Posted by Angelique on June 5, 2008
Within this last year, I have decided to make a lot of changes in my life. I decided to move to my mom’s house, decided to change my major to psychology, and more recently, decided it was time to take care of my health.
The decision to move to my mom’s wasn’t hard ~ I really had no choice because of my son; and the decision to change my major wasn’t too difficult either because I had originally wanted to go for psychology years ago before I started college, but I let someone talk me out of it. So it took me several years and a few different majors to figure out that psychology is what I was supposed to be doing to begin with…..and now I have a 4.0 average in my major. That’ll teach me to listen to anyone else besides my own intuition.
However, the decision to take care of my health was a little tougher. I am diabetic and have known for years, but I never paid too much attention to it. Yeah, I would try every now and then to cut back on certain things, but I can’t say I ever really tried too hard. For those of you who don’t know, blood sugar levels should usually stay between 70 and 120, preferably less than 100. Mine was staying between 300 and 400. I figured I felt fine, so I rarely, if ever, took my medicine, and hardly ever took my blood sugar level unless I felt sick. It was stupid, I know that. I should have started focusing on it a lot sooner.
Well, about a month ago, I decided to start taking my medicine again. I was packing some things to take to my mom’s, and I ran across a book for toning the body. I sat down and started reading. It talked about exercises to do and about making a food log to keep track of your daily intake. Right now, I am not really interested in toning my abs or anything so much, but the food log got me thinking…..Instead of using it the way the book said, I could use it to keep track of things that affect my weight and my sugar. So for a couple of days I wrote my food intake in a spiral notebook, then I got tired of writing everything over and over again. So I went through and created a food log on my computer. It has the day of the week, a place for the date, a place for blood sugar and weight, and spaces for all three meals and all three snacks throughout the day, then I printed out enough pages for four months. I began keeping track on May 16th. Now, three weeks later, I am still keeping up with it. I cut out all pasta and almost all breads. I also started eating a lot more fruits and vegetables. And you better believe I am searching the aisles for all kinds of sugar-free items……Just a note: I have found that sugar-free cool whip, sugar-free chocolate mint cookies, sugar-free vanilla wafers, and the no sugar added chocolate quik are delicious :)……I don’t much care for the no sugar added ice creams or the Light and Fit low sugar strawberry yogurt.
Anyway, so far so good. Since I have begun to watch what I eat and take my medicines regularly, I have gotten my blood sugar down from the mid-300’s to an astounding 180-200. It has not been over 200 for the last five days. For me, that’s amazing! I will admit that I have faultered a few times and went off the eating plan. Those are the days that my sugar was over 190, but I will just mark those off as cheat days and leave it at that. As for my weight, I’ve only lost about three pounds, but at least my blood sugar is going down and that is the main thing I am worried about at this moment. I figure as long as I keep this up, the weight will begin to go down eventually.
The biggest influence for all this is my kids. They are getting older and their lives are changing. So if I want to be here to see their lives change and grow, I need to make some big changes in mine. Life is also beginning to come together for me as well, and honestly, I would really like to be around to see what happens.
Filed Under: Life Comments:
Posted by Angelique on April 19, 2008
I know it’s been a while since I wrote my intro blog, but I have been busy, busy, busy.
First things first, my son, Tommy, is now staying at my mom’s house half time. A couple of weeks ago, he had a huge blowout. Basically, my daughter was yelling at me because she was put to bed early as a punishment for being late to school most of the week before, and he thought she was yelling at him, so he stormed into her room and yelled at her, scaring her. As a result, because he is not allowed anywhere near her room when he is angry, I told him to go to bed. Well, he out and out refused over and over again. Things escalated to where I told him he would not be allowed to go to his father’s house that weekend. It was an all out war at that point, so I called my Mom and my Dad talked to him for a while. Tommy had gotten into bed, but he had still been yelling at me all the way until his Grandpa talked to him on the phone. Even then, he was still very aggitated, but he eventually calmed down. After the dust settled, we told him that if he acted like that again, we would move right now rather than wait till June.
Things were fine until about a week or so later, the day of my daughter, Anna’s, birthday party. Tommy had been going everywhere with me all day to get everything ready. He was opening the car door for me, he was carrying bags, and being really great. But then, right before we left to get the cake, my ex-husband showed up and went with us. Tommy all of a sudden forgot his manners. He didn’t open the door for me and started giving me a little bit of attitude (I think because his father was there). Anyway, the party was great. We had pizza, soda, and cake. Everyone was happy. Then my ex left to go home and we had to go to Walgreens to get a prescription. Inside the store Tommy asked me if he could go to the toy aisle. I said we didn’t have time. That’s when the *%@# hit the fan. He started yelling at me in the middle of Walgreens. I told him that just because he missed his dad was no reason for him to give me an attitude. That just made it worse. He said that it wasn’t because of his dad, it was because of his temper, he just can’t control it. Well, the yelling continued throughout the rest of the night until he went to bed. In the morning, I went to wake him up for an appointment, and he wouldn’t get up. I tried four times to wake him up nicely. When it didn’t work, I yelled at him to get up. It didn’t help. He just started yelling at me because I yelled at him. After a while, I ended up calling the doctor’s office and cancelling the appointment. I found out that the appointment was actually for the day before, so I would’ve had to cancel anyway, but I felt bad because I couldn’t get him to stop yelling and therefore had to cancel. Right after that, I called my mom crying and told her that I couldn’t handle it anymore. I couldn’t handle being yelled at constantly.
So we all decided it was for the best interest of everyone involved that he move down with my Mom & Dad for a while. The reason I say it is only half time is because this month he is coming back with me for one week for an appointment, and in May, he will be staying with me for the last two weeks while my Mom is out of town. Then in June we will move down here with him. He seems to be doing really good here, but I think that has a lot to do with the fact that there are two adults here to back each other up. He still gets an attitude when I come on the weekends, but my mom thinks that is out of habit. Hopefully it’s a habit he will break once I move down for good.
Anna has also been keeping me busy. She had some bloodwork done in March and we got the results back. The neurologist said that her thyroid, blood count, liver test, and something else all came back normal. Her EEG also came back. He said it was borderline which is still okay. That was good news. But he said her bone age was two deviations from the norm. She is an 11 year old girl with a bone age of 13. So he recommended that she see an endochrinologist. We have that appointment at the end of June. She also saw her podiatrist. He said that the medicine she takes for pain before bed can also be taken in the morning if she is hurting. Lots of doctors, lots of appointments for both kids. Oh yeah, we also had a court date to answer for all her absences and tardies in school. I really did not enjoy that. Basically, the judge said that I needed to get papers to the school saying that she has an ongoing condition and it will interfere with her attendance. I did that. But when I asked the girl at the desk to write a note on letterhead from the school saying that I turned in those papers that were requested by the judge, she looked at me as if she didn’t know what I was talking about. She just asked if she could send it home with Anna. I said okay. Well, I got that letter from Anna’s backpack that afternoon. It wasn’t a letter, it was a sheet from the school handbook with highlighted areas saying that notes for absences need to be turned in within 48 hours……I KNOW THAT……so I ended up having to go back to the school the next monday and ask the same girl for a new note. I told her that the judge specifically asked for a letter saying that they recieved the paperwork from the doctor saying that she has an ongoing condition…….She still looked at me like there was nothing going on upstairs. But she wrote a letter this time. It said that they “recieved the note excusing Anna’s absences but that school policy is that the notes need to be in within 48 hours after the absence.”………I told her again what it was supposed to say. She changed “note” to “medical records”. I settled for that. I figured if she still didn’t get it after explaining it three times, it was hopeless. So when I took the letter to the courthouse, I went ahead and had them make copies of the doctor’s letters and records also. Hopefully that will be good enough. I guess we’ll find out.
Then, on top of all that, my daughter gave me a virus of some kind. So now I have been sick for the last week. I hope it goes away soon, because every time I think I am getting better, I get worse again. I had to try and study for my psychology test this last wednesday through bouts of coughing and cold spells. I don’t think I have to actually say this, but it didn’t go well. It was open book, but I couldn’t concentrate or find a lot of the answers. I hope I can at least have a B on it. I’ll be lucky if I even get that.
So, needless to say, right now I look like the walking dead and feel like I am about three steps away from the grave. But I thought it might be nice to come on here and update everyone. I hope all of you are feeling better than I am. If I survive, I will write again later.
Filed Under: Life Comments:
Posted by Angelique on March 30, 2008
Hello world.
My name is Angelique. Right now, I live in San Antonio, Tx. I have two kids, two chihuahuas, two red-ear sliders, lots of fish, and lots of things going on in my life. I am a Psychology major at UTSA (and it only took me trying three other majors before deciding on this one). I am also in the process of moving into my mom & dad’s house in Freer, Tx. We are bringing down a trunk load every weekend until the kids finish school in June. Then we will go ahead and move everything else. Hopefully it will only be big stuff by that time (crossing my fingers).
My son’s name is Tommy. He is schizoaffective, ADHD, and ODD. He is also 13, which is why we are moving in with my mom & dad. He has outbursts of anger, and with him being as big as I am, it is too hard for me to keep him under control by myself anymore. He is very impatient. He wants what he wants, when he wants it, and doesn’t seem to realize or care that other people have things going on in their own lives; which is really funny when we have to go see his doctors and he gets tired of waiting for the appointment.
My daughter’s name is Anna. She is 10 going on 16. At least she thinks she is. She will be turning 11 this thursday. We made a deal that if she saved up enough money, we would get her the Nintendo DS for her birthday, and she did, so she is really excited about that. She has epilepsy (absent seizures) and cerebral palsey, which has caused her legs to start hurting because she has always walked on her tip-toes. So she has her doctor appointments as well, except she is a little more understanding when it comes to waiting.
As for the pets, (1) the chihuahuas are both girls, named DD and Sweets. (2) The turtles are one girl - Spike, and one boy - Spidey. (3) The goldfish are Luke, Mandy, Coda, and Venom (genders unknown). (4) Two plecostomus - Plecko (mine) and Rhino (a friend’s - I’m babysitting). (5) A shrimp named Phasmo. (6) A frog (also babysitting) we call Froggie or Kermie. and (7) A lot of guppies, four which are mine and the rest I am babysitting (No names because I can barely tell them apart). Needless to say, I spend a lot of time cleaning aquatic tanks.
My hobbies, besides collecting pets, are beadwork, reading, writing, poetry, and embroidery (not in any specific order). I have been writing poetry for 20 years (at least) and have started a lot of stories that are still in the works. I have also been doing embroidery for almost as long. As for the beadwork, my mom got me interested in it almost two years ago. I haven’t done much, but I will post pictures of what I have done when I have a chance. Reading is my favorite past time. Some of my favorite authors are Anne Rice, Stephen King, and John Grisham. I also love the comic strip “Lenore” by Roman Dirge.
I guess that’s about it for now. If and when life happens again, I’ll be back. See you next blog.
Filed Under: Life Comments:
The Battle with Blood Sugar