A Super Awesome Turkey and Day 7 NHBPM

I interrupt this blog posting month to show you this super cute turkey craft my T1 daughter made.  The assignment was to get creative and dress up this turkey, all of the 3rd Grade turkeys will be decorating the cafeteria at their school.  Kortnie decided that she wanted to make her turkey look like herself, she found an old nasty site in her bathroom.  She usually has a shower on site change day, she can take her pump and site off and have a 15 minute un-connected shower about every 3 days, that is exciting stuff!  Apparently, there are some rogue sites floating around in there.  She also found an old tube in the stash of extra stuff in my closet.   I thought this was a grand idea, so I started looking around at some of our old pamphlets and diabetes propaganda and found a picture of a pump, meter, and poker that I didn't mind cutting out for her to use.  She made the dress out of scrapbook paper, and its totally something she would wear, she found an old silk flower in her bedroom and used that for a hair pretty, she even used a used bloody test strip.  She said her favorite BG number to be is 108 so that is the number she picked to write on her meter.  She asked me to draw a medic alert bracelet on the turkey too.   Isn't  it pretty?

 

Now for NHBPM Day 7, today's prompt was to Re-Design a doctors office.  Well, there are tons of things I would do to make a doctors office more fun. 

 

Our Endocrinologist has two different offices.  His main office is very nice, there is a window in the waiting room overlooking a grassy area with some sidewalks.  Its a nice view to look out on, other than that it is pretty boring.  There is a TV in there, but it plays some boring diabetes channel.  You would think that would be okay since after all, it is an Endo office, but, it's a Pediatric Endocrinologist.  The boring diabetes channel is kind of scary.    His satellite office is kind of blah too, he does have some cool Star Wars stuff hanging up in there behind the receptionists desk.  Our local family doctor here in town is pretty boring too, but the exam rooms are themed and fun.  Our Dentist waiting room is probably the best waiting room, it's small, but has tons of magazines and a Lego table.

 

Now with doctors offices you usually spend a lot of time in the waiting room, although for our Endocrinologist I don't think we've ever waited more than 10 minutes, if that, but usually just Kortnie and I and her dad if he's able to come with us, go back to see the doctor.  I'd like the waiting room to be a little more fun for Stasia and Graham since they sit there and wait for us for 45 minutes or so. 

 

What I'd like to see in doctors office waiting rooms in general.

-Better cell phone service, 3G and/or Wifi.  I am not a fan of people sitting and talking on the phone, but with the technology we have these days with smart phones and laptops, waiting rooms would be a lot less boring if we could surf the net. 

-More light, seems like they are always kind of dark and dreary, they need better lighting or windows.  Plants would be nice too.

-Fish Tanks, I love a waiting room with a fish tank!

-Boxes of tissues and hand sanitizer dispensers. 

-When I was pregnant with my daughters, my OBGYN had jokes on the ceiling above the exam table, she changed them often.  I loved those, all OBGYN's should have them.

 

What I'd like to see in Pediatric Waiting rooms

-More Color, paint your walls, go with a theme, something-anything!  It will ease the stress of the kids if they have something happy to look at.

-More magazines or books that cater to the kids, its nice that they have stuff for moms to look at, but wouldn't it be so much better if there were kids books that the mom could read to the kids, that would help relax them and take their mind off whatever they are there for.

-TV's of course are always a hit, but not boring medical channels.  Disney movies, PBS Cartoons, specialty kids news shows or cooking shows, Discovery Kids channel, I am sure there are tons of options.

-Fish Tanks, I mentioned that already, but kids love fish tanks too!

-Themed exam rooms, a different theme in each one, so the kid looks forward to which exam room they might get.

-Something to do in the exam room, I feel like we wait in there more than we wait in the waiting room.  Games, books, TV, just something.

-We used to go to a Pediatric Dentist in Flagstaff, they had an awesome waiting room, cool chairs to sit on, kites hanging from the ceiling, a jungle painted on the wall with stuffed animals hanging from the walls, even a slide and some fun toys, kid magazines as well as mom and even dad magazines, and the best part was that they had a separate entrance for the kids, a small kid sized door!

 

What would you like to see in doctors offices? 

 

My Status from Facebook today with my Diabetes Fact of the Day and Thankful post of the day was...

The Election is over, emotions are all over the place. It is what it is. Now its time to get back to what November really means. It should be a month for Thankfulness in our Country - and for me it and my family it is also Diabetes Awareness Month.
*Diabetes Fact of the Day* - In one year, a person with Type 1 Diabetes will give him/herself a minimum of 1,460 injections.
and
Today I am *Thankful* for the community that I live in, the roof over my head, my husband, my kids, and my dog (and our other crazy pets too).

 

 

New Year, New DR, New Insurance

It's a new year. I'm excited for the many prospects of it. Kortnie's doctor retired as of Dec 1. I'm pretty excited about it because now I can go ahead and get her a new Doctor. The Dr that retired is the only Pediatric Endocrinologist up here where we live. So now we've found a new Dr in Scottsdale, AZ which is about a 231 mile drive for us. I wasn't a big fan of the old Dr, but he was only 31 miles away and I also kind of worry about having a Dr further away during an emergency. Anyways, this new Dr works in an Endocrinology Center and we're just excited for a new path. His name is Dr Hahnke. Our first appointment is on January 13, it happens to be MLK day and the kids are out of school. My husband is taking off of work and we're all going to go down together. We'll see the Dr, eat at Olive Garden, do some shopping at Sam's Club and then the girls want to go to the mall and spend some of their Christmas money. We are hopefully going to make a fun trip out of it.

Some of the questions I have for this new Dr are...

1. How to really work on her A1C, it's been high in the high 7's and lower 8's since diagnosis.

2. She's had T1D for a little over 2 years now and we've never had any blood work run except for the A1C every 3 months. She should have yearly blood work right?

3. I need to get our prescriptions renewed too. We also have new insurance which started on Dec 1. And the new insurance BCBS the preferred (cheaper) test strips happen to be One Touch which is awesome because they are the kind that link up best with her pump, we can use them in the pump's meter remote. (We're on the Animas Ping) The insurance will let us get 300 a month for a copay of $15. When we were on Medicaid we were allowed 150 AccuCheck's per month for no copay, and then we lost Medicaid on Jan 1, 2011 and I was having to pay full price for test strips, so I resorted to buying them off of ebay. Most of the time the AccuCheck's were the best deal I could get on ebay. I'm excited to be able to use the One Touch's now! Yay! Also, the old Dr only wanted to prescribe 1 bottle of insulin per month to Kortnie and I really think she needs 2, that way I won't have to really try to streth it out, at the end of the month I find myself starting to worry that we'll run out. I was paying $136/month for a bottle of insulin, so I didn't really push to get 2 bottles, that would have doubled our price, but now with the new insurance I an get the 2 bottles for $15 copay each month. Also with the new insurance we'll have to use Liberty Medical for the pump supplies. So I need the new Dr to write new prescriptions for the pump supplies. We did have a lifetime prescription for the pump supplies of at Animas, but now everything is switched up. We do have a $1000 deductible on the pump supplies, after that BCBS will cover 70% of the cost. Again this past year we were paying full price, so I'm excited to get past that $1000 deductible and get the costs of those down.

4. This Dr can do the A1C test with a finger poke in the office, he also does a 3 day CGM, which I am going to ask about.

5. We currently do not have a 504 plan at Kortnie's school. The school however does have a medical agreement type thing with our family. Kortnie's in 2nd grade now and going to 3rd grade next year. However when she goes to 4th grade she will be in a new school with new staff. So my goal is to have her able to do a lot of her diabetes care by the time she goes to the new school which will be Fall of 2013, I will also insist on a 504 plan when she goes to the new school. So I plan on visiting with Dr Hahnke about some of that.

6. I think I'd also like to talk to him about us trying Apidra, possibly over Spring Break when she's out of school for a week, in March. I do need to check with our insurance and see if there would be a cost difference for Apidra though.

7. Kortnie will only do her site in her belly, I want to talk to him about talking to her about other sites and why she should move it around more often.

So, do any of you have any other questions you think I should ask, something, I'm not thinking about? I'm sure I'll come up with a few more between now and then. I really need to start writing these questions down.

This year, I am going to be pro-active, I'm going to start keeping better track of her numbers, basal changes, carb counts, I'm going to really start weighing and measuring and not guessing quite as much. I thought we had a handle on things and we're doing okay, but I want to do better! I also want to work on my fear of letting Kortnie have more independance. She wants to go and do and she doesn't want me hovering. I also need to get out more by myself or with Brian without having to rush back and check on Kortnie or without having to call her every hour or two.

I also am going to work on me this year, I am overweight and tired. I am going to start really working on making healthier choices when shopping, cooking, and eating. Not just for me, but for all of us. I also want to excerise more often. 4 days of 7. I want to spend more time on me, making myself feel good, I want to get dressed and make myself look nice more often. I want to work on getting some of our debt paid off too. I know we aren't going to get on top of it this year, but I want to work on getting it a lot more under control. I also want to blog more often :-) It's a lot, I know, but I'm willing to start chipping away at it.
Happy New Year everyone, what are some of your goals you want to work on? D or not?