Saturday, November 22, 2008

Christopher Thatcher - Saturday, November 22

I've been meaning to write an update for a very long time now. This is not the update you're looking for. A little bit of jedi mindtrick there for you. It's a little bit of a tale, something ridiculously stupid that I did last night that I feel like sharing.

Every night before bed I do a shot- it's what I do. I do 32 units of Lantus to keep my bloodsugar stable throughout the day. This shot is in addition to all of the other shots I do whenever I eat. The cool thing about Lantus is that it activates over a 24 hour period at the same rate all the time, so you hardly ever notice it's there. It makes a big difference though, and it's really nice to have around.

A couple of years ago my sister accidentally did novolog instead of lantus one night. Novolog is the stuff that we do when we eat. It starts acting immediately and it does all of its effect at once. That's why it's so nice for when we eat. She's on a similar treatment plan to me, so her lantus shot is always a big one. That night she did a ton of Novolog instead of lantus. She realized what she'd done shortly after she'd done it, so she told me and Andrew and then went to the kitchen to gorge herself on carbohydrates. Ever since that happened I've been terrified that I'll make a mistake and do the same thing.

Flash forward to last night, when I do the exact same thing. It was really late because I'd been up playing warcraft with Tyrel and Dak. By late I mean 5 am, my bad there. I guess I wasn't thinking too well, because I had plenty of opportunity to stop and say "wait a minute, this isn't my normal routine!". Things were out of whack, but because I wasn't careful I ended up with 32 units of novolog shot straight into my belly fat.

Here's the fun part. Lantus works over a 24 hour period, right? So it doesn't matter that you do a ton of it at one time, because it's so spread out. Novolog hits immediately (okay, so it's actually somewhere between ten and twenty minutes to start working, and its effect doesn't get over for about an hour- but still, it's supposed to be immediate). So I all the sudden have a ton of insulin in me that's trying to take my bloodsugar down. Like, really far down.

To understand the magnitude of how stupid this was, let's look at a bit of math. For every 15 grams of carbohydrate I eat, I do one unit of Lantus. One slice of grandma sycamore bread has 22 grams of carbs. Eight ounce of milk has about 15 carbs, etc. etc. You can look on the nutrition facts. When I test my bloodsugar, I do one unit of novolog for every 30 the result is over 120. That means that if I test and I'm 180 I'll do 2 unites of novolog to get back to where I want to be. Okay, glad we got that figured out.

So I test last night and I'm 337. Yeah, that's really high, once again, my bad. That's seven units of correction. It would have been sweet had I actually done seven units. Instead I accidentally did 32. That leaves 25 units of active novolog in my body, just waiting to send me into a coma and leave me dead. It was time to binge.

I went upstairs and woke Andrew up to let him know what was going on. It's always good to have another person around in cases like this, since they're not in danger of falling over all the time. If something bad happens, he'd be there to fix stuff. He was a really great brother and he woke up at 5 AM to lay on the couch and ask every couple minutes "hey, you still alive?". What a stud.

I talk about falling over and dying, but it's really not that frightening. Because my bloodsugar was so high when I did the shot, I knew that I had quite a bit of time before the insulin would start kicking my butt.

On average, I do about eight to ten units of insulin for dinner. I do four or five for breakfast. 25 active units of novolog is three dinners. I did the math and needed 375 grams of carbohydrates in the next twenty or so minutes.

I started rummaging through the kitchen to find food that would have a lot of simple carbs that my body would absorb quickly. I knew I wouldn't be able to force a ton of food into me, certainly not three dinner's worth. I had to choose wisely.

I ended up drinking two cups of super-tang. That's a total of six scoops of tang mix spread out between 32 or so fluid ounces of water. That's enough tang mix to make six quarts of NASA's favorite drink. It was super concentrated tang, but it carried a ton of really fast carbs. My super-tang drinking habit netted me 216 grams of carbs. Holy crap, that's a ton of carbs.

After that I looked for the next highest carb-density food in the kitchen. Ends up that maple syrup has 60 carbs for every quarter cup. Holy crap. So I decided to eat two eggo's and spread a half cup of syrup between the two of them.

I tried really hard and it was totally disgusting. I managed to down 3/8 of a cup of syrup between the two. After that I figured I'd have enough carbs to make it through the evening. So I went and laid down on the floor of my bedroom, waking up every twenty minutes or so to test and make sure my bloodsugar wasn't going insane. After two hours of that I figured it was going to be okay so I took out my contacts and went to bed.

Going to bed at seven thirty sort of means that I'll sleep until four the next day unless someone wakes me up. So today has pretty much been a wash.

I feel really stupid about all of this. It's a stupid mistake that I've been looking out for for years now. I was stupid and careless last night and I had to pay for it. I'm super glad that I'm at home this weekend. Food is a lot easier to come by in my parent's kitchen.

I shouldn't have been up that late in the first place, because that's just asking for trouble. I made it out alright, but my body still took a beating for it. Sleep loss is only the beginning. Downing that many quick and worthless carbs in that short of time isn't a good idea for anyone. It was a bit of a struggle to keep it all down for the next hour or so, my body really didn't like having the super tang and syrup mix in it.

But hey, crisis averted. I don't write this to stir up any sort of anything from the audience. I'm writing it because last night as I was dealing with it all I thought about writing it here. Hopefully I'll be able to write an update soon. But know I am alive and that things are going generally well. Today wasn't super great, but my life has been getting better as a general trend.

I hope you're all doing well. Happy nearly thanksgiving break. Much love to everybody out there. Hopefully I'll be able to see most of you sometime soon. Peace.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Christopher Thatcher - A Post of Passion


"I'm moving to Canada." - about fifty facebook statuses


First off, moving to Canada hasn't ever been a good strategic choice. Today is no different.

Obama got elected, and a lot of people I know are freaking out about this. I'm just going to lay out how I feel right now and let you all sort through whatever happens.

I believe in America. I believe in the people of America. I can not and will not believe that my personal beliefs about politics outweigh the personal convictions and political ideals of any other individual in this country. I think I'm smart, but I love that my vote counts just as much as anyone else's.

Our electoral system elected Obama. If you have a problem with the results of this election you have a problem with the constitution and the fundamental beliefs that this country was built upon. Because no matter who you voted for, we as a people have elected our next president.

If the voice of the people had come in for McCain, and somehow someone other than McCain was our president, I'd be heartbroken. The exact same goes for Senator Obama. Even if I was the hardest and most intense McCain supporter in the world, I would rather see the voice of the people go satisfied instead of my own personal desires.
I believe in the American system more than I believe in my own ability to choose the best leader for my country. America was built upon this sacrifice. We're built upon the idea that anyone's individual desires are not greater than the will of the people as a whole.

This isn't about me and what I know. This is about all of us and what we have come together to decide. I believe this is the best way. That's what the founding fathers believed.

In conclusion, America has spoken. Like it or not, this is the way things are. I think we can all take tonight to be upset and to cry and to invest in Asian markets. But by tomorrow morning I expect to see a country that is ready to wake up and work for a better future. This is the American system. I believe in it and support it. No matter who the president is, we have a responsibility to honor that office and to work as individuals to make our country better.

So I'm going to wake up and get an education. I'm going to work hard for me, my family, my beliefs, and for the American economy. I'm going to make things better by being a good guy. I'd do that no matter who was elected.

Be you red or blue, we have our next president. He's not the democrat's president and he's not the republican's president, but he's the president of the American people. Party lines don't exempt you from being American.

I rejoice in the greatness of our system. I rejoice that it's still working. I don't care how you feel about Obama, I only care how you feel about America. Do you believe in the system? Do you have faith in what we were built upon?

I know this will get me into trouble. But it's how I feel. I believe in America, and I would no matter who was elected. Thanks for reading, my politically charged friends.

-Christopher "I love the closed ballot!" Thatcher