Found a great picture of myself

See full text and a beautiful picture of me on my blog post.



I've got a beautiful heart shadow, no?

I found this picture of my PICC for the Defend-2 dosing. See that black line

Nice x-ray! Aren’t PICC lines wonderful things? I’ve been reading your posts & I can’t fathom being dx’d with T1D @ quite possibly one of the most difficult times in your life. I feel for you & totally understand where you’re coming from (your blog “I’m an ass” is just about heart-wrenching as it gets). I was wondering if you thought about switching to pump therapy (although I saw your A1C was near perfect) ? I just know that it offers a lot of us diabetics more options & flexibility with our crazy, erratic lives (especially working in the healthcare field).

I’m waiting to see if I’ll be accepted into grad school this fall for Acute Care Nurse Practitioner & while that is anxiety enough, I know I’ll be facing many challenges with my T1D when I enter this super fast-paced, crazy-busy Masters program. At least I’ve had 16 years experience of my D to draw back on & don’t have to worry about a family/children, learning about my new Dx. I think it’s amazing how far you’ve come already & I applaud you for accomplishing everything you’ve already done (clinical trials, dropping your A1c, etc). I’m always suggesting new dx’d T1’s to visit or become a counselor at a summer diabetic camp, but it looks like your schedule is overwhelming to say the least. But, if you have a chance to at least visit one for a day, the experience can be priceless.

Hey there!

Thanks for reading! I’ve been trying to get on a pump now for months, but to no avail.

I have super bad hypoglycaemic unawareness and that’s pretty much the reason for my low A1C. I am down in the 40’s and 50’s all the time w/o feeling it. So my “perfect” A1C is really just the median for an average with a huge standard deviation.

Best of luck with getting to school. Waiting is the worst! This is the second time I’ve had to do this, first with grad school for my PhD and now for med school.

I’m just grateful I have the biomedical and basic science knowledge to know the background of this disease enough to understand how to manipulate it and work with my body. I can’t imagine having to go through it w/o that knowledge. I think you just inspired a new blog post.

I’m interested to find out what health insurance you have, although I’m sure many will give the same responses that you have received due to your deceivingly lower A1C. I’m still appalled that any insurance company would deny a T1 an insulin pump. If only I could mail you some of my blood from last month… my A1C was ungodly high…

On a random note, I randomly search craigslist at times to see if anyone is giving up free pump supplies (it happens sometimes) & occasionally I’ll see people putting up unused insulin pumps for sale. If these sales are legit (although I don’t think technically medically-legal), I wonder if that would get you through med school or at least til your insurance company grows a brain. I understand all of the implications involved in such a scheme (would a doc allow that? would the insurance be confused why you need so much novolog? could you find enough free supplies to get you through? etc) & understand it’s not an ideal situation or if it’s even possible. But I’m just putting it out there, I just feel for you & your poor hypo’s.

You should be qualified to wear a CGM due to your hypoglycemia unawareness (my Endo says four hypos at night per month qualify for Kaiser insurance). But, I was thinking I saw a photo of you wearing a Dexcom already? Hope you’re done with your awful research paper, but if not I’d recommend ‘13 ways to bleed on stage’ by Cold if you haven’t heard from them before (okay it’s old, but I still enjoy it). Here’s to hoping your insurance reads your appeal letter & gives you that long awaited pump!

The insurance company has requested more information from me, 30 days of BG and some other stuff from my endo, soooo they are either considering the appeal or they are setting up for a slam dunk denial.

I’ve seen that on CL too… just always leery about getting something that could kill me really quick on a board like that.

Denied on the CGM too, even with multiple positive indications. I was wearing the dexcom just to test it. I’ve also worn the Medtronics Guardian and Revel with CGM. Dexcom is, in my opinion, far and above Medtronics in cgm technology. Part of the reason I am trying to go with Animas since they have partnered with Dexcom.

I would surely hope that with all those hypo’s you have, it would be a slam dunk for the pump instead. Make sure you chart all those night hypo’s~ I believe that’s a big trigger (but I’m sure you know this & more). I’d love to see the Animas integrated with the dexcom but I’ve seen forum chats circulating on the web since 2008 & I get disappointed. I emailed the rep and all he could say was that the integrated pump was coming out this year but couldn’t give a date. Lots of luck!