I tried searching for a blood sugar app on my phone. The first thing the search yielded was The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik album. Huh. Never put that together before.
The next thing I found was a Blood Sugar Monitor Prank app. "Blood Sugar Monitor Prank is designed to fool your acquaintances and friends to think they have high blood sugar! Play with Blood Sugar Monitor Prank and have fun many times at the expense of your friends. Press and hold for two seconds to get measurement. When finger is not moved on screen a message with high blood sugar is displayed and ambulance siren sound is played. Don't tell your friends this: you only get normal blood sugar if you move your finger a little bit when holding finger on screen."
Content Rating: Low maturity
Hahahahahaha. Let's pretend for a moment that you're playing this prank on someone who doesn't realize that you can't test your blood sugar on your phone. Hahahahaha... If they don't know that, how are they going to be properly horrified by your fake reading?
This search for a blood sugar tracker app was prompted by what must be the fifth person to ask me if I have lost weight. This most recent person is a nurse here at work, and when I told her I had no idea if I've lost weight because I don't have a scale, she laughed her conversationally polite yet slightly disapproving laugh and invited me to join the Home Telehealth program. They send you things like a scale and a blood pressure cuff for free, and you plug in your numbers daily into a machine. When your numbers are out of line, the nurse in charge of your case gets a flag and they call you.
"I see you put in that your blood pressure was 291/12, and I was just calling to check and make sure you're still alive."
"Hmm, it looks as though you've lost 100 pounds in 2 days, are you feeling ok?"
Whether it's clearly a typo or not, the nurse has to call. I don't want to do it because 1) I work with these people and 2) it will drive me up a wall if I hear from them every time my blood sugar is even slightly outside the acceptable range. There's also a question about your mood. Can you imagine having to field suicide questions any time you answer that you're feeling a little down?
It's a great program for a lot of people, and it's meant as a preventive measure: to keep daily track of a patient's blood pressure, blood sugar, etc., and it gives their doctor a LOT more information, plus there's more accountability than just asking the patient to keep track. If they go more than a couple days without entering information, the nurse calls. And calls. And calls.
For me... I'm not sure I need a free scale that bad. I pay the gym every month and I'm sure there's a scale there somewhere. But she reminded me that weight loss in a diabetic can be a terrible thing and asked about my blood sugar, acknowledging that it was none of her business. I said everything was fine, but she got me wondering because you know how oblivious I can be. I checked my meter- my averages are good, but maybe I need to start a log again and keep an eye on any problems.
I just went back to talk to that nurse because now she's got me freaked out that I'm doing the same thing as 12 years ago when my blood sugar was out of control, I lost all that weight, my body was eating itself, and Dana asked me how she could get diabetes. The nurse asked me about my averages and exercise- she thinks I have boosted my metabolism. Then I remembered the Metformin, which is supposed to increase insulin sensitivity and has a side effect of weight loss and she tried to help me understand how increasing insulin sensitivity will help the whole picture. I'm still a little confused about how insulin sensitivity affects weight loss, but I'm willing to accept that. Plus, the endocrinologist said that it takes a year for Depo Provera to get completely out of your system. Depo Provera is a form of birth control that works by making you lose hair and gain a bunch of weight, making you completely unattractive to your mate. I think maybe the combination of Depo leaving my system and Metformin coming in is contributing and yes, I will start making Zumba a habit again, since that was helping. As an added benefit, I have Pantene hair now. I'll be in their commercials soon, making tons of money and paying off my student loans.
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