A Look Back

Last November my A1C was 12.5. I rarely checked my blood sugar. When I say “rarely” I am talking maybe once a month. I would just take my prescribed doses of insulin and that was it. I was living like a non-diabetic for most of the day except for the shots I would take. I would “shoot up” and forget about my disease.

When I saw that 12.5 I knew I had to change my ways or I would end up a blind, limbless being regretting all the mistakes I had made. If I was even still alive.

I switched doctors and by December my A1C had dropped to a 10!

I wanted to learn more about my disease so I searched for info on Diabetes online. I started listening to a Podcast called Diabetic Feed (which I miss dearly) and heard about this blog called Six Until Me. I was not a blog reader at all. I had heard of blogging but did not really get into it at all.

I decided to check it out and when I did, I found a bunch of links that lead me to different blogs. After reading all these accounts of diabetic adventures, pitfalls, and struggles I realized that I was not alone and that there was this great community that I could be apart of. A community that would accept me even with all of my mistakes and crap!

I started this blog in January and since then my life has never been the same.

By May my A1C had dropped to a 7.9 which was awesome! In June I started on an Insulin Pump (Master P) and was checking my BG 8-12 times a day.

Over 6 weeks ago I stopped smoking and have been completely smoke free since. (And still going strong by the way)

Last week I finally did some blood work I have not made the time for.

My A1C is 7.6 now.

Happy? Yeah I am. I guess I should be happier since it is still on the way down. I was just hoping for this miraculous drop right to the ADA goal of 6.5 or something. I am too hard on myself I guess. When I see all that has been accomplished in less than a year I see that I am on the right path.

You know what? I may not be where I want to be but I see that I can make some changes in my life. I see that it is possible to change bad habits and take on new good ones.

I read what I typed and I am proud of myself. I should be.

This is not easy.

Blogroll? BLOGROLL?

Come out come out wherever you are!

I have tried to find info on why the heck my links are gone but their site seems to be down.

Bummer.

Does anyone's blogroll work? I cannot remember everyone URL's so I use my links to read everyone's blogs.

**UPDATE**
AS SOON AS I HIT PUBLISH AND THEN VIEW BLOG, THERE THE @#%$#^ BLOGROLL WAS.

DID I JUST GET PUNK'D?

While We Were Out

About 7 months ago we asked our cousin if she would makeover our bedroom while we were on vacation. She has always had a knack for décor and her house is amazing! We (as most parents) have never done much in our room. We have decorated the kids’ rooms, the common rooms (living and dining) and the kitchen but our room was always BORING!

Here are some pictures of our room before and please do not laugh too hard. I would hate for you to get a cramp on your side.

Yes, I do not know how we ever survived in such a boring and plain room with nothing on the walls.

We saved up $1000 (which is a fortune to us BTW) and told her to do whatever she wanted to do in the room. Our only request was that we have a ceiling fan of some sort. We were willing to get rid of any furniture and any colors were fine. We left it entirely up to her.

Here is the bedroom now and honestly, I still am shocked every time I walk in.

After we saw the room and picked our jaws up off of the floor, our cousin said, “Are you ready for more?”

I knew in an instant what she meant.

“You did not do the bathroom.” I said in disbelief.

You see, our bathroom had some water damage in and around the shower and we pretty much never used it at all since we figured it would cost a small fortune to fix. Our cousin and several of our very good friends got together and donated money to fix our bathroom as a 10th anniversary gift to us. They scraped the walls, put up new drywall, and took care of the whole thing.

Here are the before pics and again, watch the laughing! :0)

And now this is what they did.

We were in tears. I have the best friends in the world. They love us so much and do things like this to show their love even though they know they do not have to.

What a great homecoming!

What a great anniversary gift.

What a blessing friends can be.

They are not our friends. They are our family.

The Vacation Post

We spent 8 days, 7 nights at Walt Disney World and boy is my bank account empty!

Looking through all of the pictures I took and remembering all of the fun things we did makes it all worth while. In total there were 11 of us that braved the Rodent World. The 11 consisted of my 2 older siblings, their significant others, their offspring, my offspring, my significant other, and my mommy! :)

The cool part was that we did not attempt to hang out together all the time. We met up each day for a meal (usually dinner) to catch up and visit with one another. Our rooms were all at the same resort, on the same floor, in a row so we did run into each other most mornings. And of course the kids had a “slumber party” in grandma’s room on a few nights. But all in all it was the first real Simmons family vacation and it was fantastic.

We went to every park. We rode every ride we wanted to. The wait times were short. The weather was great.

My favorite part of the vacation was just hanging out with my kids. We laughed and laughed so much our sides hurt. It was so great for just the 4 of us to run around like crazies and all act like little kids for a whole week! My kids are so much fun and funny to boot! The cool thing is how they really tried their best to experience everything. Not just treat WDW as an amusement park.

They tried new foods, talked to people from the different countries in Epcot and learned about the different customs from different places.

They posed for every lame picture moment their corny dad wanted them too. And they even did some acting to spice up the pics for dad’s blog.

Master P about overheated after looking at some of the desserts we had!

This is what the kids looked like every time we rode the bus to another park or back to hotel. They always rested so they were energized for the next adventure.

I would not have changed a thing!

*coming up next on The Bad Blog*

Our “While you were out” moment. I cannot wait to tell you about our homecoming!

Sweet 16 - Pun Intended

Where to begin?

We had an amazing time at Walt Disney World. I will post more about that when I get some pictures off of my camera and into the old PC. Also, I have some I need to scan and really need to think about what all to share and what not to so I don’t bore all of you.

The one thing I did want to mention is that today is my 16th anniversary of diagnosis. My sister emailed me this morning with…

Congrats?

Yeah, good use of punctuation. Do you congratulate? I guess you say, “well at least I am here.”

“Congrats!” not so much.

Maybe congrats at not having any complications? But that is not true. I ended up in a wheelchair on Thursday at Epcot because my feet were (and still are) covered in blisters from walking so much and I didn’t even feel it until I took off my shoes Wednesday night and saw open bleeding sores on my feet. My feeling is so bad in my feet that I did not even feel the pain that people without neuropathy would feel to alert them to the problem.

How about, Congrats on not having any real life threatening situations. But that is not true either. Last year I had a very bad stomach flu that put my in ICU for a few days. DKE was in full affect in this BAD Guy and my wife thought for a while that this may be the end of me. I cannot remember most of what happened. I have a post in my brain all about that situation. I am going to not detail that out right now because I am still pretty “high” from my vacation. (Not “high” like BG is high or the Willie Nelson kind in case you were wondering.)

I guess, “Congrats on making it through 16 years of struggle. Ups and downs. Continuing to not give up and learning more and more about your disease each day. Congratulations on finally owning this disease and wanting to make a difference for other diabetics in the world. Congrats on having so many people who are there for you and care about you to help with your difficult situations and people to offer advice and just generally listen to you when you need to be heard.”

There is so much to be thankful for this day and everyday.