Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘blood sugars’

Dec 4

1 Comment

Taste Test.

Since it’s December now, I hope it’s okay to revisit a video that includes a festive ol’ tree in the background.  This video is about how awesome coffee is … and why it matters that the order is RIGHT.

(See also:  Now I put my own fake sugar in the cup, instead of playing coffee roulette.)

 

 

Related posts:

Redefining “Diet.” Looking Back: Law and Disorder. Check Yourself.

Oct 30

24 Comments

Ketchup and Mustard.

Blood sugar excursions are one thing (little trips to the grocery store, short flights to Canada … those sorts of excursions are fine) but the long-haul ones are not okay (BOS -> MEL).  I can deal with a sticky high of 180 or 200 mg/dL without getting fired up, and lows are less frequent these days, so I’m not as irritated by them.  Issues seem weekly rather than daily, which is a lovely change of pace.

Except for yesterday.

Holy shit, Yesterday.  You sucked.

The day began with a low alarm in the morning – not a deep one, but a shallow low, easily managed by turning down my basal rate for 45 minutes and popping one glucose tab.  Before breakfast I was 107 mg/dL.  After breakfast, I was 302 mg/dL.  The eff?  I have a breakfast bolus recorded in my pump, but it clearly didn’t make a dent (either that, or the stress of the morning sent me cruising up into orbit).  My goal of bringing my blood sugar down within a few hours was thwarted by a thorough combination of a bloody infusion set (was that why my breakfast bolus didn’t register?), insulin that may have been borked (my pump cartridge was a potluck of dregs from older bottles), the regular stress of work coupled with exacerbated stress of having a high blood sugar … it was gross.

It wasn’t until about 2 pm that I was back down to the 200′s, and that was after pulling the infusion site and taking an injection.  And it wasn’t until about 3 pm that I saw a number under 100 mg/dL.  Which started the second half of my day, spent trying to bring up a low blood sugar that wanted its own bedroom.  I bounced between highs and lows for hours, not able to properly correct at either end of the spectrum due to a magical combination of user error and pancreas error.

When I looked at my Dexcom graph last night, it was way too much ketchup and mustard (aka “highs and lows”) and not nearly enough time spent in range.

“Damn hamburger Dexcom,” I muttered.

A normal day with diabetes doesn’t wring me out, but yesterday did.  Concentrating on work was really difficult, because my high-brain was too sluggish and too thick to let synapses fire.   Writing was impossible.  Sitting at my desk for more than twenty minutes was impossible because I kept having to take breaks to get more water and then to pee.  (I went for a run and a mile and a half into it, made the wise decision to turn around.  A good idea since, by the time I got back to my car, the need to pee was amazingly all-consuming.  Oh hydration!)  My whole body felt like it was submerged in Jell-O, and I tried to swim through it for the majority of the morning.  Instead of making beds/doing laundry/cleaning dishes/writing/answering emails/phone calls, I wanted to climb into bed and sleep off the blood sugar hangover, but that wasn’t an option.  Life doesn’t wait for diabetes.

I made lots of mistakes yesterday – should have pulled the site/taken an injection earlier, should have assumed my blood sugar would rise more after turning down the basal, should have checked an hour after eating instead of two.  So many things I should have done, or done differently.  But my brain isn’t very clever when it’s on the glucose roller coaster.

Oh yeah, and diabetes.

This morning, my fasting blood sugar was 104 mg/dL, a welcomed change after yesterday’s 398 mg/dL, 42 mg/dL, and all the numbers in between.

“Don’t mock me, you little jerkface,” I said to my meter.

If the frigging thing had a tongue to stick out, it would have.

 

Related posts:

The Price of Being Stubborn. Despite Insulin … Spot Off.

Sep 2

1 Comment

Totally Looks Like: Shark Attack.

I don’t know how to write out the theme for JAWS, but mentally insert that [here] because apparently there was a shark sighting in the wee early morning hours of my basal profile.

Totally looks like we’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Related posts:

Low Hangover. Bikinis and Boluses. Spot Off.

May 28

9 Comments

Hard to Capture.

With Twitter as the medium, there’s only so much that can be captured with only 140 characters at your disposal, especially when there are always so many juggling balls aloft.  Since it’s mostly intrinsic, these thought processes, I forget what parts are unfamiliar to people who aren’t living with diabetes.  After looking back at the Storify-version of my #dayofdiabetes experience, there’s so much there, but at the same time, there’s so much missing.

How can I explain how hard my family has worked to make sure we have insurance coverage?  And how the guilt of 16u of insulin left in my pump sometimes forces me to change the infusion set that’s in my skin in order to squeeze out the last of the insulin from a cartridge before changing that part out?  Insulin pump site changes aren’t always done “in full,” with the cartridge and cannula changed simultaneously.  There have been years in the last two-plus decades where we’ve paid nothing for insulin, and then pockets where we’ve paid the full cost.  Knowing how swiftly things would go bad if I didn’t have access to insulin is humbling.

Or the guilt that comes with this kind of mistake.  I very rarely forget to bolus for the food I’m eating, but that day, the toddler wolfed down her lunch and then was ready to bolt outside and play, and as I was cleaning up the neglected turkey and cheese sandwich, I polished off the second half of it.  And then promptly forgot to bolus.  “Frustrated” doesn’t really begin to touch the rage and guilt that sets in at this point.  I hate that there is so much about diabetes that remains out of my control, but when I can pinpoint exactly where my day went off track and it’s the result of something I forgot to do?  I have a hard time with that.  The guilt that ends up folded into so many parts of the diabetes decision making process can be intense, and relentless.  “I’m high because I was stupid and forgot to bolus for something that clearly carried a pile of carbs.”  If it were anyone but me, I’d tell them to just correct the blood sugar and try to move past the guilt part – “There’s no point in feeling guilty!  That just adds to feeling rotten.  Correct and move on.  Keep trying your best.” – but I’m not able to take my own advice.

It’s not simply guilt that’s hard to capture; sometimes it’s hard to really explain why a moment might make me so freaking proud.  Like the fact that a gross high blood sugar derailed me for a couple hours, but I still made exercise part of my day.  Exercise used to be something I actively (ha?) avoided, but slogging my way to the gym even though I felt crummy, and then leaving feeling better, and empowered, and more in control makes me feel proud.  It’s not a big deal, and it’s not a victory that anyone else would notice, but it was a good moment for me.

Same with graphs like this.  I have worked hard to make sure my overnight basals are solid, and that I’m able (for the most part) to go to sleep at an in-range blood sugar and wake up in the same in-range ballpark.  This isn’t an accident -  this is a most intentional moment.  It’s hard to capture why a Dexcom graph that’s between the lines matters so much because it seems like it’s the result of a block of time “without incident.”  It’s hard to explain how much work goes into keeping these moments as incident-free as I can manage.

A day with diabetes looks a certain way, all tucked into Twitter with a neat little hashtag.  But it’s hard to capture what we really do every day, as PWDs or caregivers.  Outside of this DOC-bubble, people wouldn’t understand high-fiving over a blood sugar result of 180 mg/dL (but did they know you were 230 mg/dL an hour earlier?).  Or why a person with diabetes would eat sugar tablets (but did they know your blood sugar was 34 mg/dL?).  Or why a “sugar-free” pie still requires carb counting and insulin (“But it’s sugar-free!”).

Participating in #dayofdiabetes was eye-opening for me, because I realized I didn’t have enough API to handle updating Twitter as much as I needed to, to account for all the times diabetes crossed my mind throughout the day.  And then again, I realized how many times diabetes crosses my mind for simply an instant, letting me continue forward in a day that, in reality, wasn’t owned by diabetes in the slightest.

Related posts:

A #dayofdiabetes. Spot Off. Summiting the Everglades.
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox

Join other followers