backwards

new years resolutions are the devil. i might just try and stop making them, because mine are usually so vague that i end up trying to do everything and then getting mad that i can't accomplish it all. so maybe the first step here is to look back on my 2006 and see how things went.
i guess i'll do this chronologically. in january, i was pretty depressed. i had lived with diabetes for only a few months, and it was geting in the way of life. i went to the gym a lot though, and managed to get myself in pretty good shape, and had a pretty good routine with my insulin regimen: one injection of lantus at night, and then injections of novolog for meals. at the time, i was still able to get away with sneaking little snacks of under 15g of carbohydrates without having to do an insulin shot. oh, those were the days! not really. actually, looking at where i am now and contrasting it to that makes me realize that 2006 was a big year.
i don't really remember february too too much, although eric and i went out to dinner for vday, and i think it was one of the first fancy dinners out where i had dessert and everything. i remember going to the bathroom at marco a few times to shoot some insulin. inconvenient, for sure.
in march, a few friends came up and we ran a road race together. i was so nervous about going low beforehand! but i managed to run 9-minute miles and finish with a good blood sugar, hurray! this was a huge deal for me personally and gave me a big mental boost. it was one of my first experiences with putting my diabetes aside and doing what i wanted, instead of allowing it to run my life once again. eric also accompanied me to the diabetes expo, where i spent a lot of time meeting with the people from minimed, and i started to consider using the insulin pump.
april is the first time i started thinking seriously about the pump. i put the paperwork through, and actually received the pump sometime in may. may and about half of june went by without me taking too much initiative to get started, because i was in a pretty good routine with my shots and exercise. but by mid-june, i was ready to go. i went through a major hassle with my doctor's office and my nurse to get started. they gave me a huge runaround, which really upset me a lot at the time. but what i am proud of is the fact that i hounded them and made them train me and see me. but i started thinking that switching doctors might be a good move.
i started pumping with saline sometime in late june. and then on july 5, i was pumping with insulin! i was SO SCARED the night before. my mom was visiting boston at the time, and i was so glad to have her and eric there to support me, because i was a total total mess. i've realized that i don't deal with change all that well.
the first several days of the pump were great: i had excellent numbers, and after a few days, i even attempted exercise with it. things were fantastic! and then my little diabetes house of cards just came crashing down. by mid-july i was suffering from constant hypoglycemic episodes, and didn't know how to fix them. i tried everything: i was on a non-existent basal rate most of the time, setting temp basals of 0 at the drop of a hat: to get to work, to get home from work, to go grocery shopping, to clean the house. i didn't know what to do! and my nurse, depsite being a wonderful person, was not very proficient with the pump. her reaction to the lows and my non-existent basal rate was to tell me that i had gotten the wrong pump, since the minimed's smallest dosage is .05 u/hr, and that i should have gotten an animas, which pumps at .025 u/hr. (not too much of difference here if you ask me, which just shows me now how much both of us didn't know at the time.) when she told me this, i burst into tears. i had known that the transition would be hard, but i was just not ready for all that work and then to be told that i couldn't pump!
i was in a pretty big funk at the end of july. then one day, i went to go see my therapist at the joslin center, and i fell apart and told her everything about my lows and basal rate. immediately, she sent me to see a joslin pump trainer who took one look at my settings and told me that my insulin to carb ratio was giving me too much insulin, and was the reason for my constant lows. looking back, the answer was so obvious! this was the push that i needed to bite the bullet and switch doctors. i was holding a loyalty to my previous doctor and nurses because they'd helped me through diagnosis, but it became evident that the switch was necessary, especially since i wanted to keep pumping. its convenience factor has been wonderful: i can bolus to the tenth of a unit, it automatically corrects for high or low sugars, it can be stopped for exercise, it can be used at the dinner table (no more dirty bathroom injections... yessss!), it eliminates the need for shots of lantus every day-- i absolutely love it.
i met with my new doctor at the joslin center in early august, and he was an incredible help. i also broke up with my old doctor and nurse, which was hard, but necessary. i felt a little silly saying that it was not them, it was me, but hey. i had a bad blip in late august when eric and i went on vacation to the cottage in upstate ny for about 10 days. my numbers were totally out of whack, and i was feeling horrible about them. in early september, i hit a real low and realized that i needed to change my outlook on diabetes, because i was really depressed.
since then, i have been working really hard to get back to my real life, while continuing to take the best care of myself that i can. it hasn't been easy, but i've made a lot of progress with friends and social things (ahem, going out and seeing people and traveling) that i had neglected for the first year after diagnosis. i've realized that the mental aspect is just as important as the physical aspect, and sometimes, i have to loosen my control over the disease a bit, not so much with my numbers, but more in my contant quest for perfection.
i also managed to make a few important connections within the diabetes world: one of e's coworkers is married to a diabetic, and we started emailing. our communication has provided me with more help then my doctors have sometimes! he taught me how to set dual and square wave boluses on my pump, which have improved my numbers 110%! and he's just been a great sounding board for venting and questioning.
i did the diabetes walk in dc in november, and i managed to fundraise about $1,900! that was pretty exciting for me; it showed me what a great extended support network i really do have. i also attended a diabetes support group in november, which was a mixed bag. parts were very good, and others were not my favorite. but all in all, i think it was useful. and the holidays were hard, but not as hard as they were the previous year. and then i ended the year with my best a1c yet, woot!
it's good for me to type this. it forces me to look at all the ambitious changes that i have made, and i am so glad to be where i am today: pumping, exercising, eating right, and continually striving to continue that, while at the same time trying to achieve a little more mental balance.