My husband just came out of the bedroom to tell me that our youngest (who is not yet 3.5) is worried about death. Because she won't be able to see forever and ever, and Mommy will miss her.

I actually did say tell her that I would miss her when she was doing something dangerous. She was downstairs watching a video with her sister, and she came upstairs at one point to ask if volcanoes were dangerous. Then she said she didn't want Bug to go to a place where there were volcanoes.

Today, for some reason, I had this burning desire to go and buy a blood sugar monitor. I started researching them online and found the one I wanted to buy, then I found another one I could get at a brick and mortar big box store. I ended up going out around 8 pm and getting it. My husband just laughed at my impetuousness, enjoying it because he is often this way and he thinks getting excited about at home diagnostic tools is just plain weird. He asked me to pick up an ethernet cable and a jar of red raspberry jam with seeds while I was out.

Almost 5 years ago I was visiting my family in Virginia and my brother from Texas was visiting too. He has Type 2 diabetes and had to test his blood sugar frequently. I wanted him to test me as well, and my bff from college, Craig, wanted his blood tested too. He had gone out and got a home blood pressure cuff as he shares my enthusiasm for monitoring this stuff. If there was a home cholesterol kit that could give me my LDL and HDL, I'm sure I'd try that too, but getting enough blood out would be a problem.

I admit I can be a bit of a do-it-yourselfer about these things. I recently tried to cut a cyst in my face with a razor blade to drain it, but have had limited success with that. I will cut my own hair too, but that is mostly because it just doesn't seem possible to make time for a hair appointment with a toddler. Plus it seems a shame to waste money on that when I have a pair of scissors, and my dh is one of those, "Oh, but it's so pretty long" types. Yep.

The first time I asked to have my blood sugar done for no reason was when I was working as a Health Unit Coordinator at a hospital, and one of the nurses was walking back after testing a patient. I asked her if she would test me too because I was curious. She did, then looked at my adipose body and then back at her machine before reported in semi-shock that my blood sugar was only 60. Or 66 maybe, I can't quite remember, but it was in the 60s. I asked her if that was good, and she said it was really good. I think she thought her tester was broken.

My brother exclaimed in happiness over all the low blood sugar readings he was getting from me, Craig and my nieces who decided they'd be tested too. He said the average reading stored in the monitor's memory was going to be much lower for awhile. I was, I thought, pregnant at the time although the baby had stopped growing a few weeks before and I didn't realize it. A miscarriage was going to come along a week later, but I didn't know it then. My blood sugar after coming home from dinner was over 100, but my brother seemed to think it was good. I figured not bad for a pregnant lady.

Because I am morbidly obese, I worry about my blood pressure, diabetes, all that stuff. My blood pressure has always been a little tricky, even at my lowest weights, with my lower number being a little high at times even though my higher number was fine. I'm 40 now and I don't have the blood pressure I had when I was 20. I probably should have bought a blood pressure cuff or at least some reduced sodium V-8 for the potassium--darn it, I could have gotten it tonight when I got the jam. I take my blood pressure in those machines, and every once in awhile I get a good reading, but a lot of times it says I'm borderline or prehypertensive. In fact, it seems more and more it says that which I find a little worrisome. Yoga breathing, yoga breathing. I have to remember to take the deep relaxing breaths. I had a period of time with tightness in my chest where I never felt like I could get a good breath and I was starting to think I had asthma, but then I realized that I was always sucking my stomach muscles in while breathing and when I consciously relaxed them to draw in the deep breath like the yoga instructor taught me, I was fine.

So lately I've been thinking it wouldn't hurt to do more high blood sugar prevention. I started taking a kind of fiber that is supposed to help reduce blood sugar. I read that decaffeinated coffee can have a beneficial effect on blood sugar levels, so I sometimes drink that after a meal. I try not to eat a lot of white flour type of stuff, but lately more is creeping back into my diet. And oddly enough, in the last month or so I have craved and drunk soda several times. Normally I am not a soda drinker, but I've been having sugar cravings. I've also been getting dizzy. I started wondering if maybe I shouldn't actively try and reduce my blood sugar too much. I did that once with sodium when I was pregnant with Bug. I decided I needed to cut it down and started drinking reduced sodium tomato juice because I was craving tomato juice big time. When they reduce the sodium, they add more potassium salts so it has even more potassium than regular tomato juice. One day I woke up dizzy and craving salt, so I liberally applied the salt shaker to my tomato juice and decided to eat salt to taste after that.

I have worried that my blood sugar is fluctuating more now, and that it is a sign of diabetes coming. Hypoglycemia can be a pre-cursor from what I have heard. I have some native American blood, but I don't know if it is enough to make a difference diabetes wise. My paternal grandmother did develop adult onset diabetes, but my European descent (Danish, English) mother who is 80 and morbidly obese does not have it. My brother blames his on his Agent Orange exposure and I could believe that as a player in all his issues. His wife who is 1/4 Chippewa also has type 2.

I know exercise is a big thing, and I do that. Sometimes more successfully than others, although I got in 4 walks this week even though I got sick. Yesterday and today I was feeling so bad I didn't even try. But I did walk into the store and buy the monitor and a bottle of some sort of flavored water because I was absolutely parched and they didn't have regular water. Wow, excessive thirst, isn't that a sign of diabetes? I drank the water which contained 31 grams of sugar, then I came home and set up my blood glucose monitor. Finally it was ready and I was ready, hands washed, finger massaged. I poked myself with the lancet twice and got nothing but a little sting for my trouble. Finally I poked myself a good one and the blood flowed out. I put it in the strip and 5 seconds later it was done. 112. It was about 3 hours after dinner, but I had just had the sugar water. I figure I'll test it in the morning and after meals for awhile until I get tired of it, and see what kind of averages I get.