18 April 2012

That diabetes feeling

Sometimes with diabetes you do just have one of those days. I know whenever I wake up with my BG either low or high, the day has already got off to a pretty negative start. Not only do they naturally make me 'a bit' less tolerant with everyone who is unlucky enough to be around me (poor parents!), but it naturally makes me feel quite down with myself too. It also means that the chances are my BG will be more unstable for the rest of the day, as if it's low there'll normally be a bounceback mid-morning.
More often than not it's high though, so I have to correct - luckily for me, insulin seems to fall half-asleep once it's in me, taking about three hours to work before it acts like it's suddenly been given a can of red bull, causing my BG to plummit just in time for lunch. I almost had a new record low of 1.9 a few days ago (Mr Easter Lindor Bunny is now headless), after being 10.8 before dinner, which wasn't a pleasent feeling!

It is very easy to feel a bit like a yo-yo sometimes, contanstly going back-and-forth, back-and-forth. The trouble is, when I download data from my metre it has quite a high % of lows and highs, but that's only because I tend to test whenever I have warning signs (these have their positives and negatives!). I've got another hospital appointment tomorrow as they're concerned about the number of hypos I'm having, but that's only because I test about every 15 minutes to check my BG is going up - I was always taught "test, test. test!" For some reason though, I don't know if this is just me as I have never really known any other type 1s to ask about this, but I don't find lows as bad as highs. I feel far more out of control with a high, and it takes me far longer to 'recover'. My doctor however takes a very different view! :(

It can be demoralising when your BG just never seems to be in control over a period of time. Since my set change on Saturday, my blood sugar was running slightly high  (10-12 on average). I was correcting but it was constantly high, and I wasn't eating any differently. I was going to change my set, but thought that if my set wasn't working, it would have been much higher. Anyway, I felt pretty awful all weekend and was probably a bit of nightmare to live with to be honest! I did a set change Monday morning as I had reached breaking point, and by 10pm (3 hours later) I was 17 - that's an example of a set not working! After I changed it again though, in a few hours I was 3.6! Because I hadn't had a low reading in a while, I felt absolutely terrible and probably worse than I did this evening. Because of this, I proceeded to over-correct by eating lots of dried fruit, so got the bounceback again that evening. That is one of the really hard things when you're low. Sometimes I feel like I could eat a house, I'm that light-headed and hungry. And because food is like insulin for me and preferring the dawdle than sprint method, as opposed to a steady jog (to be fair, it sounds quite like me running in athletics...) my BG will stay low than suddenly shoot up to the low teens (it's 12 now after the 1.8 earlier).

Today was much better, apart, from this evening - during school all my readings were in range. Nevertheless, sometimes it feels like I can never win.  Has anybody else had one of those days recently, where their BG levels can't seem to be stable? I'm trying to stay positive however; the thing I always tell myself on days like this, before I go to sleep: always keep smiling. It sounds quite cliché I know, but on my desk there's a picture of me just before I was diagnosed, where I look so happy and smiley - I don't want my diabetes ever to prevent me being like that. At the end of the day I am still the girl in that photo, with the same dreams and ambitions as as before diabetes. So I will always look at that and remember to keep smiing - after all, tomorrow is a new day :)




  1. Thanks for the follow on twitter, and for your comment at Fractured Phrases. I'm now following your blog. I was actually diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 10 - that was 20 years ago. It certainly can be a challenge, but I'm usually able to keep it fairly under control. Funny, it seems we have another thing in common: I first took to creative writing and "poetry" as a way to deal with my emotions dealing with diabetes as well. Glad you are able to have such a positive outlook and "keep smiling"!

    1. Thanks for the reply and for following my blog :)

      Poetry has been such a wonderful outlet for me, although I have my two types of poems: the nature ones which are more 'polished' and then the ones I write just for me, when I'm feeling a bit more overwhelmed by everything diabetes-wise. It's a bit rocky at the moment but I'm getting there- just got to get rid of the hypos!

      Sophie :)


Blogger templates by pipdig