Having plodded along with my iPhone 3G for a lot longer than I should have, I was waiting for the next incarnation of the iPhone. Getting one on release day posed no problem, with some clever thinking about where to go. There were no queues and just a bit of Telstra provisioning wait time (hundreds of others all over Australia also trying to set up new iPhones with Telstra, one of the big telcos here).

After playing with it for 24 hours, I totally love it! I’ve been having some fun with Siri tonight, asking her (it’s a ‘her’ in Australia) to do all sorts of things.

Siri is an ‘assistant’ of sorts. You speak to your iPhone and tell her what you want. A note? Call someone? A reminder? Some info? An internet search? Someone’s address? Dictation instead of typing? And a whole lot more! You speak in normal language.

Here’s an interesting list of things you can ask Siri.

Some iPhone 4S screen photos of my interactions with Siri…

Carb Counting with Siri

Information is provided via Wolfram Alpha, and other sources.

HbA1C information request

A fictitious note was fun to make. I can’t measure my A1c (no home testing kits in Australia), and I doubt it will ever be 4.6, but that’s what I told Siri to write and she got it right first time!

Siri take a note (totally fictitious of course!)

The note is time-stamped and synced with iCloud. It’s then downloaded to all my Mac computers and devices, so if I’m in the doctors office, for example, with my iPad and not my phone, the note will be there too.

Siri is still learning my voice, my accent and certain words that I will regularly use. I was surprised she got “HbA1C”.

So far, I’ve dictated several SMSs, an eMail and a Facebook reply and the words she got wrong were far less than expected. Sometimes she git everything right!. It gets better every time I use it. She knows what I mean when I say, “Remind me to call my daughter tomorrow afternoon,” and will set a reminder for me. I only had to say daughter and a name one time and Siri asked if I wanted to always associate that contact as my daughter. Cute and amazing!

I can think of so many uses for this technology. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been driving and needed to write something down, or I think of something and I’m fumbling around for a pen and notepad so I won’t forget. The carb counting is easy and fantastic – no more flipping through books or scrolling through hundreds of food items on an app! I even asked it for nutritional info for a BigMac and the answer was there in seconds.

You can ask Siri to do calculations. Let’s say your insulin to carb ratio is 1:8. You’ve asked for a carb count for that BigMac. Siri comes back with 45 grams. Then you ask Siri, “What’s 45 divided by 8?” She answers with 5.625. Round it and you’ve got how many units of insulin to take!

Siri functionality still has some limitations in Australia – there’s no map interaction, traffic or business lookups (only USA), but apparently that’s coming in 2012. I totally love this technology!

Life for someone with diabetes can be a roller coaster, and there’s risk. Short term, long term – it’s risk. To get decent A1Cs, you have to be doing something right. To survive Type 1 Diabetes on a daily basis, you also have to be doing things carefully.

So, you’re plodding along in your life and suddenly a steamroller comes along and tries to flatten you. That’s what happened to me last month. I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes generosity and caring translates to a huge sign on my forehead that says something like: Born yesterday! Want something? Apply here!

That very long story, for the purpose of this piece, is not worth telling. The result is…

So, three weeks ago, I separated from my husband of 4 years, and have evicted my overseas guest who was here for 8 weeks. I don’t actually feel a whole lot better… yet. Sure, I’ve saved my self-respect (or whatever that was supposed to do for me), but in the world of diabetes, living alone in a new location with no new friends yet, doesn’t augur well with me.

If I had time to get out there, it would be easier, but although the work is starting to come in now after eight months of marketing for new clients, I’ve got bills stacked high. My time is spent trying to make ends meet on one income, in a place and a mortgage meant for two, and I have little energy for much more after that.

My daughter lives in this area and I talk to her and see her often, but she works 6 days a week and has a life with a live-in boyfiriend and all their friends. I also have some clients I’m friendly with (but don’t socialise with). In reality, no one else is responsible for me or for how I deal with diabetes.

When I had other people in my house, I could reasonably rely on them to pick me up off the floor, should I have ever ended up there. I never did literally, but I do have trouble when I go low, and there was much security in knowing others were around.

Daytime isn’t a problem. I test often, but sometimes I’m caught up in stuff and can leave it an extra hour or so to test. I’m a bit hypo unaware, often not feeling anything but my eyes going strange starting when I’m well below the threshold. Not so good, but I’ve always caught it, even though by the time I do catch it, I can’t often remember what I’m meant to do. Test? Wait for a migraine? (My beginning symptoms are similar.) Put my glasses on? What IS that with my eyes? What does it mean?

It’s a strange kind of funny that every time this happens, you’d think I’d know what to do, but the thought process goes into a kind of slow motion, sometimes illogical deduction. Lack of glucose to the brain no doubt.

While I have never minded living on my own, it was always in places I knew others, and since 1989, my daughter was at home until she was a late teen, She’s smart, resourceful and has lots of common sense. She knew what to do when something was wrong. Since she was 6, I always had husbands or others living in my house. Not so now. I’m in the kind of place it’s very difficult to rent rooms for various reasons.

My late friend, who died in February 2010, always knew I was heading for a low, well before I realised it. He was a kind of hypo-dog human! I sure miss him. No one else has ever come close to the kind of instincts he had about me and about my blood glucose.

I do have a dog, a very sweet Border Collie, but she’s the furthest thing you can imagine from being a hypo dog you can possibly imagine! She prefers to have glaring contests with the local frill-necked lizards, on the other side of the open fence.

Living alone, sleeping is more of a worry. Not sure how to solve that. I could get one of those medical alert buttons (at a cost for monitoring or one that dials numbers), but what can I do with it while I’m asleep? I sleep like a log, and that’s a worry too.

So, no really late night snacks unless they’re very low carb. Making sure my blood glucose is stable for a couple of hours before bed. Not going to bed at anything under 5.5 (99 mg/dl), in fact sometimes if I do find myself much lower than that before bed, I’ll take a 4 gram glucose tab.

Making sure my basal rates are just right on my pump means regular night basal testing, especially while the seasons are changing (summer is different to winter for me).

I’m not sure there are any more precautions I can take, but there’s still risk. I think everyone who is insulin dependent, worries about the risks. Yes, you can live with a house full of family and still no one could know you’re in trouble when you’re asleep, but those risks multiply when you live alone.

I may not particularly want to face the day sometimes, but these days I tend to be very thankful I’ve woken up in the morning.

It’s that time of year again – the Jewish High Holy Days – Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year (feast), Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (fast), and Succot, the Feast of Tabernacles (feast). It’s a plethora of festivals and Holy Days like no other – all at the same time of year. Not that I’m particularly religious – in fact, I’d say I’m not at all religious. Christopher Hitchens is a hero of sorts, so an easy conclusion follows about my beliefs. Nevertheless, I definitely didn’t say I don’t like traditions. I love them! I have no rational explanation yet these High Holy Days are part of my heritage and ones I still like to partake in, in some way, every year.

Tonight was the start of Rosh Hashanah.

The same dilemma faces me every year. Food has special significance in Judaism – traditional food at traditional times of the year. Symbolic food for a sweet year is eaten on Rosh Hashanah. Sweet Challah – a yeast-risen, eggy bread that is usually eaten on Friday nights, and made sweeter for Rosh Hashanah. Apples are also traditional. Both are dipped in honey, and plenty of it!

The nightmare for someone with diabetes continues with, for Europeans, something called gefilte fish. Yup, sweet fish mixture (don’t ask) with chren, horseradish mixed with beetroot. Don’t ask! I love it but I guess it’s like Australian Vegemite – an acquired taste. You either grow up with it and love it, or learn to like it if you’re living in someone else’s tradition, or you turn your nose up at it. The non-European Jewish people – some  from the Middle East, Africa and some Mediterranean countries don’t have gefilte fish in their traditional food and often don’t like it. Thanks… if you’re sitting next to me, I’ll have yours too!

Course number three will have a side of tzimmes, a sweet carrot dish. And there are more dishes – sweet, sweet, sweet. How else can we expect to have a sweet year unless we stuff ourselves with traditional sweet foods? That’s tradition for you!

Every year, I look at the apple, the challah, the honey and all the other dishes, swearing I will only take a tiny bite. But, you know… I want to have a really sweet year.

The problem is the massive carb guestimate that goes along with eating that kind of food.

While you’re in a fascinating conversation with someone else at the table, you are barely aware that you’re reaching for another piece of challah because this year, it’s especially yummy, or that someone has put a plate of freshly cut fruit in front of you and it’s just there, staring at you, saying: eat me, eat me. Fresh rockmelon, honeydew melon and watermelon. One small bite, right? Wrong! Honey cake (yes, honey is THE star of the show) and more fruit. So that’s 4 courses (at least) times sweet.

Um… what was that? Maybe 50 grams of carb… maybe 150… maybe some carb number out of my reach. None of the food comes with a carb count. After years of enjoying the food and madly blousing under the table, you get pretty good at guessing, but you can never be sure. Just 10 grams of carb out – nearly one teaspoon of sugar, which could easily be contained in a single bite of some of what I was eating – can be the difference between ‘in-range’ and oh hell I need more insulin. Believe me when I tell you, it’s seriously good food, firstly because it’s good food, but secondly, it’s food you’ve had at this time of year, every year of your life, so it has a history in a deeply rooted tradition. Maybe like a traditional Christmas lunch, which I’ve never had. The older you get the more past times and places you are reminded of, and the more entrenched that tradition becomes – least it does for me.

Insulin pump, thank you! I could never have managed this without you! (And never did!) I’ve had you now for 2.5 years, and still thanking my lucky stars! Combo bolus for a few hours, and add straight boluses here and there as you realise you’ve nearly lost count of the carbs. Manageable, although I suspect I had an entire week of carbs in one sitting. And I’m well aware that it will do my waistline no good at all! Insulin makes me fat – it loves me that much!

Every year, when I get home and pull out my meter, I make bets with myself – how high am I going to be after all that food I wasn’t going to eat, and how off was my carb guesstimate. In times past, I would also be doing some of the cooking for the crowd, so I would make some lower carb dishes as well. This year I wasn’t in the kitchen for the first time in 12 years. Eat or starve!

All things considered, I was a little high by the time I got home, but a 9 mmol/L (162 mg/dl) wasn’t so bad. Yesterday my endo said he advises people not to correct under 10 (180)… not that I’d follow his advice. That wouldn’t work for me. I’ll correct if I’m in the 7s or 8s (126-180). I feel better if I’m around 5.5-6.2 (99 – 112). I seriously expected to be way higher, so I’m pretty happy I almost nailed it. Just one more little bolus before bed.

Wishing all who celebrate this special time of year: Shanah tova u’metuka - a good sweet year.

How high do you go before you correct? At certain times of the year (e.g. Christmas or some other special occasion), do you have food you don’t usually eat? Clearly I do! And I’m not one tiny bit sorry!