Diabetes "Class"

This morning I left home at 7:30 to get to Bethesda for my 9:00 gestational diabetes orientation class.  This time it was a little different than it was back when I was pregnant with Faith.  Then I went for an entire afternoon, and a whole class of us were talked to by a nurse first, who explained how the testing worked, and then by a nutritionist, who told us how to meal-plan, and what to eat when. 

This morning, there were only 2 of us, and the nurse led us off to a small conference room.  She passed out the folders of info, and then started talking about how we would need to make an appointment with the nutritionist as well, since she was just a nurse and couldn't really help us with meal-planning.  She gave us the phone number, which I dutifully wrote down, and then she got the bright idea that she could call even today and see if we could get in and talk to the lady.  So she asked which we would rather do--try for today, or call ourselves and make a different appointment.  The other lady was quiet, so I spoke up, "Umm, well, this is my 9th baby, and my 2nd with gestational diabetes, and I still have all my information from the last time the dietician talked with me.  I've already been testing my numbers for a week, and things are fine . . . so I really don't want to have to talk to the dietician at all . . ."

The nurse looked at me, shocked ("Your 9th baby?!"), and asked me a few more questions to make sure I actually had my monitor set up and was doing everything I should be doing.  Then she looked at me with a puzzled look and said, "Who on earth made you come here today?!  I'll just note that you were here, but you don't have to stay!"  Woo-hoo!!  That was what I was hoping for! 

I did have to go back down to the actual OB clinic.  I'm testing my blood sugar 4 times a day, but the nurse-practitioner who put in the prescription wrote it for only a jar of 50 test strips (with 3 refills).  You can't get refills until about 10 days before the end of the month, because the provider is supposed to be writing the prescription to last a month.  Soo, I'll wait while you all do the math . . . but 50 strips, testing 4 times a day, means that bottle will last me about 12 days since I started testing last Wednesday.  And the N-P also didn't give a prescription for a big box of lancets, but rather for a box containing 25 lancets plus an extra poker-thing that the lancets go in (you already get one of those, plus 12 lancets, with the actual meter);  So--35 lancets, 4 times a day--that's less than 9 days!  I've been reusing the lancets, which is a big no-no.

So I went down to talk to the lady at the desk to see if I could speak to the clinic attending doctor and get a new prescription.  She took my ID card and disappeared off in the back with it, eventually poking her head back around to ask if I just needed the strips and lancets, or if I also needed medicine.  I never actually talked to a doctor, but she came back and told me the presciption was entered in, and I could go to the pharmacy to pick it up.  Yay!

But when I picked up the prescription, I was dismayed to find that once again, I only got 1 box of 50 (but with 6 refills this time, LOL).  Can doctors not do simple math?!?  Well, that will get me to my next appointment, which is Oct. 12, and then I will have to speak very slowly and clearly and explain that if I am testing 4 times a day for 30 days, then I need 120 test strips at a time!  I did get a big box of 200 lancets, so I'm good to go there for awhile.

My numbers in general have been really great (they're supposed to be under 105 when I wake up, and under 120 two hours after a meal).  I've had pretty much no troubles keeping them low--until Monday and Tuesday.  I think it is the stress of co-op!  I did have one odd thing happen.  This morning, right after I talked to the OB front desk (which made me nervous), it was time to test, since it was 2 hours after my breakfast.  I had eaten my usual breakfast of 1/2 c. bran flakes, milk, and a hard-boiled egg.  This pretty much always gives me a blood sugar reading of around 97.  I NEVER have problems with breakfast!  So I test, and my number comes up as 138!!  I was flabber-gasted!  But I was still feeling flustered from trying to explain everything to the desk lady, so I decided to just sit for a minute and relax, and then test again.  So I sat, breathed deeply, looked around, relaxed--for about a minute.  I had tested originally at 9:25, and so at 9:27 I retested.  My number this time?  100.  What in the world?!  There's no way my levels are actually fluctuating 38 points in 2 minutes, but what could it be?  Who knows?!  It did make me wonder if the high number I got after lunch on Tuesday (right before life science, when I realized I had completely forgotten to email notes to Celia for class, which made me flustered) would have been different if I had relaxed for a minute before testing!   Weird.

I've ramped up my exercising again.  It's been hard to fit it in, but I've been exercising for about 40 minutes in the morning after breakfast, and Bob and I have been taking a 40 minute walk almost every night after dinner.  That maternity support belt I bought from Amazon a few weeks ago has been WONDERFUL.  It has made such a difference in how comfortable I am with all the walking!  We'll see how long I can keep all that exercise up, though.  It's very disruptive to the day, especially the morning time.  Anna and Grace are definitely not getting very much time spent on their schooling, although sometimes I do stuff with Anna in the evenings.  But I'm so tired by the time evening rolls around (no time for naps in the afternoon--must do more school or run errands/get people to appointments!), and that is also when I have to work on biology prep, which is taking a lot of brain power.  Oh well--less than 9 more weeks!  We're in single digits!