prequel to Labyrinth

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Labyrinth

Super cool news! The company Archaia has announced that they are working on a graphic novel that will be the prequel to the fantasy movie “Labyrinth”.

Have you seen Labyrinth? It came out in 1986, and it had fantasy, creatures made by Jim Henson and designed by Brian Froud and starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connolly. Oh yes, how could I forget – it is also a musical. It is one of my favorite movies.

So a graphic novel is kind of cool (a movie would have been extremely cool) but according to Entertainment Tonight they may have music made for the novel. So, even better… Now, if they can get David Bowie to sing too… *hope* *hope*. They say it should be out in late 2012.

Here is the trailer to the original movie:

Continuous Glucose Monitor and me…part 2

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Medtronic's CGM

This is part 2 of my discussion of the Medtronic CGM. This post is devoted to one of my least favorite warning signals — the weak signal warning.

The weak signal warning shows up when the pump is having trouble reading the transmitter. It is an important alarm. But, it seems that the transmitter is not very strong at all.

If I go to the gym (which is one of the more important places where I would want the CGM to work), I have to make sure my pump is as close to the transmitter as possible. I guess all the electronic equipment at the gym causes problems. Ugh.

I could live with that — but it also has problems in computer labs. Well, since I teach in computer labs, you can see that it would be important to me. Grrr.

Well, how about at home? It seems if my pump goes underneath me (when sleeping for example), it also gets a weak signal. Blah!

Now, if you look at the documentation, it would seem that a weak signal wouldn’t cause that much of a problem. It claims that it keeps up to 40 minutes of data which it would upload once it gets the signal. But, in my pump that isn’t the way it works. If it loses signal for more than 15 minutes, (and then get it back) it then goes back in the “Start” sequence. That means up to 2 hours of no glucose readings. Then it will need to be re-calibrated, again.

Perhaps it acts wacky because I have a Paradigm 722 and not a Revel. I really hope so.

 

contact lenses

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Have you seen this yet? It is super cool! Microsoft Research and University of Washington is working on something called the “Functional Contact Lens”. They have discovered that a person’s blood sugar level can be read in a person’s tears. So, the contact lens will sit in the eye (just like a regular lens) while it is there it can read the blood sugar level and send the info to a different device. Now, that is cool enough – technology like this could avoid a lot of finger stabbing and belly stabbing. But, that is not the end of this technology.

They are hoping that the contact lens could show the information to the wearer directly. So, the info will be seen on the side of their vision. Maybe with a blood sugar number, or perhaps with a warning message. The video that they have on the website makes the Natural User Interface look like the info the Terminator gets in the terminator movies.

This project is a long way away from being released, but looks very very cool. I know I would be interested in trying it out when it comes out…

 

24 hours w/ diabetes

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Recently I read a post at the “Angry type 2 diabetic” about how the Mary Greeley Medical Center, in Ames, Iowa, had medical professionals live like a diabetic for 24 hours. It reminded me of my nurse practitioner from years ago.

She was taking a course at Joslin about diabetes treatment. Each medical professional had to act like a diabetic with a particular treatment plan. I forget what type of treatment plan she chose. The thing was, she only kept to the treatment plan for a few hours. She said that she “got the idea” after that. I was thinking “Oh no you didn’t.”

We have to continue to stab our fingers and test our blood. We have to count carbs and give ourselves insulin. We have to do that EVERYDAY. There is no vacations, there is no break, there is no “getting the idea”. This darn disease doesn’t stop.

And she wouldn’t even try to do it for more than a few hours. Sigh.

 

mySentry

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Medtronic has announced a new product – mySentry.

MySentry is a remote glucose monitor — so a parent can look at a monitor in a different room and see the Continuous Glucose Monitor’s latest reading of their child’s blood sugar.

mySentry works with a patients MiniMed Paradigm® REAL-Time Revel™ System. mySentry’s monitor can be in the room of caregiver and the patient can be in a different location in the house. The caregiver can glance at the monitor to see if anything is wrong – if there are any alarms, low or high blood sugar, and more. No longer do parents have to wake their child up several times at night to check their blood sugar. They don’t even have to stay in the same room so they can hear the continuous glucose monitor’s alarms.  Pretty cool.

Thursday Thoughts

Quote

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Here is my health quote for the week:

“He who enjoys good health is rich, though he knows it not” – Italian Proverb

In other words — you don’t realize how important good health is until you don’t have it any more. I wish that all of those who don’t have a chronic illness could understand how lucky they really are.

#dsma

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Photo credit: ppdigital from morguefile.com

Did you know that lots of people with diabetes and their families get on twitter to chat about diabetes and life? Well why you didn’t you tell me :)

I found http://diabetessocmed.com/ two weeks ago and have joined in two #dsma twitter chats. (They are on Wednesday nights at 9PM EST). It was so nice to be able to talk to people who knew exactly what I was feeling and talking about. Sigh… Happy Lisa.

So, if you haven’t heard of it either — Go on twitter, follow  @diabetessocmed. Once it is Wednesday at 9pm EST, pay attention to #dsma. If you want to join in the conversation, make sure you add #dsma to your tweet. I have used http://www.tweetdeck.com/ and http://tweetchat.com/ to make the chat a bit easier, since there are SO many people talking at once. Good Luck!

Diabetes web comic

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Native American artist Ryan Huna Smith (with Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona) has created a comic and digital mobile app to help teens (especially Native Americans and Latinos) learn about diabetes. The comic book called “It’s Up 2 You!” and it is available in the iTunes store for free.

It is also available on the web: It’s up 2 you on the web. On the web it is written in English, but there is also audio in English, Spanish and Tohono O’odham. You can also view it with a “health challenge” which is basically a diabetes knowledge quiz. If you can’t figure out how to read the comic, click on the word “Free” on the cover.

Info from:

A visit to Wendy’s

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A couple of days ago, my family and I were heading to a New Years Eve party and we were running late. Instead of gambling on whether or not there would be supper-like food at the party, we decided to make a stop at the fast food restaurant “Wendy’s”.

Before you start to tell me how many carbs are in a french fry — I know. I decided to have a half sized apple pecan chicken salad, which is a total of 28 carbs. But, I am not blogging excitedly about the salad. I am excited about the drink machine that was in the restaurant –> a Coke Freestyle machine.

You see, when I usually go to restaurants, if I don’t want a million carbs, I have a choice of coffee, water or diet coke. Honestly, I am not a big fan of any of those things. The new Freestyle machine has over 100 choices of drinks — and a lot of them are the “Diet” and “Zero” drinks. I was able to have my favorite soda — Diet Dr. Pepper. Yay for choices!

Fiddling with the website

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It has been a while since I changed the look of the website, so I decided that the first of the year was a good time to do it. I think I fixed everything that broke during the change, but if you notice anything, please let me know.

Did you have a good first day of the year? I hope so!