The Joy of Insurance Paperwork

Let me start this by saying that I know I am very fortunate to have two insurance providers, the one from my work being my primary insurance and the one from my wife’s work as a secondary provider. The downside of having two insurance companies is that all the paperwork now has to be done twice and getting them to play nice with each other is no easy task.

Late last year I was only on my wife’s insurance, at her renewal time the insurance company informed us of changes to their plan that was going to cost us a lot more money for all of my supplies and prescriptions. At the same time my company’s insurance had their annual open enrolment period. After a lot of research I found that I could join my company’s insurance plan and after paying that premium I would still be money ahead at the end of the year. I know that sounds like a pretty easy deal but that is where this adventure really begins.

The first thing that I had to do was fill out all the obligatory paperwork. I then had to contact my doctor and get all new prescriptions to my new insurance company’s mail order prescription provider. After getting these prescriptions from my doctor and checking them I found that he had a couple of them wrong. Another call to the doctor got that straightened out and I sent them off to my new provider. The next step was to contact my wife’s insurance company and inform them that I now have a new primary insurance provider. I then had to contact my former mail order prescription company and inform them that I have a new primary insurance provider.

Shortly after all the notifying is done I receive a letter from my former mail order prescription company telling me it was time to refill my prescriptions. I call them again and tell them of the change in insurances. Shortly after that they send me a form to fill out to let them know that I now have a different insurance company. The tone of the form led me to think that they thought I was just being a bad person for not filling my medications like they know I should. Oh well, fill out the paperwork and off it goes to them.

About this same time I decided that I would like to get a CGMS to supplement all my other diabetic toys. I e-mailed my diabetes nurse and she sent me some paperwork to fill out and give to my doctor. I filled it out and sent it to them. My doctor does not understand why I want to use a CGMS but I will have to get into that in another post. In the mean time my diabetes nurse gets everything taken care of and I order the CGMS after of course some more paperwork. To get the supplies for my CGMS my diabetes nurse sends all of my prescriptions to yet another mail order supply company. Good news on this company, after some more paperwork they will file both of my insurances for me and I end up with no out of pocket on all of my CGMS supplies except the sensors. I’ll probably write a little more about the sensor situation in the same post that I write about my doctor’s feelings on my having a CGMS.

I received all of my medication prescriptions from my new mail order company and then filled out the paperwork to have my secondary insurance reimburse me for what I paid my primary insurance for the prescriptions. I then received a letter from my secondary insurance stating that my primary insurance did not have the right codes on the receipt for them to reimburse me for what I had paid. I fill out more paperwork requesting the correct billing codes from my primary insurance company. I get their response to my request and fill out more paperwork and send it to my secondary insurance company again. I’m still waiting on their response to this last round of paper work.

All of the above paperwork leads me to my current and most frustrating round of paperwork. I have just received a letter from my current insurance company requesting information on all of my diabetic related treatment and supplies. The part that I have the hardest time understanding is, they are already paying for all of this stuff. I would think that since they are the company paying for these items they would already have all of this information. I would like to have about 10 minuets in their computer system so I could print off all of my information that they have on me so I could then hand it to them so they know everything about my diabetes treatment and supplies. But alas, I fill out more paperwork and off it goes to my insurance company.

Can there be anything better than the pure joy of filling out insurance company paperwork?

Eat more so I can exercise?

I have never been good at the exercising part of being diabetic. For the first year after my diagnosis I did really well, I ate right, lost weight and had good control of my blood sugars. Now here I am going on year two with diabetes and admittedly I am not doing as well, or at least that’s the way that I feel. I know that I haven’t been eating as well as I should and the weight loss seems to have hit a plateau for the last few months. I know at this point it looks like I am going to have to start doing some sort of exercise to loose the last of the weight that I need to.

Finding where to put exercise in my schedule is my next dilemma. I have a very erratic schedule, my day typically starts at 5:30 in the morning getting myself ready for work and the kids ready for school and then out the door around 6:00am. I am then usually back home around 6:30 in the evening. I can’t see myself getting up any earlier; I am definitely not a morning person. In the evenings I really like my time to just set and relax so I guess that this will be the best time for me to work in some exercise.

I am not much for the normal exercises, so I think my best bet to getting exercise is working outside. Mowing, hauling dirt to fill those holes in the driveway, putting some more backfill around the house and the shed, fixing fence etc....

This is by no means a promise to anyone that reads this or even to myself that I am going to do this all of the time. I would like to say that I will but I know that it will not happen on a regular basis. But the way that I look at it, if I can at least get out and do some of these things on an irregular basis it will be a lot more than I am doing now.

Exercise is good for loosing weight and lowering your blood sugars. Here is my problem with the last half of that statement, my last A1C test last month was 4.9. So if I exercise to loose weight and it lowers my blood sugars do I need to eat more so I don’t get to low?
Man is diabetes ever fun to figure out!

Sedentary Lifestle

Today started out like any other work day. Go to work, do normal work stuff until my mom called me at about 9am. My 81 year old type 1 mom called and asked if I could go up to the hospital to be with my sister. My sister who is type 2 had back surgery on Monday and they were getting ready to send her to a rehab hospital. My mom had been staying at my brothers’ house which is a lot closer to the hospital than were she and I live. My brother had picked her up from the hospital to take her home to get some more clothes and medicines. My mom wanted someone to be with my sister when they move her because she is on a lot of pain killers and is not thinking clearly at the moment.

I work at a great company that is very understanding, I stick my head in my bosses office and tell him I will be taking off the rest of the day and take off for the hospital. When I got to my sisters room she was setting up in a chair watching TV. We talked for a while and then her lunch came so I went downstairs and grabbed me a bite to eat. After lunch the nurses came in and got her ready to go to the rehab hospital. I gathered up all of her stuff and took off to the rehab hospital.

When I got there they were just taking her up to her room. I took her stuff up to her, told her I would be back up tomorrow with the kids and I got the heck out of there. The reason that I left in such a hurry was that I knew what was about to happen, therapy was going to start immediately.

I suppose that you might need a little information why I wanted to leave before therapy started. My mom was diagnosed type1 at the young age of 79; my sister was diagnosed type 2 a few months after my mom’s diagnosis (about a year after that I was diagnosed type 2). My mom and sister live together and kind of take care of each other. Shortly after their diagnosis’s I noticed that they were both putting on more weight, not a subject that I was or am willing to discuss with them. At the same time they both started living a very sedentary lifestyle. I did ask if the doctor said anything to them about the importance of staying active and getting any exercise that they can, they said that their doctors did tell them that but they just don’t have the strength to do it. I have been around them enough to know that it would not matter what I said or how much information I could show them on the benefits of staying active they had made up their minds that since they have diabetes they just don’t have the strength.

Now here we are a couple of sedentary years later and they both can’t seem to walk more than 20 or 30 yards without taking a break.

I know that while my sister is in the rehabilitation hospital she will not have a choice but to get up and move, that is what this hospital is all about. All I can say is that I hope these are very patient people because I know she will fight them tooth and nail to keep her sedentary lifestyle. I know these next couple of weeks will be pretty tough on her but in a way I’m glad that it is happening, at least now she will be forced to be more active, if she can keep it up when she gets home that can only be a good thing. I know I will do my part to make sure that she stays active.

I love my mom and sister to death but I do get pretty frustrated with what they are blaming diabetes for doing to them. I so want to tell them that it takes two to tango but like a alluded to earlier, listening to reasoning is not their strong point.

Complication Frustrations

The longer that I have diabetes the more thought that I have to give to complications. Every ache, every pain, the first thing that pops into my head is, is this diabetes related?

I seem to get a lot of headaches anymore; they seem to coincide with my blood sugars being on the climb from the mid 90’s on up. For the most part my numbers hang out in the high 70’s to low 80’s until I eat, then they start to rise and of course then comes the headache. I have yet to find any information for getting a headache in the low 100’s but I assume it is possible, I have read a lot about people that get headaches in the 200 range and up. Maybe my tolerance for high blood sugars is just really low. Or maybe it’s just stress, who knows.

Healing slowly, now here is a complication that I can more than likely contribute to diabetes. I like to work a lot with my hands and I inevitably end up with cuts and scrapes that seem to take forever to heal. I never realized how long my hands took to heal; I always thought that I was just re-injuring them all the time so they never really got a chance to heal. Now I know different. I first figured it out about a year ago when I burnt the side of my leg just above my ankle. It took that burn about three months to heal. Once I started putting the length of time it took to heal my leg with the length of time it took my hands to heal I then realized what was going on. I know, I know, a little slow on the pick up but I eventually figure things out.

The fact that I have at least one complication that I can attribute to diabetes (healing slowly) is probably the reason that the hair on the back of my neck stands up every time I feel something that isn’t right with my body. I guess that as time goes by I will get used to these complications always hanging around in the background, but for now it’s just frustrating.

Totally Consumed

At times it seems my life has been consumed by diabetes. I have spent countless hours researching causes, symptoms, complications and anything else that goes along with this disease. I never seem to tire reading all that I can find about diabetes. When I stop and think about it I could probably add OCD (about diabetes information) to the list of things that are wrong with me. I have joined numerous discussion boards on diabetes, I have several member pages on different diabetes forums and I subscribe to a laundry list of diabetes related blogs.

I think reading the blogs is one of the things that I enjoy most about this disease. I know it sounds odd having enjoy and disease in the same sentence but it’s true. It seems that no matter how bad the situation, or in this case the diagnosis I can find some things about it that will at least make me smile. Reading diabetes blogs does make me smile and I do enjoy a good smile. I have also found a lot of comfort in finding other people out there with diabetes that have the same questions and fears about the future that I have.

I understand that if I keep my blood sugars in control that I may not have to suffer any of the complications that so many other people have to deal with. The problem that I have with that is the phrase “may not”. That phrase just scares the crap out of me. I do dearly want to be around to watch my kids grow up. I can easily cope with how the weather changes from the forecast and I can deal with my daily plans changing on a moments notice. I just have an extremely hard time dealing with the fact that no matter how hard I work at controlling this disease it “may not” keep me from going blind, loosing a foot or some other nasty complication that comes along with diabetes.

I think that since diabetes now plays such a major role in my life that this new diversion of devouring all of the diabetes related information that I can get my hands on is just a new part of my life.

My life is truly consumed by diabetes and the search for more diabetes related information.

Expensive forgetfulnes

When I got home from work tonight it was time to remove the transmitter on my cgms and charge the battery. I just passed day 12 on this sensor and needed to remove the transmitter and charge it, I can then plug the transmitter back into the sensor and trick the cgms into thinking that I have installed a new sensor. It is a necessity for me to get the most life out of my sensor that I can, they cost $35.00 each. It is recommended to change these sensors every three days, since I pay for them out of my own pocket I keep them in for as long as they work correctly.

Anyhow enough of the back ground information and back to my main subject.

I removed my transmitter and plugged it into the charger. I stuck a band-aid on the sensor to hold it in place, this helps keep the sensor in place until I plug the transmitter back into it and cover it with a big piece of IV 3000. I was then setting there thinking I should go outside and feed the cats. I went outside and found that the kids had already fed the cats and I saw the riding mowers setting there and thought I should sharpen the blades and get them ready to mow this weekend. So off I went, I removed all of the blades and sharpened them, cleaned the decks and greased everything that needed greased. When I was done with the mowers I thought, if I were to do the weed eating now, then when I get home tomorrow I can start mowing right away. Since to mow everything that I mow takes about 8hrs it seemed like a good idea to get started now. I finished the weed eating and went into the house to take a shower, when I took my shirt off I realized my sensor was setting there in the wide open, the band-aid had fallen off and the sensor area was covered with dirt, not good, not good at all. I went about cleaning up the sensor area as good as I could without moving the sensor. I then plugged the transmitter back in and covered it with the IV.

Long story short, I may have just toasted another sensor by forgetting about it while I went about the daily chores of life.

Very expensive forgetfulness indeed.

Diabetic Toys

When I arrived home from work tonight there was another package waiting on me. This one contained the Medtronic USB care link device. I set it up and downloaded the information from my cgms. After looking over my results I got to thinking about the tools or "toys" that I use to help me control this crazy disease. Here's my list of Toys so far.

• One Touch Ultra Smart, the only meter that i actually paid for
• One Touch Ultra
• One Touch Mini, Silver
• One Touch Mini, Pink, had to have this, pink is close to red, my favorite color
• 2 One Touch Ultra-Links
• 2 One Touch meter cables
• One Touch Diabetes Software
• Medtronic Continuous Glucose Monitor
• Medtronic Download Cable
• Medtronic Care-Link USB Device

I know it sounds odd to be somewhat excited about having this many devices to help me control this disease but in a strange way I am. I suppose that this means I have come to grips with this diagnosis of diabetes. I obviously would much rather go on living life as I did before diabetes, but unfortunately that is not possible. I guess as in all things you have to look at the bright side of being diagnosed with diabetes. I am probably healthier now than I have been in about 20yrs, I've lost most of the weight that I should have done years ago and there is no doubt that my eating habits are healthier now than they ever have been.

I guess to sum this all up diabetes has made me a healthier person, outside of having diabetes of course.

Late?

Today started out like most Mondays. I woke up late, well not exactly late, but later than I like to wake up. I generally get up at about 5:30am so I can get to work around 7. I don't have to be to work until 8:00am but I like to get there early, I enjoy the people that I work with and my job. Anyhow I didn't wake up until 6:30 this morning which means that I won't get to work until about 7:30. Not actually late but late to me. I hate it when I do this to myself, it seems to throw my whole day off.

I eat breakfast when I get to work and this morning was no exception, open my fridge and grab the usual granola bar. I then got started on my usual Monday routine, reading reports and checking what was accomplished last week. I found a problem on one of the jobs that we are doing and go to investigate. After a couple of hours going over the information I found that one of our suppliers had made a mistake that had the potential to cost us a few thousand dollars. I contact that supplier and start discussing the issue with them and my cgms starts alarming, I check it and it says "predicted low". I confirm that reading with my glucose meter and it is right on. I pretty much eat the same thing every morning so this low came from left field. I grab a snack and finish my phone call. I went to lunch a while later and grabbed the usual two soft taco's no cheese and head back to work and ate my lunch. A little over two hours later I get the "predicted low" again. I eat one of three things for lunch every day, and I am usually in the 80's most of the afternoon, but today just seems to be the exception to the rule day. My readings hung around 65 the rest of the afternoon. I get ready to leave work and check the cgms, 64, I think to myself, is it OK to drive? I haven't had any problems driving with readings in the 60's before so I head home. I get home and take a couple of my daughters to their ball practice. After practice I finally get a chance to have some supper, I eat and a couple of hours later I'm still in the low 60's. So I happily fix that with a bowl of low fat Butter Pecan ice cream. That fixed those readings, I'm now at 92.

When I start my day out late, self imposed or otherwise, it seems to set the tone for everything being just a little off course.

First Post

I suppose to start this off you should know a little about me.



I am a 40yr old male living in Kansas. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes a little over a year ago. I have 5 kids, 1 dog, numerous farm cats and a great wife.



I have been thinking about starting a blog for a while now. Since my diagnosis with diabetes I have spent a lot of time on the web trying to understand diabetes and how other people have dealt with their diagnosis. Their have been a few people that I think really sparked my interest in a project like this, Keri, Thirties, Jennifer, Scott, Amylia and to many others to list here.

I can't promise anything at this point but I hope to keep this updated often, as far as subject matter I'm sure I will be all over the board but with one constant, diabetes. I have found that after you are diagnosed with diabetes it tends to permeate all that you do in your life from that day forward. It may not show on the surface but it is always there.