43rd Annual Chicago RV & Camping Show

We’ll be there! If you’re in the area and going let me know so we can say hi! Have a great weekend everybody!

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Comments Response…

Thanks for the responses regarding my previous post “Hello, my name is Erik and I have a problem….” 

I started today with blood sugar at 130, it’s been so long since I was under 200 right after waking up I honestly can’t remember the last time!

Teri, I am now following your new blog, you have some great information there and I’m going to follow along every day. I like how you log your weight, good luck! As of 2/11/11 I was at 264lbs. I am going to start logging my exercise and our coat rack, the expensive treadmill is getting dusted off and put back into service.

Donna, I dropped cereal, most bread, milk and cheese a year and a half ago. Bread and cheese got snuck back in (fast food!) but the past week I have been avoiding them and will continue, I haven’t had a real soda in I’m guessing 8 years but I did drink diet soda which is just as bad for you but I’ve had maybe 10 diet sodas in a year. When we take the RV out, since I’m up first most mornings I’m going to put that to good use and go for walks, as long as my back is working that morning. My bike is going to be fully functional within the next two weeks, I know I’m going to have to order parts and I’ll know which ones by tomorrow.

Diana, yeah I am good at being aware, it’s the doing I pretty much stunk at. I agree with you’re point about hibernation, I definitely feel much more determined to get going now, perhaps the bad A1C result helped spur that on but I think the fact we hit 60f yesterday is helping as well!

Merikay, giving up the booze will have an immediate effect I’m sure, I agree, having one or two on Holidays is fine and I’m going to try hard to stick to that. I’ll keep posting with where I’m at, good or bad!

Rae, I was on Insulin and Byetta up until about a year and 4 months ago when I took myself off. While on them my A1C went UP to 14.9 and the Byetta made me feel way off, the fact there are law suits against Byetta scared me a bit as well but my A1C was the final reason, I could get a 14.9 simply by using no drugs what so ever and save a bundle!

I went to the doctor who sent me to an Endocrinologist who tried to put me on 6 to 8 different potent drugs and I called my doctor right after the appointment and told him there was no way in hell I was going to take that many drugs, no way. He put me back on Amaryl, Actos+Met and Lipitor and my A1C went down to an 8.4 but since it went back to 9.9 and you know the story from there. I am now on Onglyza, Actos+Met, Lipitor and a once a day injection of Victoza and my numbers are steadily coming back down. I’m on the Lipitor simply because I’m diabetic, Triglycerides in Diabetic’s typically go through the roof and in the past mine has but now it’s at 120 and looks good.

Thanks for the replies everybody, it really helps getting feedback like this.

Hello, my name is Erik and I have a problem….

The blood test results don’t show it unless you look at the A1C result but clearly I have been doing good enough to keep what would be good results for a normal person in every regard except for blood sugar. Heck, how many people do you know who weigh 264 and have perfect blood pressure, perfect cholesterol and perfect triglycerides?  Any doctor would be proud of the blood test results I have, except I’m diabetic and that damned A1C is there to keep things honest so even if the doctor doesn’t see it, I know it and I’m a lot harder on myself than any doctor could be, but I don’t listen to myself very well.

So, why is my A1C back up to a 9.9, oh heck, lets make it a round number and call it a 10 shall we? I can’t stay away from candy, ask my wife, if she brings home a box of candy bars or cookies containing chocolate they will magically disappear in no time. On Halloween she’ll guard the candy and anything left gets hauled to work. Too many nights a week I’ll do shots of jaeger or have 2 or 3 mixed drinks and what do these things have in common? SUGAR/CARBS and while the jaeger does have 51 herbs that are good for you the rest of it isn’t, pure and simple really.

I have also been eating fast food again, McDonald’s and Wendy’s to be specific with a few Taco Bell’s tossed in a few times a month for good measure. At work I had fallen back to eating the wrong lunches and we have enough candy and junk to feed an Army and while I stay away some days, other days I have 2 or 3 candy bars in a day and that folks is my problem. I dropped weight from 280 to 242 and after my Mom died I fell back to old habits. My weight climbed back up to 264 and my A1C climbed along with it so what to do?

When my doctor sent me to get tested for PAD and possible heart issues I took a step back and thought about it, do I want to live to be 80 and healthy or live to be 80 by pure luck but missing a few limbs, possibly blind and miserable? I’ll take 80 and healthy for 200 Alex….     I don’t know how well I’ll do but this is the first time I have openly confessed I have a candy problem and I am going to try my hardest 3 months at a time to get to the next A1C test and get good numbers.

Fross your gingers… I mean cross your fingers, see what happens when you cross them too early? I have been slowly seeing better numbers, on 2/15/11 my blood sugar was 285 after walking to work (a few days prior, it was 485!), not good. Yesterday it was 179 and this morning it was 164 so it is working, but can I get to 100 or consistently be under 120? Man, I don’t know and to do so will take will power I hope I have but haven’t tapped into yet. Time will tell, one day at a time.

I’m also going to take my $800.00 bike down from the garage ceiling where it has been hanging for nearly 12 years, the wheels may be warped and tires rotted but I’m going to buy a fat persons bike seat, fix the rims and tires and start bike riding again, Loki is going to go with me. I used to love to do that with my last dog, time to hit it and git it…

I’ll be walking from my office to our network CoLo today, 2.5 miles in each direction, that should knock the numbers down a bit!

Always Ready For Some Good News & Gov’nt Rant…

I went to the Cardiologist today, the office, nix that, the Hospital was jam packed. I had to fill out paper work that was overly redundant which took about an hour but when I finally got in he checked the pulse in my left leg and within 2 seconds said I had one of the strongest leg pulses he has felt in a while, I love good news!

He then ran through the ABI tests I had taken last week, 133% above the norm in the right and 125% above normal in the left leg. He reported there was no sign of PAD but there was clear indication that I played a contact sport for a long time and there was damage to the capillaries on the inner sides of both ankles and that explains the copper color (iron residue) my veins have in that area. The ligaments in both right and left legs under the calf including the muscle that runs through them (damned if I can remember the names) are damaged which explains the discomfort I have when walking long distances. This will affect the hiking I want to do this year but I will do it!

I explained to him how long I played hockey and that both inside ankles and both calf’s were hit by slap shots, checks and hockey sticks for better than 20 years. Plus football, soccer and baseball so yeah my legs are a bit banged up and the knees are junk, blah blah. It’s amazing what these guys can tell just by feeling you up.

Long story short, I won’t ever be running again, no big shocker there but he did explain things so much clearer to me than previous doctors had and did several tests including the EKG which still showed an abnormal T Wave but only in the third instance and he said the blip was so small and in the third instance is typically the result of the computer algorithm not reading the third instance properly, he said he wished they would consult with an actual cardiologist when they write them. He ended with saying I don’t need a cardiologist for probably a long time to come and to get more exercise. Whew.

My last 2 doctor visits are March 1^st with my primary doctor and March 9^th for the eye doctor to check for damage from diabetes to the cornea. After that I should be done for 3 months until the next A1C.

Now for the negative, thanks to the new Health Care bill that nobody in Government read and many bragged about that fact but still signed it into law anyway…. deep breath… I received a notice in the mail today that coverage costs are going up, the number of drugs being covered are going down due to the new legislation. I try to keep my blog politically transparent but I HAVE READ this new law and the fact that it could be passed into law AND SO MANY OTHERS are passed into law everyday WITHOUT being read, to me shows the utter state of incompetence that our Government has gotten too, be it the left or the right part of it.

Does our Healthcare system need to have some things fixed, hell yes but the very geniuses who don’t read the law refuse to allow competition (this would take a whole new post to explain) and then complain they need this law because there isn’t enough competition, the stupidity amazes me. Does it need to be replaced and administered by the same Government that does things so poorly a toilet seat costs $250.00 and it takes a committee to replace a light bulb? NO, but we get the Government we deserve folks and my family insurance has gone up 30% already. On top of that Illinois officials now have 66% higher income taxes to spend at their whim, isn’t that just dandy? I digress…

Guess what, if the new Healthcare bill gets repealed, all the new costs and higher rates the insurance companies are taking in now stay as they are, there is no legislation being put together to give us our money back or to lower the rates and that too says something about the incompetence of our Government.   Anybody remember the promises made when they instituted Social Security, look how well that has turned out, now they want to run our Healthcare, no thank you.

End of political rant, I bet my BP right now is up there…

Heavy Snow Proves Too Much

I went up to the rig today to remove the snow in front of it so I could drive it and check everything out. I took my car so no snow blower for me, I thought what the heck, just some snow in front of the rig I can handle it no problem! Wrong!

I get up there and the winds have gone from 4mph when I left the house to 35mph+. The snow is so heavy from the 41f temps the best I could do was clear a path directly in front so I could open the hood and turn the batteries back on for the engine and house. My arms turned into Jelly so decided to just fire up the generator and test the systems out.

I even put out the slide and everything worked great. No mice were found so I let the genny run for about 30 minutes, I watched some TV and then shut everything down and buttoned her up. I contacted the body shop to try and schedule getting the passenger mirror repaired, it was real loose when I checked it out, much looser than when we put it in storage.

If all goes well the rig will be ready for the March 31st trip! If not, we’ll work it out!

49 Days, 5 Hours, 21 Minutes and 2 Seconds!

Found An Example…

The new Coachman Encounter has one of the ugliest exteriors I have ever seen but has the best interior layout my wife and I have seen that conforms to our taste layout wise. This one has the desk but we like the other interior layout they have as well.

I mean no disrespect to anybody who has this model but that grill, not sure what they were thinking, VERY flimsy and ugly. If we were in the market I don’t think my wife could talk me into this no matter how much she liked the inside.

See the desk? I have to work remotely when we are out and this would really fit the bill nicely! Maybe we could gut our rig and somehow fit it like this someday? Who knows but I like thinking about it.

Things That Make You Go Hmmmmmm…..

My wife believes I look at RV’s too much, she’s probably right as I do love to look at them and see what possibilities there are for the future. I feel the more I look the more ideas I’ll get for our current rig since we will be keeping it for awhile. (ok, so that’s what I say anyway!)

I see the more expensive the rig the more of them have the TV in the dining area where it’s harder to see and they almost always have two couches which makes no sense to me.

Take this picture for example, this is the interior of a 2011 Newmar Dutch Star. Look where the TV is, I don’t know about you but this just seems to be in the way of the wife's domain, only a man would design something like this. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for Newmar but this is a fault of many of the luxury brands out today, not just Newmar. So, when the wife and I will finally be able to afford a newer rig this type of setup will be out of the question.

I like the ones that have a desk built in, call me old fashioned but put the TV up front, heck make it be attached to the ceiling so I can lower it now we’re talking! Our TV is mounted in the dashboard and when we drive the weight causes the dash to noticeably shimmy up and down as we drive. I catch myself holding the top left of the TV to keep it still even though the coach was designed this way. Still, I’d like to toss that pile of crap old TV for a proper HD LCD. So I’m going to remove the TV this Spring and see what our options are. This summer we will make this pain in the ass RV our own and if I could win a stereo sound quality competition I can surely figure out how to get this set up properly and so it looks factory. Another reason why I look at a lot of RV’s online.

Oh yeah! 50 Days, 10 hours, 11 minutes and 10 seconds!!

51 Days, 3 Hours, 34 Minutes And 50 Seconds

But who’s counting???