Monday, October 15, 2007

8 for 8 and a New Member of My Diabetic Team

After much trial with my basal rates, nutrition and limitless frustration I can finally say I'm satisfied with a workout week. I went 8 for 8 last week, completing each of my scheduled workouts for the full time my Coach wanted me to. Now of course some challenges occurred along the way but as I'm learning I pushed through them and realized it's just part of being a Type 1er.

Biggest challenge of the week - my prescription running out on test strips! My God they are expensive!!!!!!!!! $50 bucks for 50 test strips - I'm now testing like 15 times a day and I seem to ruin 2 or 3 strips a day because the one touch strips love to take less blood than they need. I'm having my endo up my prescription so I can avoid that sticker shock in the future. Making matters worse, I was running with my new wind vest for the first time yesterday - during my run I heard something fall out of my vest, turned around and saw my meter laying on the ground. Earlier during the run my vial of test strips fell out! Thankfully I only had 15 or so strips in the vial but that's like loosing $15 dollars.

After a ton of research last week I think I may have found the organization that will help with my nutritional needs for training. Fit4D.com is a company founded by David Weingard, to help diabetic athletes receive the nutritional guidance they need. David has completed 3 Ironmans, 2 as a diabetic and realized that there aren't enough CDEs who have the expertise for dealing with athletes. Over the next few weeks I'll begin my relationship with them and will be sure to let you all know how it goes. After a phone conversation with David I have all the confidence that Fit4D will go a long way in helping me achieve my goals.

In other news my Downtown Giants won their homecoming game 60 - 0 on Saturday. The kids really came together and in the second half we had players running the ball who hadn't carried it all season, it was alot of fun.

7 comments:

Shannon said...

60-0??? Holy shit! Was it naptime for the other team?

Strips are horribly expensive. It's ridiculous. We ask the endo to prescribe way more than Brendon needs so that we never have to worry about running out.

Congrats on the 8 for 8!

Anonymous said...

That is way too expensive for test strips. I do find it amazing that you test that often. I try so hard to test as much as I can. What do you do when you know you need to test, but you feel like you dont have the 30 seconds it takes to test?

Wingman said...

Chris - if I know I need to test, I test; I don't care whose around me or what the circumstances are. At first I was a bit hesitant to draw blood in front of others but now I can test and walk at the same time.

Anonymous said...

test strips are expensive! This summer my family and I were out to dinner and I thought i had enough strips to last me the night, but when we got there, i went to test and the bottle was empty. I didn't want to just Not test and felt that if i bolused without not knowing my blood sugar, that could end up to be a huge problem, So we went to Walgreens or something and it was like a dollar for every strip. So I know how you feel! But testing is definately worth it, because when you know what your number is, it's a feeling of comfort to know it's okay and if its not, we can fix it.
Congrats on your basal rates, it takes me forever to figure out the right amount at each time of day. :)

Anonymous said...

You'll like the Fit for D people (though I like their old name better).

I've been real happy with them.

Unknown said...

Wow! 60-0 rocks! And 8-8 is also great news. I am glad you are finding the support you need, as well.

I pay out of pocket for strips in Taiwan, and at $1 a strip it REALLY sucks!

Bernard said...

Wingman

Good for you, 8 for 8 is amazing. Thanks for the pointer to Fit4D, I've added them to the diabetes search engine.

If you want cheaper test strips, try out the AgaMatrix WaveSense meter. I bought 50 strips on Amazon for about $30 and I've seen other websites offer them for around $23 for 50. And it's a really nice meter.