_Eating

Those two links should give you lots of links for recipes, but it you would prefer to own a book, here are a couple:

• Fix-It and Forget-It Diabetic Cookbook: Slow-Cooker Favorites to Include Everyone!
• Best Diabetes Slow Cooker Recipes

Do you use a crockpot/slow cooker? What are your favorite recipes?

Lifescan announced a voluntary recall of two lots of OneTouch SureStep test strips. Some of these strips produce inaccurately low or no blood glucose results. Here are the lot numbers:

2802961 (100 count strips)
2802962 (50 count strips)

For more information, check Lifescan’s website here: http://www.lifescan.com/company/about/press/surestep122008/

I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday. Everyone enjoy themselves!

And…just for the holidays, an updated holiday page: See it here: http://www.diabetesthoughts.com/Holiday.html