Happy Birthday to Mom!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

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Congrats on another year!  (And on discovering Hampsterdance, too!)

Yay Mom! And: Medical Stuff.

First of all, thank you so much for all of you who have been praying for my mom.  Her surgery went really well, praise the Lord, and while I'd like to let her blog about the details if she feels so inclined, I will say that the awesome surgeons cleared the blocked artery and put in "the Cadillac of Stents."  Yay insurance!  She is tired but doing well, and her email was especially coherent for someone who just had heart surgery the day before.

But, of course, tons of other things have to happen at the same time as this.

I got a large box in the mail today that contains my new Freestyle Navigator.  For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a continuous glucose monitor, like the Dexcom  I blogged about a while back.  It's a bit different, and it has a few more features (though apparently the Dexcom Plus has those now) that I like.  I've been told not to start using it until I am trained, so I will be eagerly awaiting a call from my trainer.  On a slightly different note, I would like to very much thank my insurance company for covering the Nav and other CGMSs.  I am very grateful to have insurance that understands that progress and new technology are themselves medically necessary and is willing to support them and help keep its patients healthy.

I am very sad, though about this.  I found out here.  For those of you who don't click on links, those basically say that my pump manufacturer, Smiths Medical, is pulling out of the diabetes market.  My pump has a little over three years on the warranty, I think, but I will have to get a new pump from a different company then.  Smiths Medical is slowly withdrawing, meaning that they will be gone in about four years, when the warranties for the newest pumps expire.  I can still get infusion sets and replacement pumps if mine breaks, but I can't renew my warranty, and that makes me sad.  I love the Cozmo and the Cozmore System.  It has so many amazingly brilliant features, and I must admit I will miss being able to test my blood sugar directly on my pump.  I'll start doing my research, I guess.  Smiths Medical/Deltec, thank you for the amazing customer service, the amazing system, and all the support and amazing features.  I will miss you.

Well, there's tons of other fun stuff going on as well.  Such as that Multivariable Calc test tomorrow.  (I am purposely not opening the Navigator to stare at it in wonderment and gleeful awe until after said test...)

I'm still alive!

I just got off of spring break, which, while relaxing, was not long enough.  I didn't accomplish all that I wanted to.  But oh well.  I'm kind of happy to get back on my normal schedule, even though it is crazy.  I love my major, I love VT, and I don't like sitting around doing nothing.

I should mention some awesome stuff:

-Before Spring Break, my parents visited.  (Yay!)  We got to see Kirk Franklin live in Burruss Hall.  Which was amazing.
-I, the person who never seems to care about movies at all, watched three movies over break.  One was WALL-E, of course.  My favorite actually-a-movie movie.  Another was the 5-hour-long 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice, which was also amazing (though it was originally a miniseries and is not technically a movie movie).  (It is definitely worth watching all 5 hours of it.  If it weren't for all the time it would take up, I would wish more movies were longer; it lets one get to know the characters and the setting better.)  And my parents and I went to see Race to Witch Mountain, which was exciting.  And <spoiler alert!> the dog didn't die!</spoiler alert>

Anyway, now that the break is over, I have to actually prepare for class and stuff.  And I can't sleep in as late as I want tomorrow.  So... back to the homework!

I can do it!

I woke up this morning with vestiges of the bad mood I had yesterday (completely unrelated to the Super Bowl).  I'm stressed.  I didn't get as much homework done as I should have.

Somehow, during breakfast, I heard the strains of "Don't Stop Believin'" in the dining hall.  It got stuck in my head.  I like that song's chorus.  It reminds me that there is hope.  God has a plan, and it involves this homework.  And I can do it.  And I can avoid the distractions; I can ignore those little online flash games calling for me to come play them if I really want to get this stuff done.  Because somehow, the ability to solve differential equations or take partial derivatives will be important someday.

I won't stop believing.

(Sorry if I got that stuck in your head, by the way.)

Thanks for Asking...

Yeah, yeah.  I'll get back to my breakfast and homework in just a second.  But this just made me laugh, even though I know it was sent out in all seriousness and that a lot of guys would be interested.  (Please keep in mind that I am a woman.)

My email inbox, as of a minute ago:  "Would you like to become a part of [the] only all male engineering fraternity on the Virginia Tech campus?"


Um. 


No thanks.  


(Disclaimer:  There is a Greek women in engineering organization here.  But I have enough on my plate.)


EDIT:  I just got some emails mentioning said women's engineering sorority, just to be fair.  They too went to the entire listserv.  

Dexcom Trial

I usually don't do much blogging about my diabetes, so this post is very different from my others.  Beware of the diabetic lingo!

Anyway, I finally just finished doing something I've been wanting to do for a while:  try out a Continuous Glucose Monitoring System (CGMS).  CGMS's approximate one's blood sugar every minute or so (time period depends on the model), but since the method CGMS's use to approximate blood sugar is not quite as accurate as a normal blood glucose test, some normal blood glucose tests are still neccessary to calibrate the CGMS and to verify unsavory blood sugar results before treating them.  CGMS's are useful for predicting high and low blood sugars, though, and they show trends very well on pretty little graphs so one can see the effects of one's eating, bolusing, and exercising habits on one's blood sugar.

After I mentioned to my endocrinologist that I wanted a trial, she reccomended I go to a local Inova branch, where the insulin pump/CGMS trainer would set me up with a loaner.  The trainer, who also trained me on my very first insulin pump trial about seven years ago, was very helpful and friendly.  She inserted the sensor, and it barely hurt—no more than a good infusion site insertion, I'm happy to report.  Since she wasn't allowed to loan out the Navigator (the CGMS I want) because it is so new, I got hooked up to a Dexcom Seven, just to let me see what using a CGMS is like in general.  I had thankfully already accepted the fact that I would feel like even more of a cyborg than usual, so with that hurdle out of the way, I was ready to give this a good shot.

The Dexcom Seven CGMS I used, shortly after pulling out the sensor.

The first twenty-four hours were only moderately accurate.  After the initial calibration, the Dexcom showed me trends pretty well.  To turn the Dexcom's reported numbers into my actual blood sugar readings, however, one would have to add about 30 mg/dL to each one.  It kept vibrating and beeping at me to tell me that I was below 40 mg/dL when I was between 70 and 80 mg/dL.  It kept that up for a couple of hours, at which point I was almost in tears.  I wanted to bring my blood sugar up so I could go to sleep without going low during the night, so I was eating some carbs to bring my BG up, but I was pretty scared that the Dexcom would keep me up all night, telling me I was low.  Argh.

Eventually, my numbers came up, I went to sleep, and life was good.  The Dexcom started looking like it was getting more useful and accurate readings around 2 or 3 PM the next day, and as long as I calibrated it when my blood sugar was relatively stable, it stayed about as accurate as it could be (there is a bit of a delay between traditional blood sugar tests and CGMS readings).  It caught several lows and highs during the nights of the week I used it, which was very useful.  Really, no diabetic likes waking up low at 3 AM.  Or waking up to the alarm clock each morning, testing, seeing a low result, and wondering how long they had been that low; that's just plain scary sometimes!  Thank you, Dexcom, for sparing me of that for a week.

On the con side, those late-night lows were annoying, and since the Dexcom alarms every 15 minutes if one's blood sugar is still below target, sometimes I got to sit around for a while to make sure my blood sugar was stable and high enough for me to sleep.  Better than waking up extremely low and discombobulated at the normal time, though.

Today, when I had to take the Dexcom off to give it back to Inova, I was kind of sad.  This device had been my constant companion for a week, watching my blood sugars even when I normally would not.  Watching the trends has been enlightening, and I'm sure I will do things a bit differently in my bolusing now.  I am even more certain now that I want to get my own CGMS.  I am fairly sure my parents' insurance will pay for it (Thank you!).  Now I just need to get started with that lovely pile of paperwork.  But for the safety factor I have appreciated for the past week, I think it will be worth the hand cramps of signing my name a few gillion times.

It's Diabetes Awareness Month

I just saw that on Kerri's blog that it is Diabetes Awareness month.  And I missed the day to blog about my diabetes (yesterday)(oops!), but that's ok.

I kind of feel like I should commemorate this.  Maybe I can use it as a catalyst to get the Virginia Tech dining halls to post nutrition facts information (sometimes it is hard to tell how carbariffic some of the foods here are...). How will I do that?  No idea.  Maybe there's a website for it or something already.  I just haven't found it yet.  Any ideas?

I voted!

I voted for the first time!  This is exciting.  Finally, after watching my parents hit the big red VOTE button for so many years, I can finally make my own voice heard.

I would have put a picture of me wearing my awesome "I Voted" sticker here, using my tablet's handy built-in webcam, but I figure you all either know what it looks like or you should go vote and get your own.  So go vote!

Test tonight! Dun dun DUN!

I have my second big Engineering Explorations test tonight.  I've been studying quite a bit, so I feel pretty prepared.  One thing I am not going to let happen this test is to let the nervousness of everyone else taking the test make me nervous.  Last time, I went in confident, sat down, and then there was some confusion with filling out our Opscans.  (I've grown up; those are called ScanTrons in elementary-high school, but Opscans here, for the most part).  Plus, people were talking about how much they studied and how much they wished they had studied more, etc.  I started to freak out and wasn't as focused for the test as I could have been.  In comparison, over the summer when I did the Student Transition Engineering Program, I went into our tests feeling confident, ignored other people's worries, and took the tests.  The first time, I got 94%.  The second time?  99%.  Of course, there was less pressure since those grades did not count, but still, if I can maintain the same attitude, I will probably be fine.

After the test, though, I get to watch a movie.  S was telling me last night how a certain friend of hers had never seen a certain movie, and I got a funny look on my face.  I think she noticed it, and then proceeded to ask whether I had seen it.  I said no; I always seem to be the person who has never seen any movie ever.  She got excited and said I have to go watch it with her and her friend.  I would usually avoid things on Thursday nights due to Stammtisch and Campus Crusade for Christ, but I'm not going to Stammtisch because it is right before my test, and Cru tonight is pretty much out of the question, since this test runs an hour and a half, which means it has more questions.  And that it ends at 8:30, 30 minutes after Cru begins.  So now I have a movie to look forward to.

In other news, I'm trying to think of non-orange and maroon Christmas/holiday gifts for my friends.  I think I'm the only one out of my little friend groups to come to VT, so I don't think the people going to UVA and Hollins and Mary Washington and other schools would appreciate orange and maroon.  Any ideas?  Especially for a college student on a budget?

Yay! And, housing arrangements.

I got to spend yesterday and the day before with my oh-so-awesome parents.  They are probably home right now, asleep and tired from the car trip, but I'm glad they came, despite the (non)-fun of long car rides.  We hung out, shopped, talked, saw Wall·E, saw 1964:  The Tribute performed in Virginia Tech's own Burruss Hall (which was a LOT of fun; I haven't seen my parents both singing along with music at a concert until last night), and just generally had fun.  It was awesome.  It was only icing on the cake that they brought me food, a suitcase (to make coming home for breaks easier), and other stuff.  Thank you, Mom and Dad!  xoxo!

We also discussed something very important:  where I am going to live next year.  I have to decide before Winter Break whether I am moving off campus next academic year or not, so my parents, S (the fellow woman engineering student with whom I will more than likely be rooming; she's awesome), and I met and talked apartments.  S had obviously done much more research than I had had time to do, so she knew most of the details about housing around here and had already focused on a couple nice apartment complexes.  We both want a quiet community, and we both miss having the privacy of our own rooms (or at least a near 100% guarantee that there will be somewhere in our living space where we can "recharge" alone, as we are both introverted).  We discussed stuff we need to be sure to ask while taking tours of the candidates, and we will be working on priority lists for what we can't live without soon (aka as soon as I get my dormwork done, I'm doing mine).  However, I don't think we've entirely removed the possibility of staying on campus.  But, if we do go off, Virginia Tech has an excellent bus system, and most of the apartments we are looking at are within easy walking distance too.  I wouldn't have to drive unless I had a giant tri-fold board or prototype model to transport, pretty much.

But Virginia Tech is having a bit of a housing crunch.  More and more incoming freshmen means less and less upperclassmen housing, so we may be "strongly encouraged" to do our bit to help next year's freshmen not have to live in study lounges or room with RA's (because some, over halfway into the semester, are still being forced to do that!)  I've been thinking about the possibility of going off campus for a while, and while it is nice to live right in the middle of everything, it would also be nice to have a room or quiet space of my own, and to live with someone with a similar sleep pattern.

Anyway, if anyone has any sage advise for apartment hunting or a definite reason to stay on or go off campus, please let me know.  I would definitely appreciate it, especially since I don't know everything involved or what to take into consideration.

I never thought I'd be so happy to see a non-Mac computer...

I finally got a loaner tablet from the nice people at SoftWare Assistance Triage.  (SWAT.  Silly me, I thought it meant "Student Workers Applying Technology in Elementary school...)  So I can do my homework by hand instead of having to figure out how to type the least squares regression equation or how to do any work I would usually do by hand with a mouse.  Yesterday I discovered a lab that had the software I needed, which was awesome and got me off to a great start.  But they didn't have tablets, so I was stuck trying to either type all my mathematical work or writing with an external mouse.  But now, I have a tablet.  And I will hopefully get mine back soon. I'm so relieved right now--sometimes the way things work out is unbelievably amazing.  God is way awesome! 

I survived Engineering Expo!

I started freaking out slightly on Monday night.

About Expo.

It's Virginia Tech's big Engineering career fair. I had not really talked to recruiters before, or at least not with motives of, you know, some day earning my own money and having a career. Real Life still scares me, mainly just because it is unknown.

But at least I know how to talk to recruiters now. I talked to four companies, and I have to say that's pretty good for a painfully shy freshman. Several of the recruiters were surprised to see freshmen out on the floor. I was a bit of an extra surprise, since my name tag actually said I was a sophomore. Why? I got 30 hours of AP credit. Not a bad reason, but I'm still a newbie.

I had heard conflicting opinions on how students were supposed to dress. Lots of people said that business casual was the absolute minimum, and if you overdress a bit, you stand out in a good way. Then I heard an older student say that she was more nervous when she overdressed, so she suggested just wear business casual. I opted for the dressier option; these people came many miles to talk to us and possibly hire us. And they are successful enough to come tell us about what they do and get us excited about it. So I wore my two suit jackets from Ann Taylor Loft and some dressy pants. (One jacket per day. I just realized that that looks like I wore two at once. No, that would be standing out in a bad way.)

Pretty much all the recruiters I talked to were really nice. I didn't get to hand out any résumés, but that's okay. There's an Internship and Co-op fair in the spring, which is more what I'll want. Though now I have fifteen copies of my résumé printed on nice résumé paper with the watermark going the right way (to say nothing of the eight or nine I printed with the watermark backwards...).

Well, I have an assignment to do on the experience. I didn't get any interviews or offered any internships, but I got something a lot more valuable: I learned to talk to the people who can get you those things.

I'm guessing I'll be freaking out about Expo a lot less next year...