What a long day

I had to get up very early this morning for a podiatry appointment, at which I got a clean bill of foot health. She also checked my circulation. I was a little concerned because under the office's bright light and with my feet being cold, they looked a little blue to me, but she said they were fine, that they were hanging down and the pulse was strong when she got me to stand up and felt it. But given my foot problems, she told me to keep the boot and not get rid of it any time soon. :)

Since I was next door, I went over to my doctor's office and asked if I could see the nurse for a moment to ask a question. They took me in just a few minutes later and I told her about the itching and showed her the splotches on my abdomen. She said that was not normal and went to consult with the doctor. He doesn't think it's an insulin allergy, because I'm not reacting on my arm. Instead, he thinks the needles I was using were too short on my abdomen and I was actually injecting intradermally rather than subcutaneously. So they gave me some needles that are a millimetre longer for the abdomen. If I use my arm or thighs I'm to use the shorter ones I have.

Then I went over to the public library and renewed a book, paid a small fine, and got some books on preventing diabetes complications and eating well with diabetes.

I went to work, had a very busy day, and then went to the bus stop early so I could go get my meds (I'd actually realised I had one day left of everything, and the Apidra pen was at less than half, so I'd called in the ones I already had on file earlier). One of my co-workers shouted to me and got my attention, then took me down to the pharmacy. I had to fill the Apidra with a paper prescription, so I just had her drop me off rather than wait, which is good, because it took an hour to fill, they were so busy. Well, I'm not sure it took a whole hour to actually fill. They never called my name and at an hour I checked and it was ready. So I picked everything up and grabbed a couple of things on the way out and headed to the bus stop. I did forget bread, unfortunately, but I was afraid I'd miss the bus.

The bus was coming over the hill when someone from work stopped and had me get in. She took me home. So I had two rides on the way home today.

I turned on the news, something I rarely do, and they had the jubilation in response to Mubarak's stepping down as leader of Aegypt. I hope that there will be democracy and freedom there and that it will remain relatively stable.

I blogged and ate some dinner, then got sleepy and decided to lie down for about an hour. Four hours later I woke up. I'm sleeping through my cell phone alarm, so I changed the tone from "Real World '09" by Rob Thomas to "How Far We've Come" by Matchbox Twenty (same singer, though). Well, that worked. Ten minutes later I was shocked out of bed, got up, checked my blood sugar, filled out my spreadsheet, and took my insulin using the new needle. I have a little trouble giving myself shots in my upper arm because it's awkward, and I wind up having to hold it nearly upside down and press the pen plunger up. I usually accidentally pull the needle sideways just a bit, which hurts. I'm working on perfecting my technique a little so it's fine. I just do that with the Apidra, where I'm doing very small doses. The Lantus is 16 units. I'd never get the plunger to go down that far using my arm, so I continue to use my abdomen for that.

I'm learning a lot about what works and what doesn't with these injections. According to the instructions, for example, you don't pinch the skin up with the tiny needles but you do with the minis.