C-routine

The 24/7 C-routine of a PWD (People With Diabetes) 

Yesterday night 11.30pm, pre-bed BG was 7.5mmol/L. Injected Insulatard 12 units. 

Set alarm at 4am. Off to bed.

Woke up in my dark room at 4am (nearly dozed off by muting the alarm loll, like what I usually did).

On my cell phone's light. Check my BG, it was 4.2mmol/L. 

Insulatard has a peak action, I know, I know. I should have eaten some food which raises my BG slowly (like half a cup of milk or 1 piece of plain biscuit). 

Who on earth would want to eat something at 4am and she was not even hungry! Well, a T1D has to do this. But, I just dozed off, after seeing the number 4.2 screened on my meter.

Come, guess what was my BG when I woke up at 8am this morning? 

Jeng...Jeng...Jeng...14.5mmol/L! (Dawn phenomena due to a noctural hypoglycemia)

How do you feel like when you off to bed with a nice BG, also a nice BG at 4am, then kanasai woke up with a screwed up reading. *inhales deeply. It's just another day of T1D.

24/7 C-routine means

1. Carbs, carbs, carbs
2. Count, count, count
3. Check, check, check
4. Correct, correct, correct
5. Otherwise, I will Complicate my already very Complicated situation, and make it into real Complications.

Hopefully in the future there will be some great, safe and reasonable treatments to regenerate beta cells. Then only I can finally stop all these Cs. I appreciate all the great, excellent, wonderful insulin available currently, but inhaled insulin is something still very far from getting rid of the C-routine.  

Nevertheless, for all the PWD out there, (with my favourite homemade fries as background)

Weekly fruit prep

I have been pretty busy recently. Busy with the change-in-schedule-of-current-job-and-new-job. Let's see when I will get exhausted working in two places...I hope not.

Also, I missed my appointment to see my endo. And the appointment has to be postponed until early next month, my endo seems to be fully booked in July already. I need her to review back on my insulin doses and I want her advice on changing to analogue insulin. Die die also have to see her this month la. 

Working on tight schedule now as a dietitian, a tutor and also a volunteer. I don't even have time to draft out ideas for my blog. The recent blog idea that I came up with was one week ago, and now I kinda forgot what that idea was initially. Loll. 

Since, working life has been so far so busy (I hope I can settle down after this week!). The food that appears in my mind when I am in a rush is fast food. This is bad. Because I can't be eating fast food everyday! So, food preparations are helping me much to keep myself AWAY from eating junk food, fast food and processed food. 

I know...renting a room in a house which doesn't have a gas stove. How to cook? Cooking needs utensils and utilities. But, cutting fruits simply just requires a knife! Some fruits don't even need a knife!

Have been going to the market to buy one-person-quota fruits weekly.

Purposely bought a green banana because it ripen too fast in warm weather.

I am eating at least 2 serving of fruits everyday now. Making it as a habit. 

Oranges can be kept longer. The Pisang Berangan turned all yellow at night lolll, I bought these fruits and snapped this picture in the afternoon. Is my room too warm or what? Ending up eating 2 Banana and 1 Orange everyday for the past one week. Excellent bowel movement haha!

This week back to my hometown. More fruits available. Durians, rambutan and mangosteen season are finally in! I check my sugar like every 3 hours. Because when I want to enjoy and eat, I have to monitor and check more frequently. (I always tend to eat extra during fruits season). Fruits season can come to harm if I am reluctant to check loll.

Life as a diabetic means mindful eating

Mom cutting

Family eating from the watermelon bowl

My mom bought a big watermelon for the weather has been too hot. We were supposed to eat these cut-watermelons in the "watermelon bowl". But my mom made me eat from my own measuring cup. She was right, I wouldn't know how much I have eaten if I were to eat from this watermelon bowl. 

Well, sometimes, I eat very "emotionally". Sometimes, I almost forget about mindful eating, and I am glad that my mom pulls me back to reality every now and then loll. #lifeasadiabetic

If disaster arrives

Every time when I watch those adventure/tragedy/horror movies, I will imagine myself in that scene running away, to save my life from the disaster with a bag of insulins, insulin pens, glucometer, whole lots of test strips and pen needles. 

Like the movie "2012" and "The Impossible". When the enormous big splash of water is coming towards my face, all I can do is run. And if the water gets on me, all my test strips gonna be wet by then! That's gonna be very challenging, because eventhough I survived through the disaster (which is very lucky), I guess I will not survive through T1D by then.

Or in the movie "World War Z", zombies are cominggg! But, yeah! Zombies won't attack a vulnerable non-healthy body like mine, so I am safe! And probably I can help in getting the vaccines from the lab, without getting chase after by the disgusting zombies. After watching this movie, I am not afraid of zombies anymore haha!

What will you do when you know that a disaster is about to come? 

Call your parent? Pack your money? Hug your partner?

I guess I will pack my medical supplies first, before I do all the above. 

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

I can eat quite a lot of food at one go. For pizza, I can eat up to 3 slices of thick crust pizza and still having some spaces for Diet Coke. 

Pizza always gives me high BG due to the thick crust of flour and tomato paste and etc. And I will never get satisfied eating thin crust, unless I eat the whole personal thin crust pizza all by myself. haha! 

Last week I was browsing through some culinary videos on YouTube and was locked on low carb pizza making videos! Low carb pizza? How can it be possible? To make the crust, still have to use flour, isn't it? Cauliflower itself will not form a pizza crust dough, but we can always use binders like cheese and egg! What a wonderful piece of creation for those like me! :)

It was a last minute thought of making a pizza at home. I just went out to buy those shredded pizza cheese and cheddar cheese, which are never available in my mom's fridge. At my home, Asian dishes are the staple food :p

These are the ingredients that I used.

These are for the pizza toppings. You can put in everything that you preferred! But please don't go overboard. At the end, these toppings are too bulky for my small pizza dough. So, I gave up putting tomatoes. I did pan-fry the chicken slices, broccolis and carrot pieces before they were being topped on pizza.

For the cauliflower pizza dough:

I used a whole cauliflower head that was available in the fridge. Coarsely cut it into pieces and put into the food processor. Then, pulse all the pieces until they were all shredded like picture below.

Pour some olive oil on the pan, and pan-fry the shredded cauliflower for about 5-10 minutes until softened and cooked. I added some salt to taste during this process. But, thinking back, it is actually not necessary to put salt here because the cheese that I used to bind later on already has flavors. 

Now making the dough!

After letting those shredded cauliflower cooled down, please dry it by putting the shredded cauliflower on a piece of white cloth (I used the cloth that my mom used to filter her homemade soya milk), then hand-squeezed all the water out! Make sure the cauliflower flour is dry! This is the most crucial part, otherwise your dough won't be successful. Mine was a little bit slight wet, then :p

I put in the wrong cheese. Should have put in the shredded mozzarella pizza cheese instead, not this cheddar cheese piece.

Preheat the oven to 180 degree C. And spread out the pizza dough on the baking pan like this.

Put the baking pan into the oven and bake for 5 to 10minutes or until the cheese bubbles up and there are slight brown edges on the sides.

Little claps when I saw these lovely brown edges!

The last step is all according to your preferences. I topped on my pan-fried chicken, broccoli, carrots, onions and mushroom. Of course, not forgetting the shredded mozzarella pizza cheese! Now, into the oven for about 10 minutes.

TA-DAHHHH!

I should put in more cheese, right? :p

I will definitely make this again when I am back home next time. Because I didn't eat much that day because this small pizza was shared among 4 people and many of my family members didn't get the chance to have the whole piece of it.

Oh ya, the video that I refered to is this one. So easy to make! :)

Eat to Live & Live to Eat

Which category you think belongs to you?

The same 3 words, but when you arrange them in separate ways, totally distinct meaning.

I put my title as "Eat to live And (&) Live to eat", because I do not agree with putting Or (/) in this quotation.

If you were to choose either one...

Let's talk about EAT to LIVE. It's kinda sad when you hear someone says: "Oh food is just my fuel, I eat because I need to keep my heart pumping. That's it." Food is colourful and should be creative! Food is not medication (though some medications can be quite colourful lol) that only treat or control your diseases. Food is a Wonderful Enjoyment in life! Food surely is not fuel that only cause you to gain weight and gain fats. When you gain much weight and body fat, most certainly is related to Metabolism and Mindful eating. Don't blame real food. 

Secondly, let's talk about LIVE to EAT. Oh, I continually encounter people who practise live to eat and believe me, I struggle hard to make them change. Even require extra effort to make him/her sit there for consultation.  Because a dietitian will make sure all their favourite foods are being eliminated. Wronggg! The moment I said healthy eating plan, I am so not going to ruin your "purpose in life" which is to eat. You will never go wrong by a variety of REAL healthy FOOD. And when I mentioned healthy eating plan, I am not saying the bland dull food. I am talking about Real Food cooking which is worth changing your eating habits for! Try a different cooking method, try using spices for a new flavor happening on your tongue, try exploring adding fruit and vegetables in your cooking and baking!

It's again the BALANCE of these two. Any extremity of either one, is a nonono. Enjoy your real food for the fuel, nutrients, satisfaction and pleasure that you can get from it!

_______________________________________________________________________________

Everytime I talk about real food, I get really hungry. And my rented house here is having water rationing for April. The whole April month. @#$%@#$% Seriously, I really pik cik (frustrated).

Yesterday night went to Cold Storage and wanted to buy some avocados. But, they don't sell there. Probably have to go Jaya Grocer. Aiks.

Anyway, I bought a very expensive potato chips. I like how they specified the amount of carbohydrates in the chips. Really interesting informative Food Label for potato chips.

So precisely, about 13 chips = 16g carbs (1 serving!)

Now that I know how much to put in my bowl for snacking next time. But, at times, counting 26 chips every time I snack, can be quite bothering. I rather boil 2 medium potatoes, sprinkles salt pepper and eat haha!

Hypoglycemia related headache

The reason for this headache is a sudden rush of sugar into the body system after I eat. I don't always get this kind of terrible headache when I eat something in order to restore my sugar level from hypoglycemia. 

I am kinda phobia towards the headache which attacked me a couple of times already. The headache was so horrible that I can't sleep nor do anything. Panadol did a little help. But the headache really made me feel like banging my head to the wall (which I actually already did in the last attack).

During the headache period, the sugar level was completely in range. Just the headache was really killing me. Sometimes I just don't understand how my body behaves. 

I have to keep emergency pain killer with me. Just in case this sudden attack of headache. I know it's weird that I failed to figure out why this happened, after all it is my body. Why is it that I am not aware of my body! Sometimes a more severe hypoglycemia will not give rise to this at all, but sometimes out of the blue moon, it will occur. 

Tonight. Now. I think it is coming back. Not sure if I was encountering hypoglycemia just now before dinner. Current sugar level is normal, two hours after food. 

The pain is arising bit by bit, very similar to those of previous times. To prevent the severe attack later, I'd better pop in two Panadol first.

I search online for this hypoglycemic headache related articles, some say it is because of the sudden rush of sugar into the body system, the sugar hit the brain cells so much that it causes them to expand and hence triggering the headache. It is definitely not a migraine because it strikes the whole head, not one part only. 

Hmmm...or this headache is not related to T1DM at all? Or it is just the stress that I am having? But I can cope with stress, I don't get headaches because of stress. Also, this pain always comes after food.

Not sure if I am right for relating all nuisances to T1DM every so often.

Do not judge me

1. Forget to inject pre-bed insulin, Insulatard at night, then went to bed. Woke up the next day, hyper.
2. Pre-meal insulin, Actrapid has finished and I have to take Insulatard for my main meal.
3. Injecting Actrapid only after the main meal.
4. Fell asleep in the classroom with lecturer right in front of me due to hypoglycemia.
5. Was so so so hypo and yet I can't figure out why my mind keep telling myself not to eat so much sugar suggesting that this will cause hyperglycemia.
6. I was hypo and I knocked my car to the side of the road. Was still trying very hard to start the car over and over again in a hypo state.
7. Was hypo during my SPM Pendidikan Moral exam. I knew it was happening because I couldn't figure out what "nilai-nilai murni" to write after it took me about 5 minutes. I brought sweets but I was too ashamed to eat in that silent exam hall, so I decided to walk to the toilet to consume. At the end, I got an A2 for this subject (Yes, for once I must blame T1DM!).
8. Sometimes I was just too overexerting, especially when others wanted to help when I was hypo. I would be telling them repeatedly that I am okay. I am okay. Okay but still extremely blur.
9. Went to class/work without my Actrapid. Spent the day without eating any lunch. (Not eating enough carbo causes hyper also)
10. Weather was so hot that I didn't care so much about the Ais Batu Kacang carbo content. Finished whole thing then only I replaced insulin for it.

Guess there are more #donotjudgeme incidents. Sometimes, T1DM is taking so much of my time that I just felt like:
I couldn't take this anymore! I want to be a rebel like everyone else! Stop all the restrictions TMD I want freedommmmm. Argh. 

Anyhow, the next day, still, the schedule repeats.

_______________________________________________________________________

Happy birthday to my best partner. 

You are the last one who would judge me when the rest in the world are already staring at me.

Thanks for the overwhelming love.

For you, my favourite quote:

Love you more than a low diabetic loves carbs :p

Planning injection units

"How to plan the number of units to inject before you know what food will be served to you?"

Just came back from my grandmother's birthday at Bahau, Negeri Sembilan. All of us went to the chinese restaurant for dinner, then back to grandma's house for birthday cake cutting.

I thought tonight's dinner would be of carbs heavy one. But, ended up to have only one carb-food, Long Life Noodles (寿面), for the whole course of 7 dishes. I was like: Alamak, what to do now. I have already injected 10units of Actrapid for this dinner. The whole night I was searching for other types of food in the restaurant. Everyone must be thinking: Omg why today this Bing so hungry? Sedangkan I was actually hunting more carbs for my injected insulin.

Anyhow, at 1.00am (when it's time to inject my night time insulin Insulatard), this is what happened:

Lesson learnt is don't get too exhilarated by a party and please consider whether to inject extra or not for the party next time.

Poor me. Just got this GlucoTabs (Tangy Orange) from my little cousin all the way from UK today, and I already started binging on it.

When you cannot eat/drink too much of food that you love

I love to drink milk. The milky creamy taste of it. Hmmmm just taste so heavenly!

At one meal time, I can finish about one carton of 1 Litre cold milk.

How good if there is no carbo-counting for milk. How good if I can drink like nobody's business.



Ya...how good if I am not a diabetic ><
Nevermind, good tasty food comes in little :)

Hypo = Sleepy?

I woke up at 5.45am this morning. And just now at 10pm, I was feeling really tired.
Wanted to inject my bed time insulin and sleep.
Check sugar. And Ta-daaaa!

Okay, now I know why I was so sleepy. Runnnn for sugar!

19th March 2007

I think...I actually have become more Optimistic, Positive, Encouraging since I got diagnosed with T1DM.

I remembered well on the day Dr Yong told my mom and I that I had diabetes. Not the usual one.

"Oh diabetes! Alright I just have to cut down eating sweets, chocolate etc. Since I do not favour sweet food much, I guess it won't be a problem and soon I will recover, as soon as I get discharged from hospital."  

I remembered I said these to myself. And I regretted very soon.

While I was in hospital, staff nurses were those who helped me to inject insulin. Finally on the last day in hospital, one nurse brought a syringe and came to my bed side. I had no idea what insulin was at that time. I just thought it was some kind of medicine for me to get recovered. Thinking to myself: After this I can go back home and go back to school tomorrow. Never bother about injections.

The nurse drew out insulin into the syringe and asked me to show up my abdomen. I was thinking: Why can't she just injects on my arms. I am totally okay with injections. But...on abdomen? Alright, just do whatever I was being told.

The next thing was, she asked me to pinch a fold of skin up and asked me to hold that syringe with cap removed. And then injected. I did not cry or yell or even refuse to complete her request.

Hmmm...Perhaps I was just too happy-go-lucky on a really "lucky" situation.

I got back home after 5 days of admission in hospital. I was given syringes and insulin.
On the first day at home, I had to inject myself using syringes before every meals. I began to feel the trouble and began to realize that this is going to be a routine. A long life routine.

Then, only I started to cry in my room alone. Because I had finally realized that I am different from others of same age now. No one is like me. I had to do all these finger pricking, drawing insulin, poking skin EVERYDAY. Infact is EVERY MEALS. Only me has to do this. Only me.

I stopped crying when I was already tired. I did not tell my mom how sad I was. How unwilling I was. I was thinking: WHY ME? Why not her, him or them?

Things were hard. Diet control was hard. Insulin triggered my appetite, I kept getting hyperglycemia >16mmol/L. I ate a lots of rice at home. Did not bother much, all I want to do was just to get satisfaction from eating.

Now 6 years I have been living with T1DM. Honestly many people asked if I feel pain during injections. I do feel pain but I tolerated this feeling. Most of the time, I do not feel pain at all with 5mm needle insulin pen. Or people always say: Oh, it has been a while, I think you can't feel pain is because you are already getting used to it.

Helloooo, I do feel pain on some injections okay. Is just that pain or not pain, I still have to inject insulin in order to survive okay! *eye rolls

But they were right. I am getting used to it now. It's like a daily task, like sleeping, breathing, walking, seeing, hearing and etc. It has became a norm for me. Though, this task is still considered as an extra work for others who look at me differently.

Ya it is an EXTRA. I called this as an EXTRA-ordinary disease :)

Embarrassed moment

Today, as usual went to PPUKM hospital for dietetics posting.

Morning time I had hyperglycemia of 10.1mmol/L. So I have eaten less breakfast, so that my sugar can have enough of insulin to go down the graph into the normal range.

Well, things did not turn up like what I wished. I went hypo while counselling a patient.

That counselling session was an easy case:

"A 23 years old female, Indian, vegetarian coming in as an overweight person and diagnosed with PCOS, referred to dietitian for weight reducing diet. "

Just weight reduction for goodness sake. And patient is a vegetarian. And patient eats Roti Canai (2 pieces) frequently (which contributes to the high calorie diet that leads to her overweight). WHY hypoglycemia always makes me look stupid?! ARGHHH

Roopini told me that I was repeating and repeatingggg what patient has told me. Patient must be scratching her head looking at me. AHHH whenever I recalled the situation, I feel like slapping myself hard!

I even slept in the counselling room later on when it wasn't my turn to counsel. I do really feel like digging a hole to hide my face into the deep deep soil, after I gained back consciousness. Luckily there is no discrimination in class. My supervisor understands my issue, so she just asked me to be more careful and alert next time, in a very friendly way, fortunately :')

I hope my patient will not remember me *Opps