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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Got the trim up on my own today.

Made some huge headway in cleaning up the garage too now that I could finally get the table saw on the workbench and put all the horses away.

I was going to pull my car in at one point and start loading tools back in the trunk, but I decided not to. I think tomorrow I'll get my good shop vac out there and clean it out real good. It needs it.

I'm going to patch up the trim first thing after I make a run to the grocery store in the morning, then I'll get to work on that. I'll also do a deep clean on the new refrigerator and plug it in out in the garage just to make sure it still works right before swapping them out.

I never did put the final coat on all the window and baseboard trim last year, so I'll clean all of that up real good after sanding down the patching on the crown and paint it all some time next week. I'm also going to clean the inside of all the windows real good so I can get my temporary paper blinds up on the front ones to hide the smart TV I'm going to put out there. It still won't have any finished floor, but other than that the room will be done and it will be really nice to sit out there and get all that fresh air.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Got the trim up on my own today.

Made some huge headway in cleaning up the garage too now that I could finally get the table saw on the workbench and put all the horses away.

I was going to pull my car in at one point and start loading tools back in the trunk, but I decided not to. I think tomorrow I'll get my good shop vac out there and clean it out real good. It needs it.

I'm going to patch up the trim first thing after I make a run to the grocery store in the morning, then I'll get to work on that. I'll also do a deep clean on the new refrigerator and plug it in out in the garage just to make sure it still works right before swapping them out.

I never did put the final coat on all the window and baseboard trim last year, so I'll clean all of that up real good after sanding down the patching on the crown and paint it all some time next week. I'm also going to clean the inside of all the windows real good so I can get my temporary paper blinds up on the front ones to hide the smart TV I'm going to put out there. It still won't have any finished floor, but other than that the room will be done and it will be really nice to sit out there and get all that fresh air.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Yhay big project tht you were wrestling with just b4 you were dx .... is this it? Just being nosy, as usual.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, you're working on the back porch, correct? But you have a front porch as well?

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Yeah. The back, enclosed, porch. The front porch is just the roof overhang on a concrete slab. There were problems with that as well that haven't been completely remediated yet, but I stopped the bleeding there years ago. Sometimes I forget that I still have work to do on that.

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Cool! on the progress, whichever porch you're working on!

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Yeah. It is cool. Getting back to projects was what I needed to do. The diabetes is becoming quite manageable... at least for now.

I have no idea what I'll be doing in the winter when I used to hibernate, but those old behaviors are going to have to be changed. I can't sit around and do nothing 3 months out of the year.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, I banged a few survey stakes into a ground and marked a level down the yard which tells me the elevation of the downspout at several points. That was just a test of the technique. If it turned out to be a complete PITA hubby was ready to spring for a builder's transit (and tripod and stadia). I'll do a few more measurements tomorrow make sure they're consistent across one side of the front yard, and tomorrow I expect to also extend it to the other side of the yard.

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I hope you have more grade to work with than I do. I was out with a level for far too long last year before putting my river rock in. I'd like to think I did a good job with it, but without any rain who knows?

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, you're working on the back porch, correct? But you have a front porch as well?

SIX; Yeah. The back, enclosed, porch. The front porch is just the roof overhang on a concrete slab. There were problems with that as well that haven't been completely remediated yet, but I stopped the bleeding there years ago. Sometimes I forget that I still have work to do on that.


SIGNY; Cool! on the progress, whichever porch you're working on!

SIX; Yeah. It is cool. Getting back to projects was what I needed to do. The diabetes is becoming quite manageable... at least for now.

I have no idea what I'll be doing in the winter when I used to hibernate, but those old behaviors are going to have to be changed. I can't sit around and do nothing 3 months out of the year.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, I banged a few survey stakes into a ground and marked a level down the yard which tells me the elevation of the downspout at several points. That was just a test of the technique. If it turned out to be a complete PITA hubby was ready to spring for a builder's transit (and tripod and stadia). I'll do a few more measurements tomorrow make sure they're consistent across one side of the front yard, and tomorrow I expect to also extend it to the other side of the yard.

SIX: I hope you have more grade to work with than I do. I was out with a level for far too long last year before putting my river rock in. I'd like to think I did a good job with it, but without any rain who knows?

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I feel for you. It ain't easy grading stuff. Just take your time with it and don't overdue it.




Yeah. Got quite a bit done today even though it wasn't much of a workout.

I've only eaten twice, three hours apart, and the half-cup of peanuts along with an envy apple shot me up from 88 to 166 before it came back down. That's the highest I've ever been in the afternoon after eating something. So the Metformin/Glipizide is out of my system for sure by now. If I want to eat more carbs, I've got to work for it going forward.

I'm back down to around 110 right now. I'm going to get 12 more carbs with my vegetables, but other than that it's all protein and fat for the rest of the night.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I feel for you. It ain't easy grading stuff. Just take your time with it and don't overdue it.




Yeah. Got quite a bit done today even though it wasn't much of a workout.

I've only eaten twice, three hours apart, and the half-cup of peanuts along with an envy apple shot me up from 88 to 166 before it came back down. That's the highest I've ever been in the afternoon after eating something. So the Metformin/Glipizide is out of my system for sure by now. If I want to eat more carbs, I've got to work for it going forward.

I'm back down to around 110 right now. I'm going to get 12 more carbs with my vegetables, but other than that it's all protein and fat for the rest of the night.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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So just OOC, being nosy and all... how many grams carbs per day can you get away with,not being terribly active?

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I ended up not doing much yesterday. I'm not sure if I feel like doing much today either. We're finally getting that rain we needed but it's cold and dark outside. Not awesome for the mood.

The experiment continues to work. I didn't eat a ton of carbs yesterday because I didn't work for them, but I went to sleep just over 90 and peaked this morning around 145 before I took the 18 long-active and 3 rapid-active. I'm down under 110 now and the only thing I've done is gone grocery shopping.

My AGL for Monday was 116mg/dL for the entire day.

I just checked and I've been 100% in range for the last 13 days straight. If I go back the full 2 weeks, it's 99% in range and 1% high because of a 30-45 minute spike I had over 180. Not bad, considering I was taken off the Metformin and Glipizide last Tuesday and the last time I took either of them was almost 9 days ago now, so they're both surely out of my system.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You might want to have some stairs up into it if you're doing a soaker tub. Defo some grab bars on the walls and whatever you can find to make the base grip your feet.

Usually the 65+ crowd is knocking out tubs to put in walk-in showers for safety, not the other way around. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it as it would be much more comfortable than a standing shower for sure, but soaker tubs tend to be pretty deep, which means unless you're putting one in-ground you're going to have a very high entry point into your bathing solution.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Just from your posts, I get the impression that rapid-acting isn't all that rapid, that it takes 3 hours or so to kick in. Does that seem about right?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

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Fast-acting insulin (Humalog) starts working within 15 minutes after injection, peaks in about 1 to 2 hours after injection, and lasts between 2 to 4 hours after injection.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
The sensor was bad...

I woke up from a nap late-afternoon yesterday and was still in the 130s. 10 or 15 minutes after waking up I plunged down to 68. Rather than panic eating to get my numbers stable, I did two finger prick tests and it showed 132 and 140.

Fortunately for me, I have a LOT of previous data to go by and I know where I should be at any time of day based off of activity and what I've eaten, because unfortunately for me it seems that I have near-ZERO sensitivity to high or low blood sugar levels at this point in time. Honestly, unless I'm already in the mid-50's and falling, I can't tell the difference between 60 and 200 on my own without readings.


I called customer support and they will be "overnighting" a new sensor, but because it was after 3PM on a Thursday the overnight won't be here until Monday. Fortunately, this wasn't my last one. If it were, I would be without any readings for 4 days. I'm going to have to talk to the doctor(s) about this and see if there is a way I can get a few spares on hand so I don't have to worry about that. Talk about being paranoid installing my final sensor on-hand...

That being said, after the 2 hour warmup was complete, at around 10PM, it said that I was around 165. There's no possible way that this could be true at that time of day since even on days when I'm not active that's toward the tail end of my lows. I did another 2 finger prick tests which had me at 117 and 112. I "calibrated" my receiver, which is just a fancy name for putting in the value that the finger prick tester says it is instead of what the sensor is saying, and I put the high value of 117 in. I've never had to do this with my first 4 sensors, so now I'm not confident with the values that this sensor is putting out for the next 10 days. Despite this, even without eating any further carbs, before I went to sleep it went back up to 135, and when I woke up it was in the high 180s. It's over an hour after I took my 18 units of long-active and 3 units of rapid-active and I'm in the 160s currently.

I think there might be some truth to the pens not being any good after 28 days. If you research online and look at forums where people are discussing this issue, you have about a 50/50 split of people telling you that they're still good after 28 days and people who say it looses its potency after that time.

It will be a shame to throw so much away, but I think I need to start injecting with 2 new pens tomorrow morning. Today marks day 45 that I started using each pen and pulling them out of the refrigerator. Granted, I haven't been very active since Monday which will have an effect on my numbers, but unless non-activity cumulatively stacks after a few days, the loss of potency after around the 40 day mark for the pens seems to be a real possibility.

That being said, I need to be careful when injecting my small amount of rapid when I start a new pen tomorrow. I only started the experiment of taking the rapid in the morning along with my long less than a week ago, and that was already well beyond the 28 days TPTB tell you should keep your pen in action.

Fortunately, there's only 1/3 the amount in the prescription long-active pens than there were in the samples from the doctor's office, so I won't be throwing any of that away before the pens expire, but every month I'm going to be throwing a lot of rapid-active away. It appears that this is a very well known problem in the diabetes community, but the makers will not change the volume in the pens because the logistics required to have different dosages in the pens would increase the price for everyone only to save money for a few customers.

Ahhhhhhh... Six Sigma at its finest.

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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Huh.

Seems like you've got two things to consider, the sensor/monitor and insulin expiry.

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Three things, actually. My level of activity for the last 4 days has been just a notch or two above Nil. I'm still too new at this to know if the effects of not being active stack cumulatively or not. Tuesday morning was when I replaced the sensor, and although I didn't do much on Tuesday and Wednesday, my blood sugar behaved as I would have expected it to. It wasn't until Thursday morning that the sensor went haywire. By that time I was on day 3 of little activity, or 2.5 days by the time I replaced the sensor. That could also be a factor.

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I'd take another finger-stick reading if I were you before throwing out your old insulin. The sensor read high when you started, and it's possible that it's drifting up for some unknown reason. It's a good thing you have an alternate technique on-hand (finger-stick, "on hand", get it??) to check your implanted sensor.

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I think I get what you mean, but I don't think it works that way. I believe that if the sensor was to say 180 at some point, but my finger prick says 150 and I lower it by 30, then all future readings from the sensor are going to be 30 lower than they would have been before I re-calibrated it. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I'll have to look into the documentation. (I actually had considered this possibility before, but now that you're also mentioning it I'm going to have to research it).

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If it turns out that the implant readings keep going up, I'm not sure what to suggest. I don't know enough about the technology to come up with many reasonable ideas, but one possiblity might be the unit's battery. They're all battery-powered nowadays and when battery -powered instruments start going kerflooey battery is suspect.

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Yeah. The battery is in the transceiver. It's supposed to be good for 90 days and give me life through 9 sensors. Supposedly if there is a problem with the battery and/or there won't be enough charge left in it when I go to install a new sensor, it will block me from being able to start it up with a new sensor. Who knows how reliable that feature is though?

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Another possibility is placement. Does it always go on the same place every time? You probably don't want to build up scar tissue that way so I assume they tell you to rotate placement.

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They say not to put it in the same place twice in a row. I had been putting it in about 4 different spots, but 2 of them really are not great, so I think I'm just going to rotate it back and forth about navel level on the right and left side, about 2.5-3 inches from the center. Any closer to the center and there's hair that can make it stop sticking good before it's time to be removed. Any lower and it can be jostled by my pants/belt. Any higher and the ribs are in the way. Any further from the center and I risk hitting it when I'm working and/or carrying things around.

The hair on my belly really makes the options limited without going to the constant trouble of shaving it.

Injecting insulin itself is kind of a problem for me because I don't have any body fat to speak of. I've got just the slightest bit around the "spare tire" area after putting on a few pounds when I first got treated, but otherwise anywhere I shoot it I'm shooting it directly into muscles, which you're not supposed to do. Shooting it in my underarms is completely out of the question since there's zero fat there. I could start shooting it in the thighs to have more rotation spots, but supposedly it takes a lot longer to absorb in the system from the thighs than from the abdomen.



I haven't eaten much today at all. Just some peanuts which don't ever seem to raise my blood sugar despite the carbs in them. It's 11PM right now and I'm only now getting the meter beeping at me for going down to 90. I'm not even going to cook vegetables tonight. I'm just going to eat protein and see what happens when I use the 2 new insulin pens tomorrow morning. I won't throw the old ones out right away, but if I see really good results after injecting with new ones tomorrow I probably will.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
if she's over 70 and still biking, good for her!


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i'm going to be posting less for a while. i still have lots and lots of things to get ready and projects to complete before the end of the year, and here we are, halfway thru the year and i'm not even close to halfway done. still be reading your posts tho, and will be commenting sporadically.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I hope your boss lady makes a speedy recovery, Brenda. She shouldn't be riding her bike so fast!

Good luck with your projects Sigs!



Going to help my friend out at his rental today.

Numbers were pretty good last night considering the last few days. But I did do 2 hours of yard work and ate a small amount of carbs, so really can't tell for sure if it was the new insulin pens or not, although I did see a much more dramatic drop out of the gates with the new stuff than I was seeing with the old stuff before I got started.

Woke up at 153 this morning with my high overnight being 164.

Also, I did prick myself 4 times throughout the day and 3 out of 4 times the prick meter was higher than the continuous monitor, but every time the difference in numbers was in the mid-to-high single digits, never double digits... so I feel comfortable that this sensor is working right after the re-calibration and I won't be finger pricking anymore unless something really weird happens.

I still decided to go with 4 units of rapid instead of 3, just to get the day off on the right foot. I'm bringing extra food with me just in case, and I'll have my tablets too if I need them.



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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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