Tomorrow I Start Insulin Pump Therapy

It is a big day for me tomorrow. Tomorrow I start insulin pump therapy. I thought I would write down some thoughts beforehand, as this strikes me as a very significant day in the course of my diabetes experience. 

I may have mentioned before that, to a great extent, having type 1 diabetes has had a comparatively small impact on my life, relative to other people. I had already been living a pretty regimented life, exercising daily, watching what I ate, going to bed at the same time every day, avoiding desserts most of the time. I did adjust my life significantly when I received my diagnosis, but the changes were minor compared to the complete lifestyle change that other diabetics must go through. In that respect, one could almost say that I was "born to be a type 1 diabetic." 

The biggest change in my life was the four daily insulin injections. This is a pretty obvious change, so I probably do not need to explain this too much. One has a different approach to life and health when one has to invest a great deal of time calculating out hormone doses in relation to the day's meals and activities. The more one wants to gain full control over one's blood glucose levels, the more intricate the thought becomes. Again, it's not so bad for a natural analyst/system-builder like myself, so the impact on me was comparatively small. But there was still a significant impact.

Which brings me to the pump. The one most significant aspect of my being a diabetic is about to change radically. Gone will be the four daily insulin injections, replaced with a little electronic device, about the size of a deck of cards. From here on out, my insulin will be dosed automatically, based on my preset values for carbohydrate-to-insulin ratios, insulin correction values, and blood glucose readings.

[Fun/exciting sidenote: my new blood glucose meter and my insulin pump will be able to "talk" to each other. That is, when I test my blood sugar, I will be able to basically beam that BG reading directly into my insulin pump for automatic correction bolus calculations. So there are indeed fun things in store for me, in a geeky respect.]

Al things considered, I'm convinced that pump therapy is the right choice for me. (At least, giving it a try is the right choice for me.) But there are sufficient new challenges associated with a pump that I am not fully at ease. Scared isn't the right word. Worried isn't the right word. Perhaps concerned encapsulates how I'm feeling right now.

Most of my concern stems from the fact that the pump - an electronic device with some tubing and a sticky little thing that juts into my abdomen - will be connected to me basically all the time. This throws a wrench in activities such as taking a shower or going to bed. I'm sure it won't be a huge complication, I mean lots of people use insulin pumps and figure out a way. Even so, there are now things I need to start thinking about that I never had to think about before. Where do I put my pump when I take a shower? How do I make sure my pump is okay while I sleep? What do I do if I want to spend some time in a jacuzzi?

In short, activities that we all take for granted are things I have to start planning for, starting tomorrow. It seems somewhat trivial to me, so I am not sure why I have been thinking about it so much for the past couple of weeks. I hope it is just a passing phase.

But I think that probably everyone who has ever undergone insulin pump therapy has thought about these sorts of things. Therefore, I put these thoughts here on my blog, for myself, for posterity, and for anyone else out there who has ever had to think about these things. 

Wish me luck.

Puke If You Do, Puke If You Don't

This morning it's a race.

I woke up with an absolutely treacherous case of the flu. My blood sugar was high, and I needed to eat something to try to make my headache go away. So I staggered to the store (we were out of groceries), picked up some breakfast food, came back home and luckily my saintly wife cooked some oatmeal and caffe latte for me. Delicious!

But. Within moments of my first bite, I knew that if I continued to eat, I'd be sick. The only problem is that I had already injected my insulin.

Fun fact: One of the symptoms of hypoglycemia is nausea and vomiting. So now as I type this, I slowly munch on my oatmeal to try to prevent hypoglycemia (read: puking), in ever-present fear that the next bite is going to send me over the edge and the flu will get me (read: puking).

Which one do you think will happen first: Puking from hypogycemia, or puking from the flu? It's a race!

Quality Time Alone in America

It has been a very long time since I have been alone in America for an extended stay. Typically, when I take trips back to the States, it is to visit friends and family or to go on some sort of vacation with my wife. Therefore, while I always enjoy my stay, I am seldom afforded an opportunity to spend time alone, interacting with "the locals" in a way that would expose me to their comparative differences from the Canadians I have been living with for the past eight years of my life. And of course, I would have no opportunity to analyze those differences.

It's easy to step back and proclaim that Americans are X and Canadians are Y and either X > Y or Y > X. That's the cheap and easy way out.

No, today, I'd like to offer a short story.

This morning I took a taxi to my foreign working location. The driver did a good job of getting me there in a hurry, and was friendly and efficient, to boot. So, when he handed me his business card and invited me to call him when I needed a ride to the airport that afternoon, I slipped the card into my wallet and figured he'd get me there as well as anyone else would.

The first item of comparison involved in this story is the notion that, here in Boston, Massachusetts, finding a good taxi driver requires a bit of networking. At first I rejected this as overly laborious, but after paying a bit too much for a cab a time or two, I figured it was better to do as the Romans do when in Rome. There is nothing quite like this in Canada, in my experience. Why some taxi drivers will pass you a business card from time to time, they express no competitive desire for your business. They are practically ambivalent. They don't seem to enjoy their jobs, and they seem very displeased with their passengers, usually. Here in Boston, taxi passengers get the royal treatment. Drivers want your business, and it shows.

As I was saying, that afternoon, I called up MG, my taxi driver. He answered professionally, and I told him I needed a ride to the airport. Immediately, MG said, "I drove you to work this morning. I'll be there in ten minutes." He was.

I got in the cab, and MG immediately struck up a conversation with me about anything he could. He is one of many Haitian taxi drivers in Boston (I had a number of Haitian drivers during my three-day stay in this fine city). Naturally, he asked me about whether people spoke much French in Ottawa, and whether I myself spoke French. He started ribbing me about why I wasn't from Vancouver, alluding to the vivacious rivalry between the respective hockey teams of Boston and Vancouver .As we drove, he pointed out where the Bruins play here in town.

The MG started telling me that he was saving up all his money to buy his own taxi. Currently, he leases his taxi from the cab company. Soon, he'll be able to buy his own and strike out on his own. MG intends to start his own taxi cab company.

I challenge you to find one Canadian taxi cab driver who not only wants to strike out on his own, but one day own his own fleet; who not only harbors this ambition, but happily shares his plans with his passengers. (Naturally, MG made sure to tell me I should call him any time I'm in Boston for business or pleasure, and to give his number to all my friends who may be traveling to Boston.)

Not many Canadians have these kind of grand professional designs. If they do, they certainly don't discuss it with their passengers. This is the punchline of the whole story. MG is a proud and ambitious entrepreneur.

MG is everything America is supposed to be. He's an immigrant, working-class, but with his eyes dead-set on a self-made white-collar life. He happily takes advantage of any chance to discuss his Haitian culture and its unique interests, but loves America for what it is. ("Boston is really nice," he told me, "It's diverse. A lotta different kinds of people. It's quiet in this neighborhood, but downtown there's a lot to do.")

This kind of happy business spirit is something I have so dearly missed during my time in Canada. MG isn't just neat guy I met during a business trip to Boston. In many respects, there's a little MG in every self-respecting American out there.

To be sure, there are plenty of ambitious Canadians out there. I even know many of them, who have successful businesses of their own, who like to invest, who plan on going into future businesses. The difference is that in order to discover this about them, I had to sit down and get to know them. I had to spend a lot of time with my entrepreneurial Canadian to learn just how ambitious they were.

Here in the United States, people wear it on their shirtsleeves. Any clerk, taxi driver, or college student will happily tell you what kind of business they intend on starting, what they're saving their money for, why they're so hungry for your business.

The angry, condescending leftists of the world have the nerve to call this kind of all-consuming happiness and pride "greed" or a hundred other such epithets. They paint the whole process as though it were a crass, craven, suffocating boor. This engine of personal pride and ambition, of jobs, production, and providing for one's family, to the anti-capitalist, appears to be nothing more than repulsive American cowboyishness.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's good to be back. Let the haters hate. Give the Canadian snobs their government jobs and subsidized grad schools. Spending a sum total of about 20 minutes today with a taxi driver named MG has reminded me of everything that is wonderful about American culture.

...If only the American politicians would find their way to Boston and take a cab ride with MG.

Let's All Eat Insects

One of the best examples I can think of that illustrates the extreme eco-left's penchant for plunging us back into the Stone Age is the fact that some people are dead-set on having us eat bugs rather than meat.

The Atlantic reports on all the action.

There is one minor sticking point in all of this. Human beings stopped eating bugs and started eating meat for a reason. What do you suppose that reason is? My theory is utility. Meat tastes better than bugs. Meat smells better when roasted over a fire. Meat can serve a dual purpose in that livestock animals can also be used for secondary purposes, such as milk, cheese, leather, glue, fabric, and so forth.

I don't fault the free market for attempting to appeal to the eccentric tastes of the few. More power to bug-eaters for availing themselves of a cheap resource. More power to bug farmers for figuring out how to sell agricultural waste to willing consumers for a profit.

But as people continue to urge us to eat more bugs, we would be well advised to pose the question once in a while? Why do people want to encourage us to eat bugs?

Is the West a Falling Star?

I had a fascinating discussion yesterday with a very intelligent group of people about whether the economic balance is shifting to China. This is a question that has been debated in the blogosphere off-and-on for about ten years. This was not the first time I had ever considered the question, but merely the first time I had had the opportunity to sit down and discuss it with so many smart people.

In general, the arguments go something like this:

The Pro-China Argument
China will eventually surpass the Western world economically because the West has become dominated by service industries and top-heavy organizations. China, in contrast, has become a hub of manufacturing and virtually every durable good is now manufactured there. China can manufacture products at a lower cost than the West can. The organizational structure of China's companies is far less top-heavy, as is its government, a fact that allows Chinese business to experience rapid change to new external forces at minimal red tape to the well-connected. China's population is gallactically large, and growing while the West's population is much smaller and actively shrinking. Chinese governments and business have invested heavily in Western resources, purchasing the means of production for a large part of what they used to rely on the West to manufacture. For all of these reasons, it is only a matter of time before China's economy surpasses that of the United States and its economic power eclipses that of the West in general.

The Anti-China Argument
While China has done a good job democratizing its political structure and investing in manufacturing, the goods they produce continue to be of a lower quality than Western products. More importantly, a large portion of what China manufactures was researched-and-developed in the West by Western minds. Therefore, China continues to be reliant on Western technology and intellectual property. The West out-sources its lower paying jobs while retaining all of its higher-paying jobs in Western headquarters for Western people. Working and living conditions in the West are vastly superior to those in China, which itself is a premium offered to Western employees. Furthermore, the West still controls the majority of raw materials which are vital to Chinese manufacturing operations. Because the West controls the manufacturing inputs, the intellectual property, and offers a superior day-to-day life for Western citizens, China would have to work for centuries to catch up to where the West is today; for China to over-take the West, the West would have to cease growing altogether during that time.

Filtering Out the Bad Arguments
Reading over the arguments above, it is easy to see how much nationalism is at play among those making them in earnest. Because China is a manufacturing hub today, Chinese nationalists and people in the East believe that such growth will continue for the foreseeable future. Because the West has greater intellectual property and freer political mechanisms today, Westerners believe such will always be the case. How wrong both sides are about such things!

On the Western side of things, it is true that at any moment, the wrong political trend could unhitch Western democracy and plunge us back into the evils of World War II. With so many Chinese students flocking to Western universities, how long can we really assume that the West will always house the brightest minds? Japan has been offering superior high technology for decades now - why not China? Or India? Or Korea? We are not safe to assume that what is the case now in the West will always be.

With regard to China, few supporters of the Chinese economic "miracle" are willing to acknowledge the extent to which it has been funded by Chinese internal public debt. While it is true that the United States has a trade deficit with China, that does not mean that the Chinese government has more money and less public debt than the USA. China has famously poured endless resources into empty construction, useless green energy, public beautification projects, and so on. Every expenditure of the Chinese government creates a temporary resource boom that eventually must crash, the same as it does in the United States. Most importantly, the bulk of Chinese economic success has yet to filter down to the average, ordinary Chinese person because the government of China is corrupt and autocratic. Every success story is a special favor given to a friend of the powers that be.

The Punchline
What strikes me most about all of this is what these two economies really have in common. Neither the West nor the East are making any effort to scale back the size and scope of their governments and allow people to invest their money as they see fit. While American kids grow up wanting to be reality TV "stars" rather than becoming great inventors or captains of industry, Chinese kids are simply prevented from seeking out that kind of work for themselves. Either way, it's not happening. Meanwhile, governments on both sides are over-expending themselves and taking on alarming amounts of debt to fund useless public works projects and interventionist strategies.

The reality is, neither economy is really doing so well, and both have a lot more in common than people seem to be willing to admit.

Diabetes and Exercise While Traveling

I am out of town until the end of the week. In one sense, it's always fun to get out of town, especially when one travels to an exciting location. I happen to be traveling some where reasonably interesting, so I have that going for me. In another sense, traveling is always and everywhere a factor for diabetics to explore and account for.

Being somewhere new means sleeping in a strange bed, waking up and going to bed according to a new schedule, eating foods that are available as opposed to familiar, working out when and where possible. The diabetic's routine is completely disrupted at pretty much every imaginable level.

I do not dread this as much as some diabetics. I find new places somewhat exhilarating, provided I can find a gym and reasonably healthy food. These days, the former is easy, but the latter can be a real challenge. Today for lunch, for example, I went to McDonald's. Of all available options, McDonald's was the most predictable, even if not the healthiest. Sometimes predictable is better than healthy. I doubt I will repeat this choice tomorrow, however.

So what advice can I offer fellow athletic-diabetic travelers? Not much beyond common sense, I'm afraid. Here are a few tips that I have found useful.

Ignore Any Changes in Time Zone

Within reason, you should try to stick to the same time schedule you are used to. If you're traveling two or three time zones over, keep your watch set to your own "normal" time zone, and wake up at the same time, go to bed at the same time. If you're traveling for work, this may be prohibitively difficult, but it is not impossible. You may get some funny looks, but you will be glad in the long run. Sticking to your regular schedule mimizes the impact on your your body.

Make Use of the Hotel Gym

This is kind of a no-brainer. Hotel gyms suck, it's true, but they exist for a reason. The reason they exist is because many of us have to travel from time to time and having the opportunity to do something other than sit in planes, trains, automobiles, meeting rooms, etc. is vital for our psychological and physical wellbeing. For diabetics, this is true to the extreme. Your body will thank you for not cooping it up in a suit all day and drinking too many cups of coffee.

Psychologically, you will benefit from the motivation required to actually work out. The temptation to let your workout slide is almost too much to resist - believe me, I feel it, too. If you overcome that temptation, you feel strong, healthy, attractive, and accomplished. This is a huge boon for your psyche. If you're traveling for work, this will enable you to work better. If you're traveling for pleasure, this will allow you to capitalize even more on your beachside antics or your enjoyment of the local nightlife.

People just feel good when they do good things for themselves! So avail yourself of this opportunity. You'll thank me later.

Buy Your Food in Advance and Keep It In Your Hotel Room

This is probably the best piece of travel advice I can offer anyone, and not just diabetics. When you get to your destination, go immediately to the grocery store and pick up some breakfast and lunch foods. Keep them in your hotel refridgerator, and prepare them first thing in the morning. You will end up with something more cost effective and much healthier than if you have the diner breakfast, convenient lunch, and fancy dinner.

For diabetics, this will allow you to stick to a regular food routine despite having many other aspects of your daily routine ruined.

So, you're saving money, you're eating healthier, and you're keeping your BG under control. What's not to like about this?

Best of all, you will - believe it or not - prove to be the envy of your friends and/or colleagues when you show up for lunch with a fantastic homemade sandwich, cup of yogurt, and fresh vegetables, while they are stuck with some greasy potato-hewn substance made with too much salt and oil. You will be seen as healthy and also a good planner. Makes for a great conversation piece, too.

Well, those are my tips. What works for you? Let me know in the comments section of the blog.

Let The Hypocrisy Begin

I'm out of town today. During my drive out of town, I switched on some good old-fashioned conservative AM talk-radio, for kicks. I caught some quasi-conservative Ottawa-area radio host, followed by Glenn Beck, followed by Rush Limbaugh. (Hey, it was a long drive.)

So far, everyone is lamenting the downgraded credit rating news. S&P seems to have deflated North America's collective ego. What I think is happening is that everyone has been caught in what they know to be a lie. You can't spend your way out of a recession. You can't just sign a bill that says the government will run health care and expect all the money to just magically materialize out of thin air, somehow. You can't just wage a 30-year war against the various peoples of the Middle East and expect to have unlimited funds with which to do this.

The spoiled, rotten children of US political punditry are now demonstrating all the class and dignity of a four-year-old child who has just been told he cannot have a chocolate bar at the grocery store.

The really funny thing about all of this is observing the extent to which the pundits are completley hypocritical. Some nice examples:

• The Canadian host spoke at length about how Canada was too far in debt, and the size of its government needed to shrink... and then promptly called for greater military spending.
• Glenn Beck predicted race riots in the near future, in the United States, and part of his reasoning was that he expected people to start blaming white people for something. (Get it? He's inciting racial conflict in an attempt to warn against racial conflict. QED!)
• Rush Limbaugh repeated ad nauseum that Barack Obama has been systematically "engineering" the demise of the country, using - among other things - irresponsible levels of spending; But Limbaugh of course supports American wars whenever and wherever they take place.. unless Clinton did it... or whatever.

I mean, no one can really even keep track of this stuff anymore. It doesn't make any sense. This is precisely why I started Stationary Waves in the first place. What all of these jokers are lacking is a consistent moral philosophy governing their thoughts.

I have said before that political parties don't have ideologies. They are basically soulless, soul-sucking entities hell-bent on power.

What I heard today demonstrates that well enough. But you should hear these guys when they talk about "a world without America at the helm." I mean, if that doesn't give the whole game away, I don't know what does. These guys want "America" to control the entire known universe.

What we need is a little more libertarianism. Power is for dictators. Peace and free trade is the only lasting form of social organization.

An Optimist's Take on the Down-Grade

This is what the US government doesn't want you to know about their downgraded bond rating: The economy of the United States is entirely independent of the federal government's bond-rating status.

We are the people. We do not require federal funds to have a healthy economy. If we want a healthy economy, all we need to do is come up with ideas, produce them, sell them, and improve our conditions.

Sometimes I think that some of us have effectively "out-sourced" our economy to the federal government. What it says, goes. If we want jobs, we ask Gub to do something to "create" them. If we want better access to health care, we ask Gub to pass regulations that "provide" it to us. If we want to buy a home, we ask Gub to offer us a preferred lending rate. We need to stop this insanity.

Look, this is really good news. It's a good thing to know that the US federal government can effectively collapse, and we'd all be okay, economically speaking. It's a good thing to know that no matter what kind of games they play on Capitol Hill, all any of us really needs to do is keep producing valuable resources and bringing them to market. We don't need those jokers. They can't really hurt us unless they resort to despotism.

Despotism is a credible threat in the short run, but in the long run the American people will never go for it. They will reject it completely. This is why I am not too concerned about that. But Gub's constant encroaching on every aspect of our lives is getting exhausting. And frankly, we are the ones to blame for that. We honestly believe that it's up to Obama and Boehner to "fix the economy." Hogwash. You hold the key to the kingdom in your very hands, if you will but use it.

Let the federal government's ability to take on debt completely collapse. We don't need it. Our economy is in our own hands. That's good news.

Friday Reflections 2/2 : Workout Plan Going Forward

My Injury

After giving my leg some good rest, yet still occasionally feeling pain in my calf while working out, I am starting to believe that there is a hefty  psychological component to my injury. A minor muscle tear should only take a few weeks to heal. I believe I've reached the point where my leg must have healed, and yet here I am nursing it on the stationary exercise bike at the gym every day.

The reason I fear I may be imagining some of the pain is because this sort of thing has happened to me before. Most notably, when I was twenty years old. It happened while I was carrying a 4x12 guitar speaker cabinet down a staircase in my apartment. I took a small misstep and fell backwards against the corner of the hand railing. The sharp part hit me right beside my spinal column, resulting in a very minor herniated disk. I had to take some time off from running because the strain on my back was too much. It was about a year before I could exercise again at all. Over that time I gained almost twenty pounds and almost forgot how to run long distances. It was depressing. Looking back, though, there is no reason to believe that a minor herniated disk would require that much recovery time. Ultimately, I am forced to conclude that much of the problem was the fear of being more seriously injured than I was.

So I have some experience with phantom pains of this kind. Nowadays, when I suffer any sort of an injury (which, frankly, is rare), I am vigilant as to my own mind and tricks it wants to play on me. This requires a dedication to self-reflection, to always asking myself to reconsider my position. Not everyone has the constitution for this kind of self-second-guessing, but it is a vital skill to have, in my opinion, and not just for fitness reasons.

All said, I think I'm going to go for a run tonight after I lift weights. I believe that if I can make it to the end of the workout, my leg will be healed.

My Plan

So what's the workout plan now, you ask?

At this stage, I am quite enjoying the opportunity to build some upper body mass. As I mentioned before, I have taken on a sort of A-Day/B-Day approach, where A-Days are bicep/back/abs days, and B-Days are tricep/shoulder days. I am foregoing resistance training on my legs because I am a long-distance runner and I don't want to bulk up my primary means of workout fun. Besides, I still have a half-marathon to run next month. 

Taking a page from the Hyperfitness philosophy, I have decided to change-up my workout routine every two weeks. Burch does this apparently because he gets bored if he does the same workout routine for longer than two weeks. The P90X folks call this "muscle confusion." For myself, I have simply noticed that my body never responds more quickly than when I am starting up a fresh workout routine. If I make an effort to always keep my routine fresh, I expect my body to continue to respond quickly. That's a good thing.

Even so, I want to keep my A-Day / B-Day approach. I also want to continue to focus on building and toning my upper body muscles. So my plan is to keep things theoretically as they are, while varying the specific exercises involved every two weeks. This means that I have one more week of my current routine left before I make another change. I will have to do some real brain-storming to ensure the change is both challenging and effective. Hopefully, it will also be somewhat educational for you, the reader.

More on that as the idea progresses.

Friday Reflections 1/2 : The Economy

And so it begins?

For the past two days, news agencies (CBC, for example) have been reporting on the losses that the markets have been suffering. From my perspective, I don't feel that this is particularly surprising to anyone. For all the stubborn theorizing by folks like Krugman, DeLong, Sumner, et al., the economy has not been recovering. For those who insist that we need "more stimulus," there is absolutely no quantifiable evidence to suggest whatever amount of stimulus was provided has had any impact on markets. The question is why?

The answer is that the economy is not suffering from a demand shock. Previous levels of "aggregate demand" (whatever that concept is worth) were equilibrated to the debt-driven spending spree of the past 10-15 years, depending on how you count it. No Keynesian (or New Keynesian, or neo-Keynesian, or nouveau-Keynesian, or whatever-Keynesian) economist seems to grasp the fact that consuming beyond the global economy's ability to produce results in the cannibalization of capital. 

More diplomatic economists than I would rephrase that italicized statement to "substituting a large amount of future consumption with present consumption." That's how you phrase a production-based concept in terms of demand. That should make my Keynesian readers happy. If one requires a Keynesian explanation for our present-day events, then it is simply this: The reason short-run stimulus results in long-run recession (something Keynes himself acknowledged, by the way) is because when you consume too much today, you have to consume a bit less tomorrow.

At the individual level, you can compare this to a person who lives paycheck-to-paycheck. If that person is smart, he'll spend his paycheck immediately on his bills, and then go grocery shopping. If he's not smart, he'll take his paycheck straight to the bar and get his drink on for a big night. Then he'll have to eat PB&J for 13 days until his next paycheck comes in. That's inter-temporal substitution.

At the macroeconomic level, we have just blown our wad on a massive, ten-year bender. Anyone who tells you that we won't be eating PB&J for a long time is either lying or living in a fantasy. The game is up. The Federal Reserve is barely pretending anymore. Investors are seeking any minor return they can find. But when all is said and done, we have consumed our productive capital and now it's time to rebuild what we just ate.

When people suggest that 20 years of Japanese growth was "erased" by the "lost decade" in that country, they are looking at pure growth rates. They forecast what the growth "should have been" according to the old growth numbers and compare that to what was observed. They fail to understand that the growth was erased during the boom by over-consumption of capital resources.

What we need now is less stimulus and less political action. We need to be left alone so that entrepreneurs can start investing in longer-term methods of production. None of us have any hope of living the good life until our entrepreneurs build the economy's productive capacity up again.

What's It Like Having Diabetes?

When others find out that I am a diabetic, their first reaction is to express condolences. This never ceases to catch me a little off-guard.

From the outside perspective, diabetes is a chronic illness, like cancer or epilepsy. To the non-diabetic, people like me "suffer" from diabetes. They watch us poke ourselves with lancets and needles, they see us react to hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia. They watch us abstain from desserts or too many cocktails. They know we cannot join them for spontaneous fun if we are not prepared for that kind of fun, or if it otherwise conflicts with our regimented needs.

From these observations, they quite rationally conclude that we diabetics feel diabetic all the time. They're wrong.

What Diabetes?

The truth of the matter is that I hardly think about it. I am not even "constantly aware of it." I wake up in the morning and kiss my wife, work out, take a shower, and get dressed. I go to work and chat with my colleagues. I join them for lunch. I go home after work and pursue my interests: running, music, writing, reading, etc. I take my wife out to dinner, and sometimes we even go dancing (the joke in this sentence is that I'm a terrible dancer). I join my friends at local pubs for a drink. I pay my bills on time. I do the dishes and the laundry.

In short, not only is my life identical to everyone else's, but I might even have a more active and interesting life than some people. There's nothing "diabetic" about it. I am basically exactly like you.

No, You're Diabetic!

In fact, I am so much like you, that I have some news for you: Virtually every symptom of diabetes (except maybe DKA) is something that all non-diabetics experience from time to time. Because they are non-diabetics, they have never associated those feelings with their blood glucose levels. However, I can assure you that they are related and that you quite often feel exactly the way I do, even if you have a perfectly functional pancreas.

That restlessness you feel after over-indulging in dessert is hyperglycemia. That bloated, upset-stomach feeling you get after a marathon session at the local sushi joint; that thirst you get after eating a few too many slices of pizza; that tired, bleary-eyed headache you get in the summer sun after having not done much all day... These are the symptoms of hyperglycemia.

The dizziness you feel when you've exercised a lot on an empty stomach, the jittery confusion you feel when you work through lunch and forget to eat all day, the urge to come home after a long, strenuous outing and eat everything in sight; you guessed it: that indicates that your blood sugar is too low.

You feel these things to some degree each and every day of your life. None of these feelings mean that you are a diabetic, of course; that isn't the point. 

The point is that, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, you already have a good idea what diabetes is like because you have already experienced all the symptoms yourself. 

I reiterate: we diabetics are basically exactly like you.

Come On, Ryan, You're Not Exactly Like Everyone Else

True enough, my life is different now that I have diabetes. Most of those differences involve trivial things. For example, I can't stay out all night drinking beer and eating jalapeno poppers like I used to. I can't gorge myself at Thanksgiving dinner anymore, intent on getting my fill of turkey and pie before I have to return to a normal way of life. I can't just decide to skip my daily trip to the gym. I can't say, "Screw it," and stay up all night watching movies.

I can't really eat pasta anymore, and my pizza consumption is relegated to one or two slices every now and then. When I drink, I have to test my blood sugar beforehand, and every couple of hours afterward. I have to be impolite sometimes and leave the party just when it gets interesting, because I have to go to bed. I have to say no to Auntie when she offers me some home cooked jilabi, no matter how much I love that stuff, and no matter how much she insists that Uncle just had some, and he's diabetic, too.

Most noticeably, I cannot put anything into my mouth without first injecting myself with insulin.

It is true that I feel badly when I over-indulge in food, especially sweets. However, while the headache I get might be more severe than what other people experience, my over-indulgence is no less healthy for me than it is for you. People hurt themselves when they do stupid things like eating half a pie for dessert. It matters naught whether they have diabetes or not. What I feel is what you feel. The impact on my body is not unlike the impact on yours. I may have a heightened awareness of the damage such behavior does, and an added incentive to avoid that damage, but make no mistake - you are inflicting the same damage upon yourself, even if you aren't diabetic.

So Life Is a Little Different, But...

What I want people to know about diabetes is this: I'm not "sick." I'm not "suffering." It's not really even "too bad that I have diabetes." I'm fine. I live a life that is exactly as normal as everyone else's (whatever "normal" means, anyway). In fact, I'm in the best shape of my life. If you can believe it, I've never felt better in my whole life. And I am a diabetic. 

If this is a "disease" or a "condition," we diabetics wouldn't know it from how we feel on a daily basis.  

Similarly, asthmatics have to think a little more carefully about things like air quality. No one would ever suggest, however, that an asthmatic is living a lower quality of life than a non-asthmatic. Even though we don't all have fancy medications and devices to carry with us, we all have special needs to ensure smooth sailing through our daily lives. 

Diabetes is a scary word, but we diabetics are not scared. We pretty much think of ourselves as normal. We hope you think so, too.

Not Like That, Like This

From Human Action, The Scholar's Edition, p. 727:

All this passionate praise of the supereminence of government action is but a poor disguise for the individual interventionist's self-deification. The great god State is a great god only because it is expected to do exclusively what the individual advocate of interventionism wants to see achieved. Only that plan is genuine which the individual planner fully approves. All other plans are simply counterfeit. In saying "plan" what the author of a book on the benefits of planning has in mind is, of course, his own plan alone. He does not take into account the possibility that the plan which the government puts into practice may differ from his own plan. The various planners agree only with regard to their rejection of laissez faire, i.e., the individuals' discretion to choose and to act. They entirely disagree with regard to the choice of the unique plan to be adopted. To every exposure of the manifest and incontestable defects of interventionist policies the champions of interventionism react in the same way. These faults, they say, were the results of spurious interventionism; what we are advocating is good interventionism, not bad interventionism. And, of course, good interventionism is the professor's own brand.

Laissez faire means: Let the common man choose and act; do not force him to yield to a dictator.

You may also want to check my Lexicon for Gub.

Bangla Word of the Day

কামড় - "bite"

Works as a verb or a noun.

UPDATE: Whoops, I forgot to transliterate that word! The word in English characters is "kaamor," where the O makes more of an "aw" sound than an "oh" sound.

Recovery Mode

Having made the official choice to pull out of the Montreal Marathon thanks to a torn calf muscle, I am now in full-scale recovery mode. We all need a little recovery time periodically, and generally that means rest. But I'm not very good at resting, and besides, I don't actually need any rest. My calf needs rest, but I myself can still do plenty of exercise.And because I am highly reliant on exercise for diabetes management, my "Recovery Mode" is more active than a total catatonic state. I haven't hit the chips-and-dip-on-a-Lay-Z-Boy just yet.

In the meantime, I thought it might be beneficial to share my recovery workouts with you as I go along. Recall that I am still aiming to complete the half-marathon in Montreal this September. Until then, I need to stay in good shame.

The Recovery Mode Workout

I: Stretching

The first item of business is to prevent any further injury to any related or unrelated muscles. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to stretch regularly. I myself have opted for stretching twice a day. Stretching improves muscle flexibility and helps prevent future injuries from occurring. It is no coincidence that the muscles on my right leg are among the tightest muscles in my body, and that it was my right calf that suffered an injury. 

The exception to this is that you should not spend any time stretching a torn muscle. Therefore, while I am stretching a lot, I am absolutely not stretching my calf at all.

II: Cardio

The next thing we need to consider is getting adequate cardiovascular exercise despite the fact that my primary means of cardio (running) is unavailable to me. I first tested whether I could simply reduce the length and intensity of my daily runs. No dice. Next, I tried getting a good, hard daily workout on a stationary exercise bike. This was much better, but I still found that it affected my calf. I tried the elliptical machine a few times, and felt that it had the same impact on me as running.

What I've settled for at this point is about a 40-50 minute workout on an Arc Trainer or stationary bike, stopping myself short of very heavy exertion. This allows me to get my heartrate up for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, it is not a very good workout for my leg muscles. Yin and Yang, though, right? It would be unreasonable to rest my muscles and exert them at the same time. Recovery means recovery, so I have to take it easy.

III: Weights

Strength training is where I have been making up the difference in my daily workouts. Training for a marathon involves reducing one's body mass and streamlining to become a running machine. Now that I'm out of the marathon and am hungry for a daily workout that meets my need to push hard every day, I find that lifting weights is the best logical place to go.

Understand that I am not at all lifting weights on my legs. I'm talking about upper body weights at this point.

IV: The Routine

What I've settled on is an A-Day/B-Day workout regimen in which I work out my triceps and shoulders on A days, and my biceps, back, and chest on my B-Days. Abs I work out every day.

When I've finished my weights workout, I get a light 40-50-minute cardio workout as described above. So far the Arc Trainer seems to work best, but I take things as they come. Any "second workout" I can get in during the day (a walk, a light hike, etc.), I take. 

Conclusion

So that is pretty much what my "recovery mode" is looking like these days. So far, so good. My upper body is already responding to the added effort, I am kind of stabilizing my blood sugar again, and my leg really seems to be healing up well. 

I will provide additional insight as it becomes available.