Thursday, December 28, 2006

'Fraidy Cat

Important lesson I learned at work today unrelated to working:

When on your lunchbreak on the day you have an appointment with your primary care doctor to discuss test results, DO NOT look up the definition of "autonomic neuropathy".

YOU WILL SCARE YOURSELF, and probably shed a few tears onto your chicken salad sandwich because you are worried this is a condition you have.

I think if my test really showed the neuropathy, I would have been called in by my endocrinologist's office who performed the test, right? Maybe everything is fine? Maybe I have some non-diabetes-related weird health thing?

Aaargh, I have to wait until 4:15 to find out.

Also, sorry I've been a stranger. My new job is awesome, and incredibly time-consuming during the day. I'll have to aim for those late-night posts again...

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Happy holidays?

New job started this week, and I love it.

Came down with some kind of raging, painful UTI this week and was put on Cipro today by a doc at the clinic. Also given an RX for Darvoset. Didn't take that one before work, thank goodness. I am free from pain at the moment, but it's pretty difficult to type. It's hard to focus. I should go to bed anyway.

Just wanted to check in. More posting when I'm not feeling so rotten.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Smarties on Sunday

It has been so long since my blood sugar has been low that I no longer carry glucose tabs in my purse. This could have become a problem this morning as Matt and I woke up in our friend's room at a poetry festival we attended yesterday just south of here. I was starving and feeling a little shaky; my head was swimming. A quick BG check reveals a 65. A quick dig through my purse reveals a couple rolls of Smarties. I didn't check my blood sugar again until after lunch, and I don't remember what that was to post it here. I guess candy is indeed dandy.

You will be delighted to know that I am a drug test, a physical and a background check away from a new job. Yessss! I'm not exactly sure why the company requires a physical, but I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that part of their business is a big warehouse. Any guesses? (My involvement with the warehouse will be minimal as far as I know, with occasional trips there to help out the woman who creates banners and POS displays.) I'm sure as long as I don't have the bird flu or a flesh-eating virus, I'll be allowed to start right away. I could have had a rum and Diet Coke yesterday, but I've been avoiding it just in case that shows up in the drug test.

The job sounds demanding and fun, so I'm excited to start. My start date depends on when the company gets their test results and background check info. I'll be the assistant to the sales department, so I'll have secretarial duties, organizational duties, and best of all, creative duties. The business imports and distributes wine, beer and liquor for many restaurants and stores in our area. I get to create drink menus for restaurants, promotions for wine tastings, ads for in-store display, and collateral for sales meetings.

I predict I'll be busting my butt big time, but it's going to be worth it. Plus, it's great knowing that soon I'll have a job again, not to mention a much better wage than before. I can pay off my credit card AND pay off Minimed. Anybody ever notice how Minimed's billing is crazy? I thought I owed them $188, and they called me up last week to notify me that I owed them quite a bit more than that. I had no idea. I try to stay on top of my bills, too, but Minimed never sends things consistently, or at least that's my experience.

So, in summation:

Smarties = yay!
Getting up early tomorrow for a work-required physical = boo/yay/boo again
New job soon = yay!
Big ol' Minimed bill = boo.
Time to go watch a DVD = yay!

Catch you all later.

Friday, December 8, 2006

*excessive finger crossing*

I had a job interview yesterday which went really well.

It was odd, because I found the job listing on craigslist.org, which is normally not-so-great in Delaware. Not a lot of new jobs are hanging around there for this area. I saw a listing which looked interesting, so I emailed a resume. Ten minutes later, no kidding, I got a phone call asking me to come in for an interview.

It seems like a cool job. Not the dream job I've been wanting, but half of the job is at least creative, which is a plus. I can only punch numbers ad nauseum for so long.

I was called today for a second interview tomorrow. I'll be meeting some members of the staff I'd be supporting, and they're having me sit down at a computer to create a work sample.

You'll get to hear more about the job later, I think. I'm not really superstitious, but I worry that revealing too much too soon isn't a good thing. We'll see.

I think I'll wear different pants tomorrow than I did to my first interview. I read so much conflicting information about when to reveal to your employer that you have diabetes. I just stick to telling them once I've been employed. My point here is my pump tubing kept slipping out of my pants pocket, and I don't want to have to check myself a dozen times tomorrow when I'm going to be meeting a bunch of new people.

Here's to hoping that maybe I'll get exactly what I want for Christmas--a shiny new job!

Sunday, December 3, 2006

A Visit with Nancy the NP, and Michelle the Pumping Princess: Chapter 1

It completely escaped my mind to ask Nancy the NP why I was having the liver function test.

There was another test to be scheduled, which sort of threw everything out of whack mentally. I have to get some sort of autonomic function test in two weeks. Nancy the NP explained that they've noticed some tachycardia (aka fast heartbeats) at my last couple of appointments, and they want to check it out. I think, well duh there's a fast heartbeat, I'm always nervous I'm going to hear bad news when I come in here. She also says there was a trace amount of protein in my urine test, and slightly high triglyceride levels in my last bloodwork.

I'm still waiting for the most recent lab stuff to come back. I got it done the same day as the appointment this week.

I guess this explains the hyperlipidemia business. But my heart? Oh sure, I'm a poet, I think about my heart all the time, but not in the sense that something could be wrong with it. I notice that my heart seems to speed up a bit too much after sudden bursts of activity, like climbing the stairs to my third-floor apartment. I always assumed it's because I'm out of shape.

Nancy the NP must have noticed a panic-stricken look on my face while I'm in the office. She put her hand on my arm and said, "It's not for sure that these are diabetes complications. It could be just you, your body, what you were doing at the time." She went on to say that even if I do have a problem with tachycardia, I'm already on half of the treatment for it--my daily dose of Altace. She said they would add a beta blocker to the regimen.

I think of my heart in the metaphorical sense all the time--it's full of love, of song, of longing, of loss, of joy. But now when I think of it, it's full of guilt.

Every pitter-patter instead of a steady ka-thump-ka-thump, every ache and pain in my limbs, every blood-sugar-addled moment of blurred vision (which doesn't happen often)...I can't keep from blaming myself in some way. I know I shouldn't. Sometimes these things just happen.
I couldn't believe that when I mentioned my possible heart problem to my mom over the phone, she didn't launch into some lecture, resulting in even more guilt.

I just think of Nancy the NP reassuring me that maybe it's just the way I am. I can live with that.

Michelle, the diabetes educator, helped me fine-tune some basal rates, and in a week, I'm supposed to send blood sugars. She even went so far as to call me a "such a good patient". I feel like I'm making some steps in the right direction, finally. Maybe that's why I'm not going to let this guilt weigh me down. I'm bigger than this.

Plus, last night I found an awesome job opportunity nearby. I'm going to try and write the most kickass cover letter of my life, because it sounds like the perfect job for me. Even if I can't get the job, I'm hoping there's a chance I could get an internship there, because it seems their internships are not limited to students. I could work some kind of part-time job while doing an internship, then I'd be ready for a job that I love.

I'm ready for a job that I'll love now. I'm ready for a body that I love now, and a level of control that I love now. Is it too much to ask for these things all at once?