Running Shoes

Man, I used to run 4 mi. every day before they invented running shoes. I wore Converse All Star basketball shoes. I ran the Deseret News marathon in them. Well, 85% of it till my legs would no longer bend and the poop-out truck had to haul me like a pine board to the finish line. I never even got winded. It's just that I had never tried to run more than 4 miles before, and my legs got stiff as boards. A few years later, running was invented and along with it, the running shoe. Now everyone was doing road work, not just athletes. My brother helped me buy my first pair. A gray set of Nikes. Wow, what a difference for running it made! I also liked 2 other things about those early running shoes: 1 - You could wear them a solid week without changing your socks and your feet never began to stink. They were made of nylon, not polyester. 2 - They never wore out. They lasted lots longer than a pair of canvas basketball shoes if you kicked around in them like you do the all stars. They were nylon, not plastic and polyester. Running shoes these days make an immediate stench and they feel clammy from the minute I put them on, and they make toe mold grow on me. Another thing I loved about the old ones, looking back, they didn't have anything in them that you had no use for. Stuff like 'support' and all that jazz. Sure, the Nikes had great high arch support, which is why I bought Nike instead of Adidas, but they did not have some bertha wall around your heel that would wear itself through the cushion and fabric and dig into your skin after you only had them less than a year. Or even less. Man they were comfortable and trouble-free - right up to the day you threw them into the trash because finally, all your toes were sticking through and the sole was no longer making any difference from running barefoot. Which is what I am back to doing again these days.

Just When I Thought This Was Winding Down..

No matter what I happen to think sometimes, I am always forced back to the reality that what I write in this blog, at least for my own survival, is absolutely necessary and correct and I cannot escape from it or find another way to go. Let me interject here that I really hate this blogspot thing of not letting me put spaces where I want or separate paragraphs. Is there a setting I don't know about? To continue, I have been doing really well the last several days and I need to post a couple of key 'secrets' (my wife can't stand 'secrets') that aren't really new but of which I have a very new understanding. They are definitely key and have been a couple of the last thresholds for me breaking through to becoming a superstar patient from a pretty good patient. Notice I am not even trying to paragraph here. Or maybe it looks the same if I do. The basic big monster for me has been unlearning overeating from a lifetime of 1-2 hour dinners at home and see who's the biggest man by see who can stuff the most pizza parties. In spite of all I have written, my performance has been that of a chronic or an addict; even when i am doing good, I still have a tendency to approach dinner time as I would a party. When my women people make something tasty in the evening, I seldom seem to even try to resist at least a taste of it. Usually, I eat more than I need to eat, having a mindset against waste and a mindset that it's time to relax and enjoy and that I need to make sure i do not miss out on anything as long as it tastes terribly delicious (and don't stop till it doesn't) and make sure I get enough so I am not hungry later, heaven forbid. So it's really all about making dinner no different from breakfast and lunch. Therefore, I have been focusing on my two key action points, making each and every meal require no more than 4 (actually 5 sometimes)units of humalog, even if I have an extra meal later on, and on not eating after the six o' clock meal, no matter how hungry or late I am going to bed. I have been approaching it with a couple of things in mind, to learn to eat dinner the way every single other member of my current family does (they all take about 10 minutes, +/- 7), and that it's okay to stop at any point at which I suspect I have had sufficient because hey - this isn't my last meal! Then I go about the rest of my evening with energy and I end up not using another 15 units of insulin in addition to the 4. Zero additional, in fact. Just think, had I been able to always do this since I was diagnosed - no, let's just count from 2003 when I started shooting insulin: I would have had the 10 years x 365 days x 5 hours = 18,250 hours I lost to languishing in a sluggish supping stupor most of those evenings. I'll just add a note about my doctor, she expressed some concern and said make sure you eat because last visit I had dropped a little weight since I was back to normal whereas the first time or two I had seen her, I was just coming off a sustained time of poor performance. Since doctors have book-learned that Scott Scoville is thin, I hear about it when I am at my normal weight. My normal weight has gone up since having adequate insulin. Prior, it was 140, having dropped from my youthful maximum of 165, but more often, 150. Between having not quite enough insulin and riding my bike everywhere I went, I dropped to 140 when I was in my 30s and 40s. Upon taking my first insulin, I went up to 185 or so within 3 weeks and then over the years since, tapered down to I don't know maybe 150 or so, depending on whether I have my belly. I was never able to acquire a belly before insulin. So when I lose the belly and drop a few pounds, the doctors always get concerned because their book says at 6 feet tall I should weigh closer to 200 lb or whatever. Especially in this day and age of GNC sucking musclemen running everywhere. When I was a kid, there were precious few of them, now they're a dime a 3 dozen; most men back then looked about like me. Hmm..just like diabetes and seliac, etc. By the way, when I first got told I was diabetic, I refused to believe it, then I went into shock, my next thought was I should be able to get over it the same way I got over everything else (which I still do not know to be untrue). In this blog, I think, I stated that having diabetes really sucked. But man, how would I like to have celiac? Or cancer? Or something besides a perfect heart and blood pressure? Et cetera. How would I like to have Type I diabetes and celiac both, like my little girlfriend Haley has? Or how about some brain illness? I stopped crying for myself some time ago. Now I am going to attempt a new paragraph: Never overeat.

So after eating right for a few days, I seem to be coming back off the heavy insulin dependence in which I use a minimum of 7-8 units for every little snack. I have been dropping too low after lunch for the afternoon to do my work, the last few days. Today, I was 96 after only 6 units and a good substantial lunch, but then I felt myself sliding down a little after that, so I ate my orange, and then some oats and chocolate, and then I still felt myself slipping down, so I tested again and I was 50 something. So I am already back to where I need to have only a few units, so I don't dip all afternoon, and exercize after lunch, to avoid a spike. After I do this I can go play basketball or sit at a desk and my sugar will stay right around 100 either way, all day and all night. - Without the use of Lantus.

Ryse Update - (Grollet)

My wife found it too confusing for me to be calling it 'ryse,' which has the same pronunciation as 'rice.' Therefore, it has a new name, which is 'grollet.' Grollet is the following soaked or sprouted, whole grains steamed in a rice cooker: Barley, Spelt, Amaranth, Millet, and sesame and/or flax optional. I generally leave out the options for straight eating but when I am going to do a stir fry type thing, the sesame and especially the flax have an amazing effect that eliminates the need for any kind of sauce like soy sauce, to make it very like authentic oriental fare.

One of my implants on the lower right, which is now over 5 years old, is failing. Slowly. Don't know how the one in front is doing. I suspect that the body robs some calcium and I lose some bone density in these grafted areas, permanently, a significant amount, every single time I get high sugar. So with this discouraging news, I stayed up all night with my sugar staying up over 200, some of the time, over 300. I didn't know what to do or think. I am discouraged paying all these major dental bills these last 5 years on myself and not the children, only to have my teeth keep on failing again. And I didn't feel like being a stud any more, and having a revival of strict psychish discipline. I will also be taking 5 Melaleuca calcium tabs daily till then, one at a time, throughout the day. I think it will actually take longer than 4 months to see how fast I am losing grafted bone density, or whether I am maintaining, but if it looks better in 4 months, great. But now that it's a new day and I am feeling good, I am declaring a psychish revival and program: I am going to be eating as darn well and disciplined as I can from this moment through April 18, 2013, when I have my next appointment and will be having an x-ray of the bone to compare to December 17, 2012. I am also going to work toward having a bike to ride to work asap. I will need an electric bike for it to be practical, and with such, I will still get as much exercise as when I rode half the distance to work on a regular bike. I may not have recorded this here, but my sugar has been really bad since October and I have been using I don't know maybe roughly 5 times more insulin than normal, and not doing a good job of keeping the sugar under control. This always seems to come with the cold weather but this time it is really worse and this is without even eating much in the way of holiday goodies.

Couple of Hours later

Yup, something's up. Ate at usual time. Ate perfect. 6 units, Apple, ryse - not too much, thin carrot and just a little collards. Flat out exercised after. 256. Then it occurred to me for the 1st time, what next: Perhaps they'll want to add glucofage to the treatment. Perhaps I am just now becoming Type II as well as I. By the way, this morning when I got up I was 97.

Unprecedented

Had an unprecedented episode last night. Sugar spiked high and wouldn't come down with an extra last shot. First time that's ever happened at all. Two more big shots and it still wouldn't come down. One last shot and it finally came down. Never happened before. Can't say what could have caused it. I was being pretty good yesterday. But I can say I have been using more insulin lately. Going to try to tighten it up and be careful and hope it will pass. Although unprecedented by insulin-related developments, this reminds me of the time I first had to go onto insulin. It used to be that if my sugar ever spiked, I would go for a jog and it would be down to normal upon my return. Then one day it spiked, I ran 4 miles to the YMCA, swam a mile, and checked my sugar. Still about 350. Nothing like it had happened before. So I went to the doc and he put me on insulin. So what now? More insulin? We shall see. I have always simply taken as much as I needed but if this continues, it would mean more than quadrupling my insulin all in one day.