27 July: Catching up

I see I've got a bit behind in posting updates. I've had a very busy couple weeks along with being a bit focused on making changes on the blood glucose section of my website. Not so much the public side, but making it easier for me to use for adding information.

Things I've learned this week in regards diabetes and glucose levels --- not all brands/types of tortilla's have the same amount of carbs. I had tried some tortillas a few months ago and it gave me much better results than I have if I use bread. But the last few weeks I've noticed my Saturday night after tea readings have been abnormally high. Turns out the tortillas I've been using the last 3 weeks had about 3x the number of carbs as the other brand/type I was using. OH. That'll teach me to read labels!

Last week I had several medical appointments. Monday I saw the plastics team to check my wound, and it's still healing at the same rate (about a centimetre a month), and since there's nothing for them to do but wait, they made my next appointment in 3 months time. I still am to have RDNS change the dressing every other day (including weekends). Wednesday I had the endoscopy and colonoscopy. I don't remember much about it, except that the drugs they gave me lasted all day and I felt very mellow and lovely for the rest of the day. They found only one polyp and have sent that in for a pathology report. I won't know anything more until I see the Gastro specialist on Friday (3 August).

A week ago Friday I had the ultrasound to see if I had fluid in my bursa (hip). I did, so they did an ultrasound guided injection of a painkiller and cortisone (Celestone). I was a bit hyper for the rest of the day and the next, but fortunately it seems to have levelled off and I'm fine. It also seems to have worked as I've only had a couple incidences where my leg has just 'disappeared' out from under me.

I went to our local Breast Stroke meeting last Friday with Jen, and took along a pair of shorts and t-shirt. When it was time for the pool/spa, I sat on the edge of the spa and dangled my legs in the water. It was lovely. While I have this hole in my side, swimming is out of the question, but at least I can enjoy getting my feet and legs wet. Jen came for tea and that was nice - she always enthuses over Rod's chips and that of course makes him feel good. And they are nice chips too.

This week I saw the Diabetes Education Nurse and she said even though I've had a few highs here and there, the readings are excellent and much much better than what she anticipated they'd be with my having had a cortisone injection last week. She's pretty sure my next HBA1C readings should be around 6.3 or so, which is interesting because that's what my BGL section on my website says too, and I didn't get a chance to print out anything from my website. We discussed the possibility that it's been the green tea that I drink that have kept my levels from spiking up after the cortisone injection, and she thinks it's quite possible. Whatever it is she said, keep doing what you're doing because it's working. That was great.

On the way out of Noarlunga Hospital (where my appt with the diabetes nurse was), I noticed a used book sale being held - 10c to 20c a book, so I grabbed a few for Bookcrossing and added my coins to the box. Yesterday I had an appt with Centrelink and on the way home I had Rod stop at the hospital and I dropped off a bag of books for the sale that I've had in our boot for quite awhile. It felt good to 'give something back' since I haven't done a lot of Bookcrossing lately and that's another bag of books that are now out in the world and not in my way.

Wednesday this past week I went in to see my GP, prepared to have a blood test for my diabetes, cholesterol and anemia. I'd even fasted from Midnight the night before. He decided not to test me though, because I still have an infection and I'm not well enough to have the test as it'd give wonky results. A few weeks ago, I was given a 7 day prescription for antibiotics. This was followed with another 7 day supply of another type. When I returned after finishing though, he changed me to another type of antibiotic, this time for 2 weeks. These ended last week, and since then all the things that have been infected for the last two months or longer returned. This time it's a sinus, ear and chest infection. So now I have a 30 day supply of antibiotics. Hope it does the job!! My left ear is totally blocked (and very very painful) and the right one is partially blocked. So now I'm taking decongestants too. I'm really sick of this. The last time I had a whole winter of sinus infections was right before I was diagnosed with BC, but I'll bet that had to do with diabetes too.

After not having the blood test yesterday, as I'd been fasting from the night before, I was quite hungry so went to the shopping centre and bought a large mug of tea, and a spinach and cheese roll. I then wandered around the shopping centre while waiting for my prescriptions to be filled. I ended up buying myself a new wallet, and ... I didn't buy it, but I looked at baby clothes. I found the cutest little plain linen dress (?) that looked like the clothes I know I had when I was a baby as I inherited them for use on my dolls. I got just a little bit teary-eyed. Yes, that's right Granny Gaelyne is hoping for a girl, I guess. I think it's going to be very hard to be a long distance granny too. If my window shopping emotions are anything to go on.

Last, I have updated our Webcam page so it only updates the images on the page as well as the time and temperature every 15 seconds rather than refreshing the whole page. It works great, and it's something I sorted out how to do on my own. I found one example that worked with one image and did some changes and tweaks so I could use it for all 3 of our current cams. Rod also changed the Doorcam camera recently so that it uses the better colour night time camera. We still a USB cam I haven't tried since updating to Ubuntu, and also have an outside camera with a slight flaw (it seems to show a Martian landscape) that we haven't put into use yet.

Well I think I'm done catching up for the moment. I'm off to take a nap now... as I've been typing I've been getting more and more drowsy, in a good way. Cheers! ZZZzzzzzz

12 July: Readings & Comments

5.5  /  99  Bedtime  
6.0  / 108  Fasting  
6.9  / 124  Post-Bfast  1x crumpet toast w/ liverwurst
5.5  /  99  Pre-Lunch  
8.4  / 151  Post-Lunch  Mac & Cheese
5.9  / 106  Post-Tea    KFC.  Plain gravy instead of potatoes & gravy. 
                        Sprint-walked halls 5x

This evening I tried a couple different experiments. First up, we had decided to have KFC tonight, and I was trying to find ways to accommodate it without it driving up my glucose levels. I wondered if it were possible to just get gravy instead of potatoes and gravy. I love KFC gravy, and mostly I use it to dip my chips (french fries) into it. So I went to their website and checked out their menu and found that yes, you can get just the gravy. Cool. So no more mashed potatoes AND chips from KFC. And I really enjoyed just the gravy too as it meant I could share with Rod and not feel greedy about it as the container was a little bigger than the small mashed potatoes and gravy.

As I often slip up and enjoy watching telly after our evening meal, the last few days I've made my first cuppa green tea and have had it with my meal. I'm the type of person who doesn't really drink much during a meal, but after the meal, it's nice to have a sip of something. So having the green tea already there is a bonus.

My next experiment has to do with exercise. As my diabetes is 'Diet and Exercise' controlled, I probably should do something about the exercise side of things as I haven't been getting as much activity in, what with the hole still in my side and all. I can't use my stationary bike as the up and down movement of my legs aggravates the wound, but I can do some walking. The only problem is - it's winter and cold, wet and rainy, making going for a walk not that appealing. Recently I read an article about how studies have been done that prove that doing a few short bursts of 'fast, intense' exercise interspersed amongst regular paced exercise actually does more good than say riding the exercise bike for 30 minutes at a regular pace. Such as riding the bike at a normal pace for a minutes followed by a minute of really fast intense riding, and then back to normal pace, repeated for 20 minutes does more good (weight lost, etc) than 30 minutes of doing the same at a slower pace. The article I was reading suggested you could try this with walking as well, and that's where my idea of using my hallway for sprint walking came from. So every time I have to go to the loo, (which is near one end of the hallway), afterwards, I go to the laundry room and then sprint walk all the way down the hall to the window in our bedroom. We just measured the hall, and it's about 15 metres, so if I do the sprint walk twice, that's 30 metres, and so on. What with drinking my green tea all day, I tend to visit the loo at least once every hour or two, so even if I did the sprint walk thing twice each time, it could add up. One of the interesting things is I've found that doing this actually leaves me feeling refreshed and more energetic. I just tear down the hallway like I'm about to catch the bus and running late. It feels good, and just look at my reading tonight - even with having KFC, it was only 5.9! I can do this in any type of weather, and I don't need anything special for it and don't break a sweat or run out of breath. Cool. You can read a newspaper article about Interval training here.

Next week I go in for a check up with the clinic at Flinders for the hole in my side. That's Monday. And then on Wednesday I have the colonoscopy that was cancelled last month. Thursday I have an ultrasound on my hip, and if it has bursitis in it, I'll have a cortisone shot injected into it. I'm hoping that it's just arthritis and not bursitis as I really don't relish what cortisone can do to my mental health (I have several family members who are bi-polar and cortisone can make them manic), nor do I like the idea that it can make my glucose levels go haywire. I've barely got my levels under control at the moment so throwing a spanner in the works isn't my idea of fun. My doctor said that the good outweighs the bad as if my leg is giving out on me (which it was doing every day for a few weeks - but it hasn't since I saw the doctor about it), the pain and fear as it happens can also affect my glucose levels and falling over just really isn't a good thing either. Fair enough, but everything I've read on the subject suggests most doctors try other methods of dealing with the bursitis first before going to cortisone injections. So I'm a bit unsure on this. The potential diagnosis is Trochanteric Bursitis.

I've been working on updating the area of my website where I update my glucose levels, and it's coming along nicely. For a long time I wanted to have something similar to my Diabetes Record book where it just shows one day at a time in a neat orderly fashion. I have this working well now, with options to edit or delete records, and just added the ability to Email readings to my Sugarstats.com account. Tonight I added the 'blog format' so I can copy and paste the details into this blog easier. One of the things I still need to work are the links for the next and previous days so I can go from one day to the next without changing data in the drop down box. Once I have the Next/Previous links working right I'll copy the code to the public area of my website and remove the edit/delete/Email options from it. That way instead of showing a list of the last 30 entries, it will have the logbook format and only show one day at a time. Eventually I'll be adding in more graphs as well. In the process of working on this, I'm also teaching myself how to make use of session data which eventually will be used instead of using the methods I'm currently employing to keep bits of data going to the various functions of the program. OK, that was probably more 'geek' than you needed to know. Basically, every time I work on my personal website, I also try to learn new programming skills, and that's what I've been doing.

How am I doing/feeling? Some days I feel great. Other days not so hot. It's hard to put a finger on anything though. I'm still on antibiotics for a chest infection and having weird earraches that may be related to arthritis of my jaw. My glucose readings have been quite strange at times too. One day this week my after lunch reading was pretty normal, but then my reading before dinner was 13.9 - which made absolutely no sense to me. I hadn't snacked, and I'd been busy. So at this point, I'm just trying to get re-organised with being more strict with my diet and introducing some exercise so that maybe I can get my readings to stay back down in the 5-6 level (under 100 mg/dl) rather than spiking at various times of the day.

Well, my other half has retired for the evening so I think I will go join him.

Cheers!

6 Feb: Glucose Readings and Meal Comments

mmol/l /  mg/dl  Event
7.2    /  129.6  Bedtime
8.6    /  154.8  Overnight 7am 
8.5    /  153.0  Overnight 7:50am
9.4    /  169.2  Fasting  10:37am
8.2    /  147.6  Random   11:36am
8.2    /  147.6  Random 11:56am
8.6    /  154.8  Random 12:58pm
9.8    /  176.4  Post-Breakfast 14:09pm
6.5    /  117.0  Post-Lunch 18:00pm
10.1    /  181.8  Post-Tea 22:15:00
5.7    /  102.6  Random 00:21:00

Fasting: I'm not sure what to make of the high fasting result as I didn't have anything to eat between the first overnight reading at 7am and the fasting reading at 10:37am aside from green tea.  

I had 2 cups of green tea to bring down the levels before having breakfast at 11:36.

Slightly high overnight readings were due to indulging in about 1/4c Doritoes while doing a puzzle before falling asleep.


Post-Breakfast: Breakfast consisted of half a pita bread with cheese and green onions. Have had same before with better readings.


Post-Lunch: Lunch was a whole pita bread round with lettuce, tomatoe, green onions, cheese, and a small amount of small hot salami cut in small pieces.


Tea was 3 slices roast beef, potatoes and 3 veg.

Post-Tea Reading: Ah ha. No wonder the iced tea I've been making hasn't had much of an effect. I've been trying to use up the Clipper brand that I bought with several different types of flavourings in the iced tea I make by having one bag of the clipper brand for flavouring and 3 to 6 bags of Tetley green tea bags (which I know beyond a doubt work at lowering my glucose levels). Earlier today I had made up a teapot of the concentrated tea I'd made for iced tea, and had used 6 bags of the good Tetley green tea and 1 bag of the Clipper green tea with ginko. Feeling a bit lazy, I had a whole cup of this concentrate -- which with the Tetley tea should have reduced my after dinner meal, and didn't. In fact, it's higher than normal. So, it looks like I'll have to bin the Clipper tea. Sometimes a bargain isn't. Pity about the waste of 6 of the good teabags in the concentrate though.

So even though my after dinner reading was high, I feel I've learned something invaluable from it, so it wasn't a total screw up.

Random reading - I had a cup of Tetley green tea, and made myself get busy doing odd jobs around the house, taking out the trash (it's bin night), and sadly tossing the Clipper tea. I didn't pay much for those but I hate throwing stuff away. Still, I couldn't in good conscience give it to anyone as it didn't have a good taste either. At least I'll be going to bed with my levels down to a good normal.

My Glucose Levels and Green Tea

I've been experimenting with green tea lately to see what effects drinking it has on my blood glucose levels. It really works at lowering my levels, but it depends on how and when I drink it.  It doesn't work as well as a prophylactic (ie having it before meals), but has its best effect when I have one or two (more so with two) cups of tea after meals.  It tends to drop my glucose levels by two full points - for example if I was at 8.4, it drops it down to 6.4 or lower.  It also works best when I adhere to a low carb diet and do some moderate exercise such as Tai Chi.

I have found that drinking green tea allows me to have the occasional treat. To allow this without having my glucose go sky high, first my starting glucose level has to be in the 6's. I have only a small serving, and then follow up with two cups of green tea and some Tai Chi exercise.

I've found that all green teas are not alike.  I've found a few brands of tea that work quite well, and a couple that don't, sadly.  What I've tested so far and have had good results with:

Tetley - both their plain green tea and any green tea with other herbs,
Madura (an Australian brand),
Twinings of London.
Temple of Heaven Gunshot Green Tea (a loose tea)

I haven't yet tried Celestial Seasonings, and Lipton of the brand name teas. 

What doesn't work so far are Clipper and Nazirs.  These don't make much of a difference in my glucose levels. The Nazir tea tastes quite good, while the Clipper teas have great added flavours/herbs but no matter how I prepare the tea it's always bitter.  I'll update this list if I find others to avoid.

The gunshot tea is neat - it comes in a little tiny 'pebble' form, and once water is added it unfolds into tea leaves. I've found that I can re-use the same leaves twice and still get good results. Three times is definitely not the charm though.  Still considering I use a little under a teaspoon per 2 cups and even the small package I bought will last a fair while, it's a bargain at $3 a box.

My current experiment is with making ice tea. Since I bought a few different boxes of the Clipper tea and it has interesting flavours but doesn't do much to reduce my glucose levels, I'm using it as a flavouring and make a pot of tea using 3 Tetley green tea bags and one clipper bag.  This tea is brewed for several hours and put in the fridge.  I then use half a glass of tea and half fizzy diet lemonade. It tastes as nice as some of the iced green teas I tried in the USA on my last visit.  However, I need to experiment to see what number of tea bags to brew so that it gives the same benefit as a cup of hot green tea.