The Diabetic Camper

When ordinary life turns tragic!

2013-06-18T17:30:00.001-05:00

I am the biggest klutz on this planet. There should be some sort of game show I could go on for klutz's like me so I could win or something. Recently I have been on a okra phase, where I just want okra in most ways I can get it (all forms but fried). I started off with okra with stewed tomatoes then started doing black eyed peas with okra in it, and finally just had boiled okra by itself. This thing with okra though has come to a point that I called my mother up to see how to make gumbo. So for my first gumbo batch I was too scared to buy a bunch of crawfish and shrimp for a delightful seafood gumbo but instead went with the safe choice of chicken gumbo.

I had the pot of rue simmering and was beginning to take the chicken off the pannini/George Foreman grill thing when I reached behind the grill to unplug it, I touched the back and burned the holly crap out of my forearm. Now I have this wonderful burn on my forearm that makes me look like some sort of hot curling iron suicide attempt person and throw on some diabetes and who knows how long this one small mistake will be there. I have been putting the triple antibiotic ointment on it and so far my BG numbers have been OK so just the discomfort of no skin on my forearm is all. I just wish there was some way to go through life without little mistakes like this that throw everything into disarray. This burn is also in the exact place you rest your forearm when using a computer mouse. How delightful for a reminder all day at work how I am just a klutz.

Product review update!

2013-06-17T16:52:00.001-05:00

http://www.columbia.com/Omni-Freeze-Zero-Cooling-Performance-Clothing-Apparel-%7C-Columbia.com/Technology_Omni-Freeze_Zero,default,pg.html

I told you all about the fantastic Columbia Omni-Freeze Zero shirt that I purchased like a month or so ago from www.REI.com and at that time I had not actually "worked out" in the shirt. I basically had worn the shirt around as an extremely comfortable hot weather T-shirt. Last Saturday I decided to go for an 8 mile run to try to keep the running legs going in the Dallas heat. This time of year is probably more suited for cycling than running.

http://www.columbia.com/Omni-Freeze-Zero-Cooling-Performance-Clothing-Apparel-%7C-Columbia.com/Technology_Omni-Freeze_Zero,default,pg.html

Most runners in the Dallas area that are starting marathon trainings and what not are in the 5am running time zone, when it is the coolest but not this crazy diabetic. I decided to go out on a nice 93 degree day with a 0 mph wind and the humidity was a great 65% or so. This was the ultimate test for this shirt. Hot, humid, and sweat was the order of the day. Now I did have a friend of mine ask me if the shirt actually did the "cool" affect and they really don't so if you are looking for a shirt that makes 102 degree days feel like 99 degrees then I guess this one does it but when I am hot, I am hot and a T-shirt is not going to make that much of a difference. This is probably the greatest feeling polyester shirt I have ever worn and it is so comfortable to do anything in.

http://www.columbia.com/Omni-Freeze-Zero-Cooling-Performance-Clothing-Apparel-%7C-Columbia.com/Technology_Omni-Freeze_Zero,default,pg.html

What I did find out about this shirt is that it holds 4 ounces of sweat. Not sure if that is something you wanted to know or not but I had to take the shirt off three times to get a total of 12 ounces of sweat out of the shirt. The good thing about wringing the shirt out was it dried in no time at all and I could feel the "cool" affect at that time. Heck after a few good wringings and a quick shake of the shirt it was darn near dry. The only real downside to this shirt is that 50 dollar price tag which I am sure if you are a savvy shopper you can get discount codes and find them on sale. I highly recommend if you are less than smart like me and enjoy running at all the wrong times to get this shirt and at least you will have some good gear to make the bad times feel like they are great.

Can water heal Diabetes?

2013-06-13T17:24:00.002-05:00

My editor and chief of blog posts (That would be Jeff the man with 1,100 Linkdin connections) has found this website that has a book that tells you that water can cure diabetes. The website is: http://www.watercure.com/wow_diabetes.html and the author is a doctor as well. Now of course what do diabetics do with these cures and stuff? Yes, you are correct we have a comedy routine that we add it to. Put the water cure along side the aloe Vera, the acai berry, and the antifreeze theory of curing diabetes. None of this stuff is a cure (remember I am a diabetic camper not a doctor or anything else, nothing posted on this blog is advice and should only be used as interesting things you read on the inter-web) but this does almost make me want to buy this book just to see what it says. Is this book just one page and it says: drink water or does it have more insight like: drink water, then go pee and repeat until you are cured. Who knows, only if I get the book will I know. Now don't get me wrong I love water and Dr Mark and his book tells me to drink half my body weight in ounces of water every day so yes, being well hydrated will improve your function of life but still not a cure. I even found a website that has a home water kit that can give you the kind of water for a cure of your diabetes: http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water-education3/water-diabetes.htm This inter-web page talks about how to replace drinking sugary sodas with a glass of water can help reduce your "highs" I never thought of doing that before (did you catch my comedy in there?) and they also talk about just replacing any sugary snacks with a glass of water can help as well. Where have I been for so long to not get this good information? Lets just remember to be good and drink water, test your numbers, and live a well balanced moderated diabetes life.

Going off the wagon

2013-06-11T16:59:00.000-05:00

So my editor and chief of blogging (my buddy Jeff) is always riding me about stuff I need to put on my blog. Most of the stuff is just inside jokes between us, and some is stuff I have to be in the mood to post, and the rest is just nonsense. Then the other day Jeff let me know he was going off the diabetes wagon and turning back to the 19th century and stopping his pump and freebasing insulin straight out of a needle. I asked Jeff for some pictures but he didn't send any so all the pictures on today's post are just random things Jeff has sent me since the last time I posted diabetes funnies Jeff has sent me.

With Jeff going off the diabetes insulin pump wagon I started to think about it myself. Then real quick I put that thought aside and remembered I am not one to be doing everything the same way every day for the basal rates of a 12 hour insulin and bathroom stall insulin shots just creep me out and I would get caught with my pants down at my desk shooting up. Not that I would ever not go off the diabetes insulin pump gravy train, just I get comfortable with everything in my life being a steady constant of chaos. I do always like the thought of not being so dependant on Terminator 2 technology to keep me alive so I will monitor Jeff and see how he does and think about doing myself later this year.

One thing that is good about taking a break from the diabetes insulin pump wagon is that you know how to take care of yourself when the machines take over and nothing works right. I have done the long acting insulin practice runs a few times but it has been way to long since my last end of the world with no insulin pump scenario so that is even more motivation to do it again.

Making Plans

2013-06-10T17:07:00.001-05:00

I have been feeling like the movie "Close Encounters of the 3rd kind" where the gentleman can't get the mashed potato place out of his mind. The place on my mind has been Big Bend National Park located on the border of Mexico and west Texas. Now this is a dessert climate mountain range but for some reason I just want to see it.

This June's Backpacker magazine did a one page article about hiking the outer loop and how it is only a 29 mile loop that takes about four days total. After reading this article I have been emailing, and texting friends to see if and when anybody can or will go with me to this land. I like having goals and dreams of things to do in the next 12 months. Gives me focus and drive to stay in shape and find another soul or two that are willing to jab a glucagon shot into my neck or something.

This is like the third thing I have received in the mail that had an article about Big Bend so now I must do it. Also I have been pondering a trip to Peru. I was watching public television and that show "Globe Trekker" was there and I think that michu pichu mountain thing looks cool and seeing the condors would be neat.

The best place to live in Diabetesville!

2013-06-06T14:49:00.000-05:00

A while back I was driving around and saw the scene above, and you are thinking "why is Dave showing us a picture of a random CVS?" That is not the whole picture. So it got me thinking that what is the best place for a diabetes person to live at in this great town of "Diabetesville" that we all live in? Some people are thinking Paris, or New York City, and all sorts of random beach towns, ski towns and all sorts of in between and you are correct. Just the one thing that every diabetic loves is when they get "supplies" that magic moment where you know you have enough "stuff" or "meds" to make it through at least a month or so. Now lets not go into cost or anything but we need "supplies" to survive.

Now if you have the ability and I hope you do but zoom in on the picture above and look to the left of the CVS (or to the right if you are in Australia since the picture will be backwards on your screen). Back in the trees you will notice a house not spitting distance from the CVS. So yes, these people live in the bast place in Diabetesville. Their front yard is a CVS! Not that I would want my front yard turned into a 24 hour condom and lube dispensary (I have mentioned condoms 2 days in a row, that is just wrong or a sign I need new jokes) but think of the benefits of just walking out your front door and in your front yard is your pharmacy? OK, so lets talk about cost now, You just sold your front yard to CVS so I think you can afford to go and get your diabetes lotions, diabetes cough syrup, and insulin now. I do feel bad for the people in the house though they live in a place I would kill for. Across the street from them is a Target and when this house was built thirty years ago it was in the middle of the country, just a small 20 acre or so ranch house on the skirts of Dallas and walking distance to South Fork. Now they have a six lane divided road across two sides of their property, a Target, CVS in their front yard and all the lights and noise they never wanted. I hope you understand that the CVS is literally their front yard.

I am a sucker for a gimmick!

2013-06-05T16:55:00.002-05:00

I am what commercials are made for, a simple person that is willing to try something once. Which reminds me, my friend Jeff was talking to my buddy Don and he was telling me Don had the funniest saying about me: "The good thing about Dave Hennesey is that he will try anything once, the bad thing about Dave Hennesey is he will try anything once." I crack up every time I think about that saying. how true it is. Well this time I have been seeing that Columbia commercial with the clothes that actually make you colder when you sweat in them. I was hooked because in Texas we get a warm season and I like to try and workout all year long so a shirt that actually gets cold when you sweat sounded like something I had to try at least once.

OK, so first I did not believe that I would actually get cold or really much cooler with this new shirt made of unicorn blood that is sown together by people at a factory that sits on an old Indian grave site that possesses each shirt. The first thing I noticed was how comfortable the shirt was. Think of your favorite old worn out T-shirt combined with a modern polyester T-shirt, add in a bit of underwear softness to it and that is what you have here. I just love having the shirt on and that is alot to say about polyester/nylon/spandex material. My personal favorite when it comes to sitting around the house is an old cotton T-shirt but this shirt is so comfy I would easily move it to my favorite.

Do you like my getting all of the angles of me wearing the shirt? I am such the dork. The next awesome thing about this shirt is that the arm pits are not the standard line down the middle of the pit. They put like a piece of diamond material in the pit so that the shirt moves better with you and it doesn't stress the seams when you take it off. Back to me being a dork, I just took in two polyester running shirts to my Tailor to have the arm pits resown because they had holes in them. Most people would just throw the shirt away, or make a sleeveless shirt out of them, but not me I had them tailored back to new. This new shirt wont have that issue though with the fancy arm pit design. The material doesn't look like your normal shiny polyester either. It has these little blue circles that are hard to notice from far away and the material looks almost like sci-fi cotton or something.

A little bad news is this shirt retailed for 50 bucks, but I used my www.rei.com 20% off coupon to get it down to an almost reasonable 40 bucks. Then they put a tag down at the bottom that you could write the star spangle banner on it is so long. Since the shirt cost so much I have not ripped out the tag yet and will probably take it to the tailor to have the tag removed and the shirt put back to like new status. I guess I should give out an inter-web page so you can go and get one for yourself: www.columbia.com and the product is called: omni-freeze zero. Next I am going to get a 40 dollar pair of their undies and let you know how little Dave likes the cold.

Bladder issues!

2013-06-04T16:42:00.002-05:00

I have a hydration bladder, but I would never in a million years ever go backpacking or just camping with only a bladder. No matter what I always have a water bottle with me because if you have ever used a water bladder you know that first they always mildew, then they can have leaky parts, and finally they can rupture or tear. I am scared to death of being in the backwoods with only a bladder and have it go bad for any sort of way. Then I received Junes issue of Backpacker magazine and they have an article about what to do if you are stupid, I mean if you only bring a bladder with you into the backwoods and it springs a leak (morons, who does this sort of stuff?)

I tried to take pictures of the article so you could read it and so that I would feel on the dangerous side by publishing something that is not supposed to be distributed without notification (don't tell Backpacker magazine I did this) The article starts by talking about small and large holes in bladders, and both of which I am extremely familiar with. For small holes they recommend using a small lighter to kind of melt the plastic back together. That to me seems like it is only going to make a bigger hole. For small holes I do this: USE MY WATER BOTTLE I BRING! Then they do have a great idea for large holes and that is to put a piece of duct tape on both sides of the tear so that the water puts pressure on one side and the other side holds it in place and you don't have to taste duct tape glue flavored water. Or do what I do: BRING A SPARE CANTEEN!

OK so then the article takes a funny/weird/odd turn when talking about a full blowout of a bladder. They say to line the bladder with a plastic bag which I can see having a spare trash bag around and using it, that seems OK. Then they suggest using a "condom" because everyone brings a freakin condom with them into the backwoods and turn it into a waterballoon sort of thing to create like a dam to stop the leak. I don't care if you are going on a baby making excursion, I don't want to know that there has or ever will be a condom in the backwoods. If your whole goal for camping "is to get some" then go to the lake and get drunk with all the rest of the idiots out there but there just seems so much wrong in this article thinking that everyone has a "condom" in the backwoods.

In the end there are ways that I have learned to try and fix a broken bladder the next time my bladder busts. Then there are things I learned about other peoples gear bags that now I know theose people will never be in the backwoods with me. Last always remember to BRING A FREAKIN WATER BOTTLE OR CANTEEN INTO THE BACKWOODS no matter what else you have with you.

Back Up!

2013-05-31T17:12:00.001-05:00

Today is my third installment of how to survive your diabetes in an emergency or just any sort of situation that is considered "not normal" which of course most of our freakin lives. So lets recap, the first thing to have is a handy dandy flashlight that works, then you need to keep 72 hours of water near you and then a system to purify water for longer than that. Now, I want you to think about not having your beautiful technology with you. Think of a random person walked up to you with a hammer and decided to smash your diabetes purse, meter, CGM, and pump. OK, so you might not be on one or all of these things (I hope you at least have a meter). Can you survive without them? The answer better be yes. First there is basically little ways around not having a meter on us. My "Pingy Thingy" is pictured above but you must remember there was a time when there were no meters around to automatically read your BG's. There used to be a thing called "visual test strips" that basically told you that your BG's were either 100 or 400 depending on the light in the room. Now I used to keep a bottle of 50 visual test strips with me but have gotten lazy and don't have them any more. With today's "free meters" you can have a meter in your purse or man purse, briefcase, car, one in every room of your house and a couple tucked away in a sock drawer, and some in your 72 hour kit. Just make sure again they first work, and second you have strips to go with them, and last that the batteries are in good condition. Personally I hate meters that do not use a double or triple A battery, and I have not used any of the rechargeable ones yet but I am sure one will be on my door someday.

A CGM is not something you are supposed to bolus off or use as an actual BG meter but you should always keep a meter on you even if you are just walking around the mall or something for an hour or so. I am extremely guilty of this and have had a couple of times where I was away from my meter for a couple of hours, did the unspeakable of bolusing off of my CGM then I get back to my meter and find out I am 400 or 68 because the sensor was not working properly. This is a hard habit to break so never start it in the first place. Remember a CGM is just a system to "kind of" tell you where you are at and always bring a meter.

Last item I think is a "first world problem" is how much we depend on our insulin pumps. If you think you will die because since day one of diabetes you have been on a pump and have never not known a day of diabetes without a pump then you are living in an egg that is going to be dropped someday. Have a backup plan for when your meter does something wrong or breaks. The best is to keep a bottle of long acting insulin in your diabetes purse with a needle, second is to have practiced your "oops my pump broke" emergency plan. You need to know a ratio for a long acting insulin and stuff. Now remember I am The Diabetic Camper and for a living I am an Accountant so none of this is medical advice and to do this test you must co-ordinate it with your medical professional. Since I camp alot there have been several issues with pumps in the backwoods and have practiced this on a lazy Saturday and Sunday while in town and when I needed these skills I knew what to do in an actual emergency.

With these back ups and emergency plans you also need to keep infusion sets around, insulin, medications, band aids, stuff, weird things, low treats, and who knows what else but you need it so make sure you go through your diabetes purse and look at your supplies, go through your car and verify you have meters, strips, batteries, and supplies for pumps and what not in it. If you travel I like to have an entire supply of everything in each of my bags, a copy of my prescriptions, and comfort foods with me like a granola bar and skittles or something. I once had a doctor tell me: Dave, if you are high for a while eventually we cut a toe off, you lose your vision and all sorts of other things but it takes a while. If you go too low once you are dead instantly. Don't ever put yourself in a situation where you have nothing in that predicament.

I hope you did not take any of these past three days as "advice" because I do not doll out any of that stuff here. I do hope I opened your eyes to how to think about being diabetes prepared for any situation and to know how to stay calm and come out alive in the end.

Water

2013-05-30T10:20:00.003-05:00

Once you have enough flashlights around you the next item on the list of items for any emergency is water. First thing is you should keep several gallons of water around the house for immediate use when the power is out or a dooky station goes down and taints all the clean water in the system. I keep like five gallon jugs of water full in the house just for these type of situations. Then when you are out and about a water bottle, not bottled water needs to be in your vehicle and near you for most of the day. I take my water bottle with me almost everywhere and fill it up as I go. Remember drinking half your body weight in ounces every day will cure your diabetes, no I am kidding it will hydrate your cells properly which leads to weight loss, steady BG's, and other neat stuff. The bottle above is a picture I took of something they sell at stores now that have a filter in them to remove simple items like chlorine taste and other simple things. Do not consider something that makes water taste good as a true water filter.

This item here is another selling gimmick. This is a water filter straw that does not remove dooky or contaminants from water but simple things like chlorine and other items that "taste" bad. These are good if you can only drink bottled water because you are allergic to tap or something. They do help in promoting good water. Have you ever been camping and had safe food but came down with a bit of runny butt? Sometimes rust and stuff gets into old pipes and a filter like this will help keep that stuff from giving you the butt of runny. Just remember they do not remove bacteria or other organisms out of the water just "things."

Besides having fresh water in your house, car, and personal self the next step to being prepared for a disaster is having iodine water tablets. Yes the same iodine that a doctor will be using to clean you before he does his quadruple heart bypass because you have chicken nuggets in your blood stream also cleans and kills anything in your water. People don't like the taste of iodine so now alot of these things come with a taste remover but the iodine has never bothered me and so just throw away the second bottle if you can handle the taste. So with having the water in your house that gives you a 72 hour window of something to keep you alive, then the iodine tablets clean water you will need after you run out of the 5 or so gallons of water you drank. These things run like five bucks and have a shelf half life of around forever so buy them once, put them in your post 72 hour survival bag and be ready for anything.

These chlorine dioxide tablets work just like the iodine but instead use another chemical for those people that are allergic to iodine. I personally like the iodine tablets best but these are great to have as well. You can always use both if you feel like the dooky in the water is too strong just for one and always use a ratio that is stronger chemical than water when mixing these things. I once had iodine water that was not processed water and came down with a month of post deer water runny butt and I simply wanted to just die. I would eat or drink anything and five minutes later it came out the back end. You don't want this to happen to you, and the doctor gives you this stick and a card board piece of paper and says you have to smear 25 samples on the card so they know who's pee you drank.

Then there are also water filters and pumps and centrifugal things but lets just assume you are not going out and camping for a week anywhere in the next year or so. That is why I have left those of the list and they also are temperamental and anything that is mechanical is made to break so if you don't use them they don't work. Stick to chemical processes to keep yourself safe.

Recap this stuff, first keep about two gallons of water in your house for every person living there. Don't do like a 55 gallon drum and look like an idiot, you don't need that much fresh water in your house. Next keep fresh water in your vehicle and also always keep a water bottle on you. I have two gallon jugs in the bed of my truck and always keep my water bottle on me filled up with nice fresh tap. Then you need to have some iodine water tablets or chlorine tablets in your house for when you empty the fresh water in the house you can then fill the jugs back up and clean the dirty water and live to see another day.

Let there be Light!

2013-05-29T17:13:00.000-05:00

I told you all yesterday I was going to review with you my list of what you should always have either with you or in your emergency kit. Recently I was asked what is the most important thing I would tell someone or anyone to have on them if I could only tell them one thing. That is of course have a flashlight on you at all times.

Now not all flashlights are created equal and from The Diabetic Camper (the worlds only diabetic camper so remember that!) that you need to get a "quality" flashlight. We have all seen those ones with like a billion little LED's in them and ones that cost 99 cents but please do not buy those or even touch them. They might give you worser diabetes than you already have because they are just that bad. Why are they bad? Because you have to understand how an LED makes light and it is not like your old non-government approved bulb where you just had to touch the positive and negative side to the bulb to create a closed circuit and walla! instant light. LED's require a circuit board to put the "0's" and "1's" into the right hole to tell the LED to turn on. So your 99 cents is dependent on the cheapest circuit board with a gazillion LED's to not turn on. Now I have about a thousand of those cheap lights in my house and I feel bad because I get coupons to get them for free all the time but now I just throw away the coupon because they all break and a broken flashlight is like a diabetics pancreas, it just sits there wasting money and space. The light you see above is one I picked up on "black Friday" which is the best day to shop for random crap like this. I keep that one in my truck with its 500 lumins it is like the sun in the palm of your hand.

Here is my flashlight I keep in my briefcase and I also run at night with this light. This is a 100 lumins light that only requires 2 double A batteries. If you are not going to buy a flashlight on "black Friday" then your next best bet is www.Amazon.com or www.Woot.com or any number of inter-web pages that sell these suckers at great discounts that are delivered to your house with neat Chinese characters on the package. So what do you look for when buying a "quality" light? The one that The Diabetic Camper would tell you to get is a flashlight with a bulb made by: CREE. These are the Cadillac of the light bulb industry and they produce the light that is claimed by the packaging and also are extremely durable. Remember the circuit board thing I told you about earlier, you need a good one not some sort of Tandy 4600 piece of junk. www.cree.com and CREE is even a public company: http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/stock-price?symbol=US:CREE&ocid=en-us_bingiaquotebtn

OK final note on flashlights and well light in general. What use is a flashlight without any power? Yes it is the same as a diabetics pancreas, just wasting space and money (I kind of like this joke). So what to do about keeping your batteries good in your flashlight? When I was 12 years old my first scout master taught me a trick I have used ever since and it is the greatest thing to do. When you are finished with your light, take the batteries out or just one out and flip it around so that if you bump the button to turn the light on it won't because there is no complete circuit. That brings up those cheap 99 cent lights as well and their cheap circuit boards. This trick does not work in them because their boards are so cheap that if you flip one battery around alot of the time it ruins the board. See how good that 99 cents was worth to you? Go out and spend a decent ten bucks on a good light for your car, home, purse, man purse, diabetes bag, and a couple more just for fun and when you need this light I have just told you about just send me a thank you email, that is all I like to hear is how one small piece of advice I gave a billion people (OK so maybe like 100 people read this blog but lets just go with it) can save at least one person.

Tornado Damage.

2013-05-28T16:22:00.001-05:00

So my mother lives in Moore, OK and not sure if you heard but recently a tornado came through there. She was lucky and her neighborhood was not hit at all, but as soon as you leave her neighborhood and go across the street is where the tornado hit. Since this past weekend was Memorial weekend and I had already planned on coming to Oklahoma to visit I called and canceled my plans because of the tornado. That is when my mother assured me that I would be OK at her house and that she wanted me to come up and hang out.

The picture above is of a church that was hit by the tornado and if you look behind the tents you can see the steeple that was blow off the top but in almost perfect condition.

Here is a picture from I-35 heading north at the medical buildings that were hit. When I saw this I was worried about how I was going to make it to my mothers house. She lives near 4th and Santa Fe which is where you see the Channel 5 national broadcast from. Good thing again was that alot of the streets had been cleaned and what signal lights that were still out had stop signs. The first responders and clean up crews get two diabetic thumbs up for their work and efficiency.

This is a picture of where alot of the aid workers were set up across the street from alot of damage. It is absolutely amazing how like right in the middle of where the tornado hit there is a Sonic drive in and was basically untouched from what I could see and they were packed with people eating there.

This is a photo about a half mile from my mothers place as I drove through the heart of where the tornado hit. Power lines already restrung and debris put into nice piles.

In the end it is always hard to prepare for anything and the people that lost their lives is a tragedy. We can't stop everything, but just being prepared for disasters similar to this is very useful. The rest of the week I will be posting about items we all need to have with us and around our house to help in situations like this. Once I arrived at my mothers house we went over what she did in the tornado and her emergency items and I must say she is pretty much ready for most situations. Maybe it was being married to an Eagle scout and raising both her sons to become Eagle scouts but she was well planned and prepared.

The DC was featured on the inter-web!

2013-05-24T13:37:00.005-05:00

JoiOur Community: A Minnesota Partnership to Conquer Diabetes Read More

Check it out! I was featured on http://www.decadeofdiscovery.org/featured-stories/blogger-spotlight-dave-hennesey-of-the-diabetic-camper/

I cut and pasted the article below but make sure you visit the link above and tell them how much you enjoyed reading my story.

Blogger Spotlight: Dave Hennesey of “The Diabetic Camper”

By: Decade of Discovery
May 23rd, 2013

Chances are, when most of us hear the word ‘camping’, we don’t immediately associate it with diabetes. But, why shouldn’t we? Dave Hennesey is the author of The Diabetic Camper, and he’s trying to add some variety to the diabetes blogosphere by combining his Type 1 diagnosis with one of his favorite activities—camping. Dave shares helpful tidbits of camping advice, interesting products to use in the wilderness, and his general perspective on how camping can apply to your diabetes philosophy. We asked Dave a few questions about his blog and his unique take on tackling diabetes—and here’s what he had to say:
1. How did you get started with your blog?
My blog started in a couple of different ways that converged into making me “The Diabetic Camper.” First I read Kerri Sparling’s SixUntilMe because I liked how she wrote. Then I realized […] there were no diabetes related camping blogs. There were all sorts of running with diabetes, cycling with diabetes, people with diabetes, and parents with diabetic children blogs but no pure outdoor go pee on a tree with your diabetes focused blogs. That is when I looked into blogging.
2. Why do you blog about diabetes?
I blog about diabetes because it is simple for me to write about my life and since I am a diabetic the two go hand in hand. Throw in my 25 years of camping with diabetes, working at scout camps, doing high adventures with diabetes and all of this added up to post after post of things I have done or learned over the years to deal with my diabetes in the wilderness.
3. Camping and diabetes are an interesting mix. What do you hope people take away from your blog?
My main focus it to teach people that even though they are not “outdoorsy” like me or anything, they will encounter some sort of “oh my” moment where diabetes goes wrong and you have to think outside the insulin vial to come up with a way to survive the situation. I want to turn people’s MacGyver [instincts] on in these situations. They might be on a plane and they have a delay and their pump has issues, or they might be low at a train station, but the one thing we all have to do in these “oh my” situations is find a way to get out alive and that is what my blog is all about. Knowing simple things to carry in your diabetes purse to solve life’s diabetes problems or even what gear is good or bad to take on trips.
4. What lessons have you learned from your journey with diabetes?
The biggest lesson I have learned from my journey is that all machines are meant to [break], so have a “manual” backup for everything. Insulin pumps go bad, meters quit on you, and even CGM’s fail but what we all seem to forget is that long ago like 20 years ago we lived without that stuff and having a vial of long acting insulin and a needle tucked away on a trip can save your life. Having a bottle [of] old school visual test strips can get you out of a ski trip that was -12 degrees and your meter only works down to 32 degrees. Have a plan for everything that can go wrong, or a way out for all other situations. That is the biggest thing I have learned and probably why I love to camp so much. Camping brings you to the basics of living with diabetes. It is just you and your disease out in the wilderness. Maybe you have cell service, maybe you have electricity but you are outside [without] all the distractions and you get to feel life at its most simple point, and it allows you to just be diabetic.
5. How does your diagnosis influence your everyday life?
Diabetes affects anything and everything in my life. If diabetes does not affect a part of your life then you are overlooking something. I once had a doctor when I was a young teenager that told me if I didn’t think about my diabetes at least seven times a day I was overlooking something. I look back now and realize that seven times a day should be more like seven times an hour every hour or you are overlooking something. My good friend Vic likes one of my patented [sayings]:” being more diabetic” and it took me probably half a year to get him to understand what “being more diabetic” was. It is that point in your life when you accept your disease more than you did the day before. Maybe you used to be embarrassed to test in front of friends or show people your pump, but one day those things don’t bother you anymore and that is what “being more diabetic” is all about. I love to have people ask me about the nubbins on my stomach or my drug dealer pager because I get to spread the word about diabetes to these people. When we look at ourselves as role models of a disease then we take better care of ourselves. Every diabetic is a role model and should act that way.
6. Do you have any tips or advice for other people living with diabetes?
Read my blog for one month and you will just see the tips and advice I have for all the diabetics out in the world. The most basic tip I always have for every diabetic or person for that matter is to always have a flashlight on you (that works). Light is comforting, you can work with it, signal with it, and even throw it at a bear to save your life but put a flashlight in your car, home, diabetes purse, and anywhere you can.
7. What are your favorite blogs to read?
I read a lot of blogs and one of my favorites is Celiabetes. Nikki has diabetes, celiac disease and all sorts but she is probably the most positive person on the planet. I love to read positive stuff. Scully is a Canadian diabetic that cycles and she has a great sense of humor with plenty of four lettered words that will crack you up. Scott writes about all sorts of stuff and really keeps people like me in the loop about what is going on with diabetes and his life. Off the top of my head those are probably the first three I check out every day, I like positive fun stuff and these three blogs are always good reads.
Thank you for sharing you unique perspective, Dave. Perhaps we’ll see you out in the wild! To learn more about other bloggers like Dave, please check out the rest of our Blogger Spotlight series. If you would like to share your story with us, click here!

Follow-up

2013-05-22T15:48:00.000-05:00

I have to give you all a funny (well not funny if anyone got hurt) update to my recent run in with a truck. The picture above is an SUV-minivan-car thing that is stuck somehow in the power lines that hang out over the road. This is the exact intersection where I was hit by the truck. I think we will now for sure find a new way to cross the street. Which could be a new set of jokes for me, why did the diabetic cross the street? To get away from the truck that hit him earlier in the year or something. I will work on my getting hit by a truck line of comedy.

That was my follow-up and now I want to talk about "cute" creatures to not take so lightly. A couple of weeks ago my dogs were outside barking away at 4:00am and so I went down to let them in but only Archie wanted in and Riley was just running her mouth off so I had to investigate what she was up too. She was at the side gate just itching to get something and I couldn't see anything but from what she was telling me it was there and finally when the sun started to rise I saw the "cute" mouse hanging out on the fence next to the house. Yes, this guy is so cute but No, he is not harmless and don't think you are saving the environment by letting him go either. This field mouse that came up from the creek a couple of blocks away because of the rain will cost you money if you don't kill them.

Here is the field mouse from the other side of the fence. I poked him with a metal rod so the dogs could have hours of fun catching him. The reason you don't let "cute" critters just go sometimes is because first when it is dry they love to eat your sprinkler system to get at the water in the plastic line. Don't think they can eat your sprinkler system? Trust me they can and will. Then if you have a gas grill they will chew on the hose leading from the tank to your burner so the next time you turn it on if the gas is just a slow leak you could have a field mouse bomb. Now lets move onto the snakes I get because they eat these things. Next, the mice like to get into your dryer tubes and once they are in there they easily are running around your house dropping feces and spreading malaria or something. How about your garage? They get in there chew up stuff and make nests out of your camping gear or tent and the next time you are out camping and pull out that fancy tent you bought last year you get to see how a field mouse put a sweet hole in it and had babies on the floor of it. Kill them before they cost you. I think this is why I have always enjoyed having pets, even though my dogs are not use full for much they keep alot of the critters out of my house. When I was a kid we hat a cat that was like a freakin puma. I never saw a live mouse until we put her down and that is when I realized that those thousands of mole heads, mouse bodies, half living crows she would let go of in the house were from our backyard and not down the street at "other" peoples homes. The animals we keep help keep us.

Pickled

2013-05-21T13:39:00.002-05:00

My good type 1 buddy sugar diabetic Don has this stash of goodies he brings to all our runs and rides as promotional freebies and stuff for anyone who wants it. Don is probably the most self disciplined person I know of because he never takes any of this stuff for himself just for everyone else to try. You get Jeff and myself around Don's goody stash of give aways and we clean him out of half his stock. One thing Don has in this stash of freebies are these "Pickle Pops" that are a simple and neat item. you can drink the pickle juice straight or freeze them, put them frozen in your jersey (sometimes on hot rides I slide one frozen one on each side of my cycling shorts), but the idea behind pickle juice is to stop or prevent cramping during events.

Now I am no scientist or wizard as you can tell from the picture above but, I will try most anything once. On our 100 mile journey through the gates of hell and back the humidity was like at 60% and from what my wizard friends tell me, or are they scientist friends I have? Either way that humidity can cause cramping. I am a man that has missed out on many of life's fun items and cramping is one of them. As I reached mile thirty and this lady next to me was jabbering on how she is going to skip the 100 miles and just do the 100K because she is going too slow (quitter, diabetics can't quit because we will die) and that is when the backs of my legs started to feel this biting feeling. So I stopped at a rest stop to stretch my legs because my thinking was that maybe I tweaked something and I needed to stretch it out but stretching did nothing. Then I remembered Don and those Pickle pops I used to always drink during our training rides and how he said they were for cramping and not for scaring off the pretty ladies. Then I remember my triathlete friends talking to me about how you can drink too much water and that can lead to more problems and that switching to a Gatorade or pickle juice to increase the salt or potassium levels in your blood can help. Remember I am not a wizard nor a scientist so these are things that I have heard in classes, inter-web discussions, or just hanging out with people so none of this is advice and if you take it as advice you are on the wrong blog, I went to school for accounting not a medical degree.

I don't think there are any wizard studies that prove pickle juice or salt actually is like medicine to cramping but from this diabetic to you I will tell you it got me to the finish line of a 100 mile ride. I switched to only Gatorade and pickle juice and at every stop I filled up, check my BG's (my blood glucose was a steady 156, thanks Dr. Mark for your book!), and felt better after each drinking of the stuff. Now I know that pickle juice is not just for pickling pigs feet, eggs, amputated body parts, eyes and small animals.

Here is the stuff they had at our rest stops:

http://www.goldenpicklejuice.com/

Here is the stuff I steal, I mean get from Don:

http://bobspicklepops.com/

Feeling 100!

2013-05-20T17:16:00.001-05:00

So a couple of months ago my buddy Don found this bike ride on May 18 (last saturday) that had a 100 mile distance. Not one of those metric 100K things but an actual physical 100 mile ride. I was stoked, he was stoked and Jeff ditched us (probably for the better). This ride started with one lap around "Texas Motor Speedway" which was real cool but that was all of the cool for the day. Now TMS is like 60 miles from my home and the race started at 7:30am so I woke up at 4:00am and was out the door by 4:30am and the picture above was me and like four other people at the track before 6:00am. I am late to everything so I planned to get lost a couple of times and I always need time to air the tires and snack on something.

Here is Don and I both sporting our "Red Rider" jerseys since we both are diabetics of the sugar kind. It was nice having Don at the race, when I did the triathlon last month it was just myself so having someone else to hang out with before a race is always welcome company in my book. The picture above was about the only happy moment we had for the seven plus hour torture session.

You see all these folks in this picture above? They all started with the 100 mile group and the course was so bad (really bad) that the only difference between the 100k and the 100 miles was that we did a second 35 mile loop after we started the ralley with a 30 some odd miles riding in a beautiful industrial area trying to not get hit by semi-trucks making deliveries. So when you made it to this certain point on the course (around mile 60) for both the 100K and the 100 mile ride you took a left turn to head back to the speedway or you went straight and did your second lap of 35 miles of trains, planes, and semi-trucks. Most of these people switched to the 100k once they did the first lap of turtue. I am sure you are not making sense of my bad description of the course but think of TMS in the middle and we did a 30 mile circle on one side and two 30 mile loops on the other side.

I know you all wanted to see some leg and here is my real nice I guess you could call it a farmers tan but I call it my not so sexy biking tan.

More bad pictures of farmer/ cycling tan lines. You know how long it is going to take me to get ride of these lines?

The final moment of victory, Don and I enjoying the only things we could get from the concierge people as they packed everything up, one cold water and one cold Diet Coke. The race announcer told everyone at the start of the race that if you did not have your vehicle out of the speedway by 3:30pm it would be towed. The picture above was taken at 3:15pm as we scurried to our vehicles right after this photo.

Now Don apologized to me for finding this ride but I keep telling him it is not his fault. Heck how would we know that riding bikes along highways, industrial parks, chip and seal roads would be so bad if we hadn't done it in the first place. That is why these are adventures, we do them to find out what they are about and hopefully live to tell the horror stories later. Oh I almost forgot to mention the extra fun they gave us and that was when we made it to the speedway after our second loop of fun we had to do two laps around the outside of the parking lots surrounding the speedway. Now TMS holds like 200,000 people so you are basically circling a small city twice just to finish the 100 miles. I told Don that he has to do the Autumn in Bonham this year in October to see what a good race is like. They don't take us on any highways and each small quaint town hosts a rest stop with all sorts of chairs, firefighters, ham radio operators, food, and fun. They even have real SAG vehicles in Bonham. This race had people at rest stops driving around looking for people on the course as to see when they could tear the rest stop down, not your typical SAG vehicles. They say your first time is supposed to be memorable and this definitely was that because we lived to tell the funny stories.

Brothers

2013-05-17T16:57:00.002-05:00

I totally had another item I wanted to post for today but this morning I received a phone call from my brother. He tells me that whenever I put pictures of him in my blog that he looks like a fairy. Does the picture above make my brother look bad in any way? Of course not. Then he goes into this rant about how the gas price in Oklahoma City is like four bucks and went into how Kansas has like 3.50 dollar a gallon gas and some person he plays inter-web games with in another state pays like 3.25 a gallon. Then he asks me what the price is in Dallas and I let him know it is a rough 3.40 a gallon and he just gets all mad and stuff, talking about how this is wrong and Oklahoma always has cheaper gas and bla, bla, bla.

That is when I stopped him and told him to just let it go. There is nothing you can do about it and surfing the inter-web for a cheap station that gets you price discount of .02 is not worth the stress in your life. A person a long time ago once told me when I was bragging how I found cheap gas to stop and look at the savings for this bragging I was doing. It came out to a whopping .46 cents and that was something that I was proud of. They then let me know to not worry about the little things and just buy gas and that extra 10 bucks you spend over a year is not going to hurt you but the stress will (I have diabetes and stress is bad). I took this information to heart and now on I don't stress about anything that I personally cannot change. There is no point to it, you just have to accept it and be happy. My brother agreed and we hung up the phone and I feel that he probably had a much better day after that by not worrying any more about crap that is out of his control.

I used to stress out about "being diabetic" as a kid. I hated being different (besides my personality I love being different that way), so it depressed me and I did not manage myself properly during my high school and early college days. Then I accepted that I was not going to cure myself by ignoring my disease and actually decided to take care of myself and lord be how much better life is by just accepting that I can't cure myself but I can take care of myself and that made me "more diabetic" and now I love telling anyone that I am diabetic, cracking diabetes jokes, and taking my shirt off to prove I have a disease with my CGM sensor and pump site on my insulin ravished fat rolls.

Bicycling Magazine

2013-05-16T16:22:00.004-05:00

I finally feel like a real cyclist, my first "Bicycling" magazine came in the mail. Now I can read all about how to not get hit by a truck, and other pertinent things that have been on my mind. The cover of this magazine sucked me in right away, how to have more fun? Who has more fun than me? The 101 best maintenance tips ever, I am so going to read this and let Jeff know that his tires probably need air in them before we ride. Not to mention all the discount inter-web places to visit and get gear on the cheap. I already saw an ad for something my buddy Lew has in his truck, this www.recrac.com thing where you can screw your bike into the sides of your truck.

So now as I was perusing through the pages of my new magazine and I came across the article above which stopped me in my steps. An article on a professional sugar diabetes cyclist and I knew at that moment that baby Jesus must know I am a diabetic and had them run this article on the first issue I got. maybe he looked down at me and had a grin and a wink for me.

Sometimes in life it is the small things that we need to make us feel accepted and trust me my slow cycling speed, looking bad in way too skinny spandex, or my 2003 Fuji red, white, and blue thunder bike does not make me a cyclist. Actually nothing really makes me a cyclist besides confidence and belief in myself and once I had that then I was a cyclist.

Random Wednesday

2013-05-15T17:05:00.002-05:00

I had a bunch of small items I wanted to post about but did not feel they were all worthy by themselves so today is a pot of random-ness items. So last weekend when I showed up at my mothers house at 10:00pm she greeted me and then tells me "Oh I have a surprise for you in the bathroom" now all of you just now went "gross!" so get your head out of the toilet (pun intended). That is just the way us Hennesey's talk, I knew exactly that she was not talking about something that was about to be flushed but she had done something to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom and cracked up laughing when I saw the toilet paper holder she bought. People ask me if my high quality sense of humor runs in the family and from the picture above you know it does. How funny is that guy, but I am not quite shure why he has the toilet plunger on his head?

OK, random item number two. My buddy Jeff whom I have told you all about his constant surfing the inter-web for funny diabetes pictures dug up the one above (I guess it was easy enough to go to www.diabetesduo.com and get it but I didn't). He texted it to me and I laughed, and laughed and laughed. Then I cried laughed and snort laughed and even some snot laughing. So funny, "test" strip poker, duck duck juice and my favorite truth or a1c. Whomever thought of that stuff is an absolute genius in the realm of diabetes comedy.

Random item number three if you were counting. The longest going stupid question (yes probably 80% of all questions diabetics get are stupid) but the age old "do you have the bad kind?" question is like a knife in our un-useable pancreas. So the fact that this puts it perfect and I want to say this to all people from now till the day I am cured or die of a diabetes related multiple gunshot wound death or something.

Then last but not least is random item number four for your happy Wednesday (or whatever day you are reading this, just replace Wednesday with the day of the week it says on your PC) is how yesterday I got a 100 on my BG test! So happy perfect score to me and hope your diabetes is buckled in for the ride and that it has all hands and feet inside the car.

Mothers Day

2013-05-14T17:05:00.001-05:00

What do you get your mother that has everything? OK, so my mother doesn't have absolutely everything but she has all she needs or even wants. I could have bought her chocolate but she doesn't like to eat alot of that stuff, or I could have bought her flowers and she just had me plant a new rose bush in her backyard so she has all the flowers she wants. My mother had a custom computer made just so she can play World of Warcraft, even her monitor is like six feet wide. I have never known a monitor so big you run out of mouse pad three times before the courser gets to the other side. So I took my mother out for a bike ride. Just my mother and her favorite son (don't tell my brother I am her favorite).

My mother was OK with just a short and simple ride in her neighborhood but I wanted to show her the hidden world of cycling. We headed to the banks of what they call: The Oklahoma River, which is just a section of the North Canadian river that has been turned into a long lake with river boat rides and lots of rowing stuff. The picture above is of the river boat loading up to show people wild and crazy Oklahoma City.

Here is a view of the ride and we had a blast. My mother did like three miles out and then she stopped and said "I am ready to go back my arms are turning pink" I tried to get her to do just a bit more but that was it for her.

Here I am getting her bike into my truck and I of course took the opportunity to do a self image of me with her bike. I took her to the bike shop because she wanted me to fix this mountain bike she bought from WalMart which was a lump of doo-doo. I told her that it wasn't worth the money to work on and then we headed to a real bike shop were she picked out a great cruiser. She went with the mountain bike 26" tires because she felt safer on them than the lighter 700 series road bike tires. I rode the bike up and down the street a few times and was surprised by how the bike did put you in a good upright position.

The last photo we took before heading back. I loved how my mom got all dolled up to go out on a bike ride, I told her she needs to get a cycling jersey for next time so she can put all her stuff in the rear pockets but she wanted to try out her new bag for Disney World over fourth of July with my brother, his family, and one of his best friends and his family. On the way home she made me drive around so she could see ways to get to the Oklahoma River from her place so she could go out and ride. So that makes one more cyclist on the road. Just a few million more to go. When we got home she said to me, "wait till I brag to all the ladies in Sunday school about what I did for mothers day." I hope she enjoyed it as much as I did.

Is this Idiocracy?

2013-05-13T16:56:00.001-05:00

So this weekend I traveled to Oklahoma to see family. I saw a good part of my family but I did not get to see my sister so I now need to make another trip up and see her and the rest of her family. Saturday my mother organized a big cook-out with a bunch of friends and family and for some odd reason I was put in charge of prepping the food. Who puts the diabetic in charge of food prep? It turned out OK and my brother also said I put too many pictures of myself on my blog, do you think so? I don't.

Here is a picture of my brother cooking up the chicken and steaks, we did some sort of marinade that I forgot that kids do not like pepper or seasoning on their chicken so I verbally apologized and let them all know that at next years mothers day cook-out I would make chicken with no seasoning on it. I figured they probably would forget by that time. funny thing about my mother, you see the giant rocks by my brothers huge belly (he harasses me about my diabetes and I get to harass him about his weight, we have this mutual agreement) Those are not real rocks, they are like plaster fake shell rocks my mother had ordered so she could have like "art" in the backyard that was also fun for the kids to play on and could be moved. They are pretty cool but the only downside to them is that they are hollow and tip over so she had her gardener put some cinder blocks inside them so that nobody would get seriously hurt. Kind of ironic huh? Fake rocks that need rocks inside them to stay in place.

Here is where I pose my question in the picture above. My mother bought this slip-n-slide for the kids to play in while the adults cooked and conversed. This had a sharks mouth and if you know anything about a gaggle of boys is that by the end of the day this thing was thrown in the trash. Boys have this thing about one-ups manship where just sliding on the slide is not enough, they have to then put dirt on it, then that is not enough and find a way to increase the water sprinkles, and it just keeps going and going till someone comes down with diabetes or gets an eye poked.

When we were cleaning up I saw these swimming goggles on the ground and thought that one of the boys had two pairs of goggles, a red pair and a blue pair and switched out the lenses. It is hard to see on my brothers head that one side is red and the other is blue.

That is when Jeff, one of my brothers best friends since grade school told me that the goggles were actually for the slip-n-slide that it was a 3D shark you were sliding towards with the goggles on. So yes we all had to put on the goggles and hold up the shark to actually see for ourselves what the 3D did and it made it look like the sharks mouth was real deep.

OK so that brings up the question is this taking a slip-n-slide to the idiocracy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ ) side of life, like not just having a slip-n-slide is cool enough and adding a sharks head was still not cool enough, they had to make it 3D to take it to the proper level of cool? I remember (does that make me sound old?) as a kid we used to just play with the hose for hours on end, then if we were lucky we had a water balloon fight, and the ultimate was when one of your rich friends would get that clowns head with the stringy hair that whipped you and left red marks on your body. That was what we had and it was a blast, not 3D sharks heads. Did your mom ever make that dish soap bubbles stuff and you played with it for like a few hours and had to crank it up a bit and toss a gallon of it into the air conditioner and the yard became a bubble rave with bubbles shooting out of the air conditioner? Or was that just us. The backyard was such a magical place as a kid, maybe because we had a shop full of old FAA plane stuff our dad brought home from work but still it was just great fun.

Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse.

2013-05-10T15:29:00.000-05:00

I am sure you are aware that in this modern day and age we are supposed to recycle, reduce, and reuse anything we possibly can. Throw your aluminum monster cans in the recycle bin, wipe your but with only one square of toilet paper, and of course reuse plastic sporks and stuff. Well last week I had a traumatic event happen to me, OK so you might not think it is traumatic but my lawn mower of something like eight years or more finally bit the dust. From the picture above you are saying it looks just fine but it is not, trust me on this I am not an expert.

What happened is the spark plug wire somehow broke into two pieces. You can see in the picture above the black plastic wire and the metal hanging out and in the background is the spark plug where the other half of this wire should be attached to. This on a car is a simple fix, you just go to any random auto parts store and buy a new plug wire. On a lawn mower the wire is connected to the coil, and nobody keeps this part in stock especially a random Home Depot disposable residential mower. The part has to be ordered, received in like two weeks and installed. The part costs 60 bucks, installation costs 40 dollars, then it would be good to go in like the middle of the summer.

With the repair to the old mower at such a high cost I was at a cross road, do I repair the mower, do I buy a new mower, or do I find a used mower on craigslist. Well I went with option "C" which was to surf the inter-web on the list of Craig for a self propelled mower (yes I am old, lazy and enjoy my mower going on its own power) . The price that kept coming up was 150.00 dollars and if you have ever bought anything on the list of Craig you know that whatever price they list is what we call the starting point, so I sent out several emails with a solid low offer to see if anybody would bite. I received lots of emails that only had one word in them: "no" not even a counter offer or anything except one guy was willing to accept my offer and that is how I wound up with the mower you see in the picture above.

I paid 80 bucks for this 6.25 horsey powered "quantum" self propelled mower. Now my mower which is like ten levels below this mower at Home Depot costs 329.00 for a similar model and it has like half the horsey power as this one. This mower is like in the 500 dollar range and up, it is darn close to commercial edition which is like the holy grail of mowers (OK I am a lawn dork) but they run close to a grand.

Once I got the mower home I got it out of the bed of the truck and started to mow. Now things were looking great with this new mower and life was so good I found the snake you see above in my backyard as I mowed. I am pretty sure it is a rat snake, we have had field mice real bad this year. I caught him and put him in the cull De sac and as I did my neighbors daughters boyfriend was pulling up in their driveway which gave me an opportunity to use one of my classic jokes. He got out of his truck and I asked him to come over and help me identify this snake I caught. As he got closer I then turned to him and pretended to be un-buttoning my pants, and he stops and goes "wow dude I am not looking at that kind of snake" and I laughed and stopped and told him it was on the ground and we laughed about it and he agreed that it was a form of snake (alot of help that kid was). Then my neighbors younger daughter played with the snake in the street for a couple of hours afterwards and he is probably now hunting me down and going to eat me or something.

Then as I was mowing my forest I came across a random crooked neck squash plant growing in my yard. Whenever I plant things in the garden I like to toss the rest of the seeds in the yard to see if any take and sure enough looks like yard squash will be on the menu in 30 days or so.

So the moral to this story is sometimes buying used is better if not worse, wait not worse scratch the last part but better because once somebody has bought something that has a long shelf life like small engine items and tools they resale at a fraction of their original price. So if you are savvy, which if you have diabetes you have to be savvy, finding these items on the inter-web can save you money like getting extra free samples from your endo.

Diabetes Funnies!

2013-05-09T16:45:00.000-05:00

So today I am tired and well lets face it a bit lazy. That means lets steal stuff from other diabetes blogs and today is from www.diabetesduo.com They have a blog and a picture section with some rather funny stuff. The picture above sounds about right for diabetes it just randomly hits a lucky person like you and I!

I do wish my meter had nice sayings like this or maybe my CGM would say things like hey you have been low all day whats the deal? Like my buddy Jeff always says his medical devices just always tell him he has diabetes.

I have had diabetes for 25 years and never put something other than put blood on a test strip but I did use the old visual strips and I think they could double as pee strips. I so think we should all get a bottle of visual strips and see if we can eye ball as good as a meter works. That would be a fun test.

These bumper stickers cracked me up and we always talk about this mythical "cure" like is an implantable insulin pump like an 80% cure or the CGM is that a step towards a cure or just another "help" item. What about a closed loop system is that a cure? I don't know but I have the worst punctured fingers of all diabetics.

Sometimes I feel like just getting my handy dandy pocket knife out and just cutting the finger tip off and let it go when you can't find a spot that bleeds. Have you ever been at the doctors office and the nurse is trying to prick your finger (the word prick is funny in itself) and they have it set at one and you want to just rip it from her hand and do it yourself because you know that it needs to be set on eleven just to get your tiny bit of blood that is in your finger.

Last but not least, Jeff sent me this so I am not sure if it is from his phone or stolen from another diabetic website but to see a sign that says "free diabetes" is just funny. I am sure there was supposed to be more to this ad but when it is put this way makes you chuckle just a little.

So that is today's post, sorry I am tired, lazy and have diabetes so if you want more from my posts and better information next time please leave a comment. If you personally have issues with me stealing from other websites send me an email: davehennesey@hotmail.com and include your home address and I will write you a personal apology to you.

Guilty Pleasure!

2013-05-08T17:33:00.001-05:00

One thing that I love in life, and I mean love is going to a nice foreign or exotic car show. Heck I even love going to the "new car" car show, just don't ask me to go to a classic American car show. For some reason a row of Chevelles, Vettes, Camero's, Mustangs, and other muscle cars does not do it for me, but the exotics and foreign stuff just gets my little diabetic heart pounding. Now I am not saying I won't stop down for a look-see at a classic American car show, I just wont go out of my way to attend one or put it on my calendar as an item "to do" for any day. I guess it is because I live in the land of America and I see these cars up and down the highways and city streets all the time and have seen them all my life but something from a foreign land or with two commas in the price tag is just simply amazing to me.

Here is one of my favorite cars above, the Lotus Elise. This has my favorite recipe for a cool car, very small, light, just weird looking enough to have that exotic look to it, and a simple engine. The Lotus uses modified Toyota engines so in theory (or at least in my head) you could take this to your local Toyota dealer and get parts for your engine.

If you don't remember the movie "Pretty Woman" this the car (not the actual car) from the movie. The Lotus Esprit, and I love how low and lean this car looks plus it has this wild rear glass kind of thing happening to it that adds to the mystique of the car. Then there is the simple Ford Probe look to it that makes it look like I could drive this car to the grocery store and to work without standing out in a crowd. This car was my gateway drug into "wedge" cars and why now my favorite car is the Detomaso Pantera the epitome of the "wedge" car.

Never was much of a Rolls Royce dreamer but I always loved their timeless grill and hood ornaments.

Here is an old Jaguar Mark II front end that inspired the past "S" model. Timeless again, but still I was never a huge Jaguar fan, probably because of that disaster of a car looking XJS they created in the 80's that just looked odd in so many ways.

I don't exactly get this car, it is a Mclaren MP4-12c "super car" (that means it cost alot and has huge maintenance bills). Personally I dislike it when car companies just use a bunch of random letters and numbers for the cars name. Give me something simple and elegant, like you tried to come up with a name not just gibberish. These cars are starting to pop up around Dallas but the front end looks like some sort of anime character. I don't want too much of a personality or cartoon character in the look of a car.

Never was a huge Buick Riviera fan but the movie "Road House" makes you really like them. They have the cool shutter headlights with a sleek looking body. They look really nice but remember they weigh like a ton and go slow so all cool look with little go.

Maserati is one of my fascination car companies. I like how they keep the trident and water theme in their cars and the little hair lip in the grill. Look just above the trident and you can see what I mean. I hear that Maserati's are the number one car company that have the worst resale value. wonder how much I can pick this one up for?

If you ever asked me "Diabetic Camper, or Dave what is the one and only Ferrari you would ever own?" I would tell you the 308 or the extremely similar 328 which is the later version just with small updates. Why you ask? First lets remember my fascination with the "wedge" car. Then I am a sucker for a targa top, for some reason I am not a convertible person but a moon roof or targa top fits me perfect. Last this is the car from Magnum PI like the greatest public investigator on TV and he got all the pretty ladies. They show old episodes on a channel in Dallas called "COZI" tv and I stop down and watch them all the time. Classic car from a classic TV show.

I guess alot of the reason that this is my guilty pleasure is that almost all of these car shows I go to by myself. There is just some sort of added pressure if someone is with you and they want to look at real cool cars and I am drooling over a random old MG, Triumph, or Delorean. I guess I am a closet car show stalker or something but at least I can admit it and that is the first step to getting over my problem. When I get home from these shows I surf craigslist and see what some of these cars would actually cost me and my mind drifts to la-la land like I don't have diabetes and have a head full of hair with open weekends to hang out with cool people. Just a dream.

Off to the races!

2013-05-07T17:26:00.001-05:00

You know I am game for almost anything, OK well anything legal and non-life threatening. So a few weeks ago one of my co-workers asked if any of us wanted to go to the horse track on May 4th (yes May the 4th be with you day). He worked at Lone Star Park our local horse track all through high school and college and he was familiar with the ponies. May 4th was the Kentucky Derby and so to capitalize on that the track and probably every track has a "Derby Day" on that day so to bring a party to the park. Lone Star park had a hat contest, live band, and all the guys wearing these funny suits, I asked my buddy and he said the suits were some sort of backwoods Kentucky thing. In the picture above you can see Josh and I out in the sun waiting for the next race and he was busy on his phone taking last calls for Kentucky derby bets.

Now I have always wanted to go to the horse track but I have between zero and no experience with horse betting. The only other time I had done anything with horse betting was once at a restaurant they had the off track betting and another guy at the event who knew about horse betting did a few bets for me and I made like 45 bucks that night, even after dinner. Above you can see my buddy Josh with our local track guide putting in our bets while we waited for the big one. Of course we lost on all our bets that day but the day flew by like nothing. I thought we had been there for like thirty minutes and looked at my watch and it had been three hours. Horse betting is like a gamblers dream, there are about a million ways to bet on the same horse to win or multiple places with boxing in and all the such. I was lost but that is what was nice about having somebody there with "knowledge" with the K to hold my hand and help me lose my money in a smart way. Not to just blow my money on the horse that goes pee last but one with solid odds to lose and has a good name and maybe from a town I can find on a map. Makes a bunch of sense right?

The moment came when the Kentucky derby race number 13 I think it was (they have other races at the derby besides the big one) and we headed into the off track betting which is where you can bet and watch tracks from all over the country. The video boards switched to the derby and everyone was at the gambling machines making last minute bets. Then in like two minutes it was over and my long shot Lines of Battle pulled up the middle of the back of the pack and we threw our stubs away headed to get some food at Cracker Barrel.

I think days like this is why I think everyone should be open and nice to each other. If it weren't for my co-worker willing to hold my hand at the race track I would have never gone in my life and look now I have done it and have the pictures to prove it. If I were an angry or easily upset person then my co-worker would have never offered this adventure to me. This is why even with vinegar and salt in our blood steam because of diabetes we still need to have a positive look on life and be friendly to each other. That other person just might educate you on how to lose your money properly.

The Diabetic Camper

When ordinary life turns tragic!

Product review update!

Can water heal Diabetes?

Going off the wagon

Making Plans

The best place to live in Diabetesville!

I am a sucker for a gimmick!

Bladder issues!

Back Up!

Water

Let there be Light!

Tornado Damage.

The DC was featured on the inter-web!

JoiOur Community: A Minnesota Partnership to Conquer Diabetes Read More

The Diabetes Debate: What are its origins? Read More

Diabetes and Heart Damage —
an iPS cell approach. Read More

Diabetes and Metabolism — The how
of clinical studies. Read More

Researchers test promising new diabetes drug. Read More

Decade of Discovery: A Minnesota Partnership to prevent, optimally treat and ultimately cure diabetes. Read More

Check it out! I was featured on http://www.decadeofdiscovery.org/featured-stories/blogger-spotlight-dave-hennesey-of-the-diabetic-camper/

Blogger Spotlight: Dave Hennesey of “The Diabetic Camper”

Follow-up

Pickled

Feeling 100!

Brothers

Bicycling Magazine

Random Wednesday

Mothers Day

Is this Idiocracy?

Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse.

Diabetes Funnies!

Guilty Pleasure!

Off to the races!

The Diabetic Camper

When ordinary life turns tragic!

Product review update!

Can water heal Diabetes?

Going off the wagon

Making Plans

The best place to live in Diabetesville!

I am a sucker for a gimmick!

Bladder issues!

Back Up!

Water

Let there be Light!

Tornado Damage.

The DC was featured on the inter-web!

JoiOur Community: A Minnesota Partnership to Conquer Diabetes Read More

The Diabetes Debate: What are its origins? Read More

Diabetes and Heart Damage — an iPS cell approach. Read More

Diabetes and Metabolism — The how of clinical studies. Read More

Researchers test promising new diabetes drug. Read More

Decade of Discovery: A Minnesota Partnership to prevent, optimally treat and ultimately cure diabetes. Read More

Check it out! I was featured on http://www.decadeofdiscovery.org/featured-stories/blogger-spotlight-dave-hennesey-of-the-diabetic-camper/

Blogger Spotlight: Dave Hennesey of “The Diabetic Camper”

Follow-up

Pickled

Feeling 100!

Brothers

Bicycling Magazine

Random Wednesday

Mothers Day

Is this Idiocracy?

Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse.

Diabetes Funnies!

Guilty Pleasure!

Off to the races!

Diabetes and Heart Damage —
an iPS cell approach. Read More

Diabetes and Metabolism — The how
of clinical studies. Read More