Diabetes, life and all that - personal diary

I woke up early this morning at six o clock.

I got dressed, tested my glucose, an acceptable 106mg/dl(5,9 mmol), had a quick wonder round the garden

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Had a five minute game of throw ball with Sheelba, our black lab

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And decided that despite having a tennis lesson at 8:00 I had time for a morning walk before that.

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Having now completed both the walk and the lesson as well as trips to the garden center and lidl, my step count is now at 12.200, well in excess of my target for the day of 10.000.

Which all means that I can now happily and without guilt park myself on my favorite sofa and vegetate watching football on the box for the rest of the day.

We have a christening dinner to go to tonight and I am a bit concerned about food choices but I guess as long as I stick to a reasonable portion of protein, plenty of salad and avoid the obvious carbs,and particularly the desert trolley, I should be ok.

Pavlos

Scandichic said:

It looks delicious! My kind of food! We have just woken up because our eldest has snook in with us and wriggled into the middle of our bed. I have just made tea so am drinking tea, chatting with eldest and showing her your cute cat. Family consensus is what a cutie! I love ginger cats. We had one when growing up.he was a rescue cat and was the naughtiest cat ever. My favourite anecdote was one summers day he sought refuge from the heat under a chair which my mother was sitting on. He looked up, saw that she was wearing very short shorts. He stretched a leg, examined his claw, gave a casual glance upwards and sank his claw into the tender area of my mums bum through the chair. She shot up through the air like a rocket! This basically sums him up.
Glad weight and bs coming down. I have maintained this week!

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Ginger was also a rescue cat.

He was abandoned in a field as a kitten and found and taken to the vet by a girl who works in my wife's office.

When my wife got to hear of this she decided we should adopt him and brought him home.

We did not get to see him for the next month, as he spent all his time hiding behind some furniture in the kitchen, only coming out to feed and do his business when no one else was around.

I was not so keen on getting a new cat at first, as our old cat Gilindra had passed away not too long before then, after being part of our household for the last 18 years.

Ginger has since won me over
though.

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I had a most enjoyable day today.

We visited the beautiful village of Kakopetria for lunch with friends.


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Kakopetria is just under an hour's drive from my home town of Nicosia, but being half way up Troodos mountain, it has a cooler climate and a very different landscape.

The old village is particularly picturesque and a real heaven for a keen amateur photographer such as myself.

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The fifteenth century church of the transfiguration oh Christ has some beautiful icons

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There is a museum showing old wine and olive presses
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Local ladies sell their produce, mostly colorful but highly unsuitable for diabetics food preserves
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Probably best of all, this is the only village I know with a stream running through it. The sight and sound of running water is a real highlight
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Some more photos from Kakopetria

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An old door knock

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Some old chairs and a modern plastic clothes hanger make for an interesting still life.

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Some floral highlights

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Grapes on vine.

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Figs

And another look at the stream
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Our dog Sheelba is a kindly soul, she would not hurt a fly.View attachment 7183

All she cares about, besides food, is playing with her football (actually my son's, but we can not get her to understand that.)
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Unfortunately, Ginger our cat is not convinced....
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Having made his escape, he kept his watch and only when Sheelba was safely away did he come down again
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Of course he then proceeded to act as if nothing happened and moved about the garden as if he owned the place!
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He was even demanding a belly rub

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Having allowed this thread to drift away from diabetes in my last couple of posts, I fully intended this update to steer it back on course.

In fact I intended it to be a review of my progress so far, more than satisfactory by the way, and I had even prepared the necessary graph snapshots .

Glucose:
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Weight:
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Physical activity (steps)
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But then I set out on my morning walk and this sky happened.

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I literally stopped in my trucks in order to admire the fleeting pyrotechnics put on by Mother Nature and the rising sun.

It occurs to me that all this taking time to take in my surroundings, acknowledge and perhaps capture and share with you what I deem beautiful or at least interesting (there is always plenty once one opens one's eyes to it), is my way of detoxifying, of releasing pressure and immunize myself against my hectic work schedule (next couple of days are expected to be particularly bad) and the pressures it brings. I realize that this is perhaps as much part of my therapy as the diet and the medication.

I then think what a breath of fresh air yesterday's visit to Kakopetria was. I say this both figuratively and literally, the invigorating pine scented mountain air was treasured rediscovered joy.

I make a note to myself that I should try to get away from Nicosia on Sundays as much as I can.

There is so much of Cyprus I have never taken the trouble to visit and doing so would present excellent opportunities to spent time with the family, discover new places to eat, take walks and indulge my photography hobby.

In fact it is such a good idea, I wonder why I have not been doing this regularly already.

I guess like most people, as I can visit what is effectively just round the corner at any time, I keep postponing this to a later time and that time often never comes.

It's ironic how foreign tourists often get to see more of a country's sites than its own residents!

Jamrox said:

You know Pavlos you inspired me months ago with your posts . I am active 40 minutes every day of my life now and take photos of my surroundings because of you. Scandichic will tell you the good work we do on Sporty forty and I have told the people on there and other posts about the inspirational Pavlos. Love the photos.

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I am actually blushing!
Love to here that I have had a positive effect. My example probably just helped what was already a need inside you to surface and take substance.

Weight down to 97,2kg this morning, a loss of 4,8kg or 10,58 pounds in two weeks.

Looking it at it one way that is perhaps too rapid a loss.

Looking at another way, this is but a good start. I have more than twice as much to lose still.

It's difficult to think of two days feeling as different as today and yesterday.

Yesterday was hectic, full of stress, as I went out of meetings and into conference calls trying to meet a work deadline. Luckily all's well that ends well.

Diabetic care was not at the forefront of my thoughts but I like too think that, other than stressing a bit too much and possibly having no time or opportunity to test my glucose as much as I would have liked, I did not fall into any major sins: I forced myself to go on my walk, a shorter 3km instead of my usual 5km, and managed to stay away from carbs.

So while my levels were slightly elevated compared to the last week or so, the day's high was still 126 mg (7 mmol) two hours after lunch, so I am happy enough with that.

Today is a public holiday being Cyprus's Independence Day. So I am feeling a lot more relaxed, with a lot more time in my hands.

I decided to make up for yesterday's shorter walk by walking 10km today. It took me two hours twenty minutes to do do but that was partly because my walk ended up being a bit of a sight seeing tour down memory lane.

I had set my mind to visit Paphos Gate on the Venetian walls surrounding the old City of Nicosia.
I drive past every day so I could see that there was an archeological excavation going on there and I was curious what that was about.




It all looks rather interesting, although I am not sure exactly what I am seeing. Perhaps a medieval road leading to the gate, what would have been then, one of the few entryways into the walled City.

It's ironic to think that I probably parked my car on the very spot on numerous occasions, oblivious to what was only a few feet below.

The area is of special significance to me as both sets of my grandparents had houses, sadly now both demolished, just a stone throw away. In fact my paternal grandparent's house would have been just off shot to the left. Also the church I (sometimes) attend, and where I was christened and married is just the other side of the wall.

The road that these days divides the wall in two is part of the green line that separates Nicosia, and the whole of Cyprus in two: Turks to the left and Greeks to the right.

A nearby, coffee shop on this road remains abandoned since the tragic days of 197; it's doors and windows filled with sandbags for soldiers to take cover behind.



My route did take in some happier sites fortunately:

The Byzantine church of St Thometios, the suburb that I grew up in







The municipal garden, last time I visited here I was probably younger than my son is now; sadly my old playground seems to no longer be here.





Perhaps taking inspiration from the much larger pond in the municipal garden, on completing my walk I decided to check our own pond and was delighted to find this little beauty in the pond



Pavlos

Spent the day at my brother-in-law's who invited us, along with about ten other couples and their children, to lunch.




As usual my sister in law cooked up a storm, there was enough food there to feed an army.



Luckily there were plenty of suitable choices for me with a variety of salads and the obligatory charcoal grilled kebabs being a godsend.



The only testing time was of course desert time. It seems that every one of the couples brought along with them a different cake so there was plenty there to tempt me. I decided that the best thing to do was to not have any desert at all, I knew that having a small piece of my favorite desert would not be enough for me, so I chose to get my gratification through my glucose meter, a post lunch reading of 94mg/dl (5,2 mmol), rather than my taste buds.

I explained away my abstinence as an effort to shed some excess weight. I do not hide the fact that I am a diabetic, at least not from those close to me, but at the same time I see no need to broadcast it to perfect strangers.

Everyone rather hypocritically praised my self discipline, as they helped themselves to second helpings.

At least Shona, my sister in law's elderly Chow Chow, did not pretend to be impressed with me. This dog has a very undoglike expression of always looking bored with whatever is going on that I find rather endearing, strangely enough!

Another day dawns, another 5km walk successfully, if rather lazily, completed, glucose levels behaving themselves- 93mg (5,1 mmol),




Rather annoyed that the name of this rather attractive vine seems to have been wiped out of my brain. No matter how hard I try I can not remember it.

@Connie
I have it now - it's podranea ricasoliana. funnily enough I could remember the second part of the name but not the first. I tried googling that but misspelled it and so got no hits.

Thunbergia grandiflora is also very beautiful and also in bloom at the moment but has blue rather than pink flowers

Lunch



The two burgers were supposed to come in a ban and be served with chips but I asked for extra salad instead.

I ended up feeling full with just the one burger and the salad so I decided to stop myself there. I do not need the extra calories just to return an empty plate.

Since deciding to avoid potatoes, rice etc I seem to be able to feel full with less food, perhaps because of the high calorific value of fatty food. I am not really adding fats just not trying to avoid them, which is what I did before.

Breakfast was a very delicious omelette made with one egg,chopped onion,cubed tomato and lots of black pepper.

Pavlos