Blood Sugar Blips
    Although her Midday is almost ten hours past her A.M., I'm putting it under Midday because I intend to take a reading later tonight.
    She was on her own from 0745 - 1530. When I returned she was up but just up. Same for The Girls (our cats). The popcorn I popped had not been eaten. The soy cracker pouch was zipped. The water had not been drunk. The can of V-8 juice had not been opened. One confirming scan of my mother's internally puckered fingers and I realized it was obvious what had gone on in this house all day. Nothing but sleep.
    It's all right. A day like this here and there give both of us a break. But when my mother got excited over her blood glucose reading this afternoon, I assured her that sleeping all day, drinking nothing and eating nothing is not the way one wants to achieve normal blood sugar. "I allowed that before," I said, "when I didn't know better, and we paid for it. If it is within my power, I'm not going to let it happen again."
    "Well, I suppose not," she slied. My mother. She'll get in as many all-sleep no-anything-else days as she can. I'm a sleep lover, too, so I sympathize but we already know what happens when I let her sleep all the time. Neither of us enjoyed that experience.
    So I gave her a tall glass of diluted, delicious orange juice and placed the popcorn in her eye-sights. Now, I'm coaxing her through 16 oz. of water.
    I dispensed her glipizide without waiting a half hour. I can tell that this evening is going to be All Aboard the Snack Train so it won't matter when I give it to her and it certainly isn't worth it to battle each other while we're both waiting. Sometimes decisions like this are made in regards to medication that are examples of the "art" of medicine, versus the science of medicine.
    Today I was attending the Sharing Wisdom Caregiver's Conference (also known as "Fearless Caregiver Conference"> in Phoenix. I'll review it, later, probably effusively. Suffice it to say here:

1. I'm glad I went. I'm glad I was offered one of the "few" free placements.
2. It was kind of a waaaay scaled down Women's Expo for caregivers with a fancy looking lunch and very satisfactory table service, which you can't get at Women's Expo, but overall, Women's Expo is better and more satisfying to its purpose, and it's free. If I hadn't received free entrance I don't know that I would have gone because I am familiar with small scale trade shows (which this conference was), having both attended and put together some and usually, those are free, too, and include comparable food and service.
3. Although I can say that I met the organizers, talked with them, had some time to sense them and am very impressed, I have to say that the conference needed more organization, maybe more money (perhaps in the way of endorsements and solicitation of vendors) and more sophistication.
4. The conference gave me the sense of a small but ambitious corporation with a currently small, slick portal and big, slick thoughts, with the added bonus that its founder(s) has a compelling personal interest in Caregiver.com. I don't have a problem with the slick, as it is a fuzzy slick, but I can see that the entire area of business related to caregivers has a long way to go...very promising, and wide open, as well.

    More will be published later, if you're interested.
    Oh. Yes. I've begun to add counters. It is a free Nedstat counter. Clicking on it will take you directly to my stats. Click away. I'm curious, too, which is why I've installed it.
    If I remember, I'll do my "official" review of the Conference in a different color. Maybe that cool, light lavender that I love so much.
- posted by gail rae @ 17:32   email...this post