Instructions Not Included

I had been looking forward to the summer. Now, please don't get me wrong, I haven't been having a dreadful time, but I have been having a rather busy time. Which is why I've been away since...whoa, April. Yikes.

I've not been entirely silent though. I've recently written a guest post for DiabetesMine, and had the rather lovely experience of chatting with Chris for an episode of Just Talking. In the real world, I've been to a couple of D meet-ups - a lovely London based one with my wonderful friend, Shelley, and more recently I popped my head in (not really for long enough, sadly) to one on my doorstep. I also got invited to do a Q&A for a group of new start pumpers at my hospital (a post on that in the near future, I promise).

With the first year of my MA under my belt, with no scheduled classes for the summer term, I had anticipated having time to breathe a bit, get my thoughts in order. Has it turned out like that? Well, no, not really. Sure, I'm done with the MA until October, but other things have stepped up to fill the void. 

I don't consider myself to be immensely highly strung, or very high maintenance. But in truth, I'm not exactly the most laid back person in the world. I stress. A lot. I get anxious, which doesn't help me in any way, shape or form. Stress and I have a bit of a vicious cycle. I stress, which pushes my levels up. Which means I don't sleep well, which makes me tired and edgy. Which makes me stress more. Which starts the circle all over again. Oh and don't forget to throw in the small fact that my IBS symptoms are mostly stress induced. And round we go, again and again.

So I've been quiet on the whole social media front. I've barely been on twitter, which is normally my haunt of choice. I've not been blogging. But, oh my D-friends, I have missed you. I really, really have. But I had to try and keep a hold on my sanity, whilst struggling with this horrid cycle, working my normal 9-5, and then turning my mind over to the equivalent of a 5-9, which is getting a new company off the ground, and getting creatively and practically ready to go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

So there you go. I've been battling the heat, the ongoing nagging in the back of my mind that I should be trying harder to lose weight after 'chubbygate', the stress, and, if I'm honest, feeling very alone and isolated. But I'm still here. I'm trying - and I've missed you all.

Back in December, I was lucky enough to learn a bit of poi juggling at work, for part of the Christmas carol service at York Minster. For those of you not familiar with poi, think juggling balls, but with long strings attached, which you fit to your fingers. It's great fun, and looks beautiful when you do it right. But if you don't? Well, you'll end up whacking yourself all over the place. Especially when you're learning. Which hurts a lot of the time. 

At the moment, things really aren't that dissimilar. I've been somewhat distant from a lot of things that I'm normally so engaged with. Forums, twitter, blogging here, and it's not because I don't love being invovled with social media - if it were up to me, I'd be able to devote a lot more time to it - thoughts of whether I could actually find work doing diabetes advocacy has crossed my mind more than once, believe me. But the problem is that I'm torn between all my commitments. I know that I'm not the only one - we all lead unbelievably hectic lives these days, and I know we'd appreciate the chance to just press the pause button for a few days, and slow the pace down. 

I work full time. I study part time for a Master's degree, which means time on campus, as well as all the work outside of classroom time that goes with it. I'm part of the university's Dancesport society, which means I have lessons, and team practice for competitions. And of course, D always has to have its say on everything.

I'm extremely lucky, in that my work are very understanding about my MA. I've been allowed to rearrange my hours to allow me time to take my lectures, which all fall within the working day. Of course, when I'm not there, I'm in the office. Which means that time to use the library, etc, is all in the evenings. Despite the ridiculous price of it, I do own a  bus pass, so I can get the bus to and from university. On foot, it would take me about an hour to walk between my flat and campus, and then obviously another hour back. So I get the bus. But because buses stop being frequent after a certain time, if I miss one, I have to wait another half hour. And they only go into town, which means I still have to walk half an hour back to my flat, usually with a stack of books. 

So what's a girl to do? If I go to the library after work, the earliest I'll get home is about 20:30, but it's usually more like 22:00 or later. Trust me, by that point, I'm hungry! I've still not really got the hang of reducing my basal rates, and since I'm high an awful lot of the time, I'm not 100% comfortable with reducing them anyway, as I'd probably carry on being even higher.

I knew that when I signed up for the MA it was going to be a lot of work. I'm not complaining about that, because I knew it was part and parcel. Trading off things in order to not completely burn out though? That's a bit more difficult. I'm glad I chose to do this part time, because there's no way I could manage it full time. 

I'll be completely honest. My control has not been great at the moment. My 14 day average on my meter is way higher than I would like it. I'm probably not paying as much attention to things at the moment as I should be, and that is unsettling me a little bit. I don't like taking my eye off the ball, but giving myself some slack in one place is the only way I can think of handling things at the moment. At the end of April, all my assignments for the year will be handed in, and I can think of other things as well. 

Until then, I guess I'm just going to have to try and avoid hitting myself with the various balls in the air.

I thought I would let this really wonderful flashmob speak for me. I've been away far too long, for reasons that I'll explain momentarily. So a welcome back to hopefully far more normal and regular service here.

It's a little bit ironic that on this entry, I can announce that I was nominated for one of the 2010 DOC Awards! Category? Blogger that we wish would blog more. I'd like to say a huge thank you to whoever nominated me - I'm really touched. I'm also proving true to form, as voting has now closed! 

So what's been keeping me away from here for the past month? Well, I'll be honest with you. I've been a)overly busy, b)stressed, and c)exhausted. I mentioned having to do some pretty intense testing immediately after my pump start, but that drained me more than I was willing to admit. I'd not been sleeping well before the pump start, so my energy tank was running on low from the get go. By mid December? I was so tired that I was worried that I was going to end up making some sort of REALLY stupid mistake that I would end up regretting. I tend to squirrel away my holiday days, rather like...well, a squirrel. With nuts. I don't like using them, in case of discovering I need them all of a sudden. But I ended up having to use several, simply in order to sleep. Not the most constructive use of the time, really. 

And over Christmas? Thankfully work shuts for a week between Christmas and New Year, which makes sense, as we'd have no-one to do business with (straight out of A Christmas Carol there!). Several of my days off were occupied with travelling up and down the country to see the wonderful Rob 'Faceman' Gooch, of D-Team fame, get married to his lovely, now-wife, Anna. I managed to go home to see my family for a couple of days for the first time since May. I say May, but I think it may have been longer than that. I just read that sentence back to myself, and I promise you no pun was intended. Because if it was, that would be unforgivable, really. 

I had a lovely Christmas at home, I really did. But between all the loveliness, work for my MA has been piling on, and although I've managed to get part of my work done to at least a first draft stage, I still have the evenings of the following week to get that piece up to scratch, and finish and then redraft my play. I'm swamped. And I'm back to work tomorrow. 

And life with the pump? Her name is now Anneka, for reasons that will be better explained in a later post. I'm now over a month in to this pumping milarky. First two weeks? They were a lot of hard work, with all the testing, and getting used to the A,B,C's of the whole affair. Then I got into the swing of things, and my levels started falling into place. But over the past week or so? Well here are examples of a few tests, admittedly not in the right order, but still all genuine from over the past week.

Meter goes 'Dee-Deed!' (I never like the double beep - it means I'm either high or low)

11mmol/l (198) - Huh?

Dee-Deed!

15.3mmol/l (275) - WTH?

Dee-Deed!

13.8mmol/l (248) - OK, I'm starting to get narked off now...

Dee-Deed!

10.9mmol/l (196) - Better, but still no cigar.

Dee-Deed!

12.9mmol/l (232) - I'm losing my patience now...

Dee-Deed!

16.5mmol/l (297) - I could cry, I really could.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Getting below 10mmol/l (180)? Quite the accomplishment, at the moment. Admitedly, I did start out having problems getting the hang of changing cannulas, and I've had a few pretty purple and red ones, but the cannulas themselves? Aside from one extremely dodgy one, they've all been pretty good. So I'm thinking that my carb ratios or basals have to be off. At the moment, ratios are the number one suspect. And right now, I'm just grateful to have an appointment with the pump team on Thursday. Trying to get a handle on Masters' work whilst running high all the time? Not easy - I get extremely restless and agitated when high. And I can't concentrate. Not the best combination. 

Ah well. Bring it on, I suppose...